Friday's Forgotten Books, November 2, 2012

Due to a computer crash, the summing up will appear tomorrow. Thanks!
I have a story posted at SHOTGUN HONEY.
Thanks to the kind folks there.

                                          THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, Anthony Ambrogio

Anthony Ambrogio is the author of YOU'RE NEXT: LOSS OF IDENTITY IN THE HORROR FILM, contributes to MIDNIGHT MARQUEE, and is the editor of CORRIDORS, a literary magazine. 

This past October, while staying on Chincoteague Island in Virginia, I picked up, for free, at the public library there, a battered copy of THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, which I had never read. I did see the movie back when it came out (as I had also seen but never read ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE STEPFORD WIVES), and I thought it was okay, but that was a long time ago, so I thought I’d check out the novel. What struck me about the book was that, if it were written today, Ira Levin could never get away with the rather slow pace that he uses to begin the book. I had to dutifully plug through the first 15 or so pages describing the Nazis meeting at a Japanese restaurant in South America before things really got going. But, once things did, it was a pretty gripping narrative—so much so that I put BOYS on my Netflix queue so I could re-evaluate the movie.

You can see from the novel how it was probably written with a screenplay in mind (by that time, Levin must have known that anything he wrote would be snapped up by Hollywood), but my recollection was that the finished product wasn’t so good. Back in 1978, when the movie was released, I didn’t think that Gregory Peck made a convincing Nazi, and I thought Laurence Olivier made only a half-convincing Nazi-hunter. That may be because I was convinced, in the 1970s, that Olivier used the same strange accent whether he was playing a Dutch professor (DRACULA), a Nazi (MARATHON MAN), a Nazi-hunter (here), or a Jewish cantor (THE JAZZ SINGER). (Maybe I was being unfair; maybe they all spoke alike because they all hailed from the same area.)

SPOILER ALERT. If you have never read/seen THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL and are unfamiliar with its plot and various surprises, you may want to stop reading now. However, at this late date, I don’t think I’m giving anything away if I disclose that BOYS, which plays like a puzzle (why does Mengele want his six assassins to murder 94 65-year-old non-entities, 94 civil servants in various European and North American countries?), finally explains itself by revealing that Mengele has succeeded in cloning 94 Hitlers and placing the babies in homes that duplicate the family structure of Hitler’s own youth, with the intention that—by replicating key events in the original’s life (like having his much older father die when he is 14)—several of them will grow into the spitting, shouting, hating, demagogic image of the Fuhrer.

A friend of mine objected to the central premise of the story: “My main problem with THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL is that Mengele's plot is completely nonsensical. Why would anybody, even a Nazi, want to clone 94 Hitlers spread out in countries all over the world? Didn't it occur to them that an American Hitler, or a British Hitler, or a French Hitler, isn't necessarily going to be a good thing for Germany. I know it's a thriller, and thrillers are allowed a lot of latitude in the plausibility department. But, at the very least, you should be able to follow the reasoning of the Master Villain, no matter how absurd his plot is. In BOYS FROM BRAZIL, I just didn't get Mengele's reasoning. To be fair, the other Nazis in the movie—the sensible Nazis, I suppose you could call them—thought his plan was as crazy as I did.”

But my friend is missing the point.

Mengele’s plan is to “save” the Aryan race by creating another Hitler. So he plants his 94 clones in Aryan countries or with Aryan (white) parents in countries with “mixed” populations. The idea is that one or more of these kids will grow up to champion the cause of the white (Aryan) race. I don’t think it’s so odd for him to believe that, whichever Fascist comes to power in whatever country, he will be good for Germany and white countries everywhere. After all, at the time that Hitler ruled Germany, the Italians (who had developed Fascism first) had Mussolini, and the Spanish had Franco, both of whom were sympathetic to and supporters of Hitler’s aims and goals. Many other countries had their own home-grown brown- or black- or whatever-color shirts. (Oswald Mosley upheld the Fascist cause in Great Britain in the 1930s, as did other people in other places.) It wasn’t all that hard for the Third Reich to get “right-thinking French and denizen of other occupied countries to jump on the Nazi bandwagon.

Mengele’s plan (perhaps not spelled out clearly in the movie—or, perhaps, even in the book) was to create some kind of Pan-Aryan paradise across the world. In the book, Liberman says that biology and family environment are not enough; the social conditions (such as those that existed in Weimar Germany) must be just right if a Hitler is to come to power. This is another reason for Mengele’s number of 94—to increase the chances of the boy having the right combination of all three things. There’s more talk in the book than in the film about the success rate of his experiment—what percentage of the boys will become the Fuhrer that Mengele wants.

At any rate, I was able to suspend my disbelief without difficulty in regard to Mengele’s plot as conceived and delineated by Levin. (On the other hand, I thought that the disowning of Mengel’s scheme by the Germans in charge was an unnecessary contrivance.) I suppose it all depends on what we can stand, but I was able to put up with the major contrivance without much difficulty.

It was instructive for me to re-see the movie after finally reading the book. The film alters the beginning of the novel—that part that I said was rather slow and wouldn’t be stood for by a reader today—by speeding up events, making them more (dare I say this?) “cinematic”—letting us see the Nazi get-together from the point of view of the young Jewish American who’s trying to keep tabs on them. In fact, the first five minutes or so of the film are practically wordless as the young man observes the Nazis gathering and rushes to shadow them.

The film itself follows the book pretty closely, though it does compress certain things and allow the story to proceed at a faster clip. (It avoids some of the awkward “disguises” that Mengele assumes at the end, first pretending to be Lieberman when he meets Wheelock, the adoptive father of one of the Hitler clones, and then pretending to be Wheelock when Lieberman shows up.)

Ultimately, I don’t know if the picture is more than a two-and-a-half-star film because of certain flaws inherent in the story and because of the casting, which doesn’t really work. I understand that Gregory Peck probably wanted to stretch his acting muscles by playing a bad guy, but he’s not the best choice for Josef Mengele. (And, of course, he has to speak with a “Choimin accent” throughout, even when he’s obviously supposed to be speaking German to his colleagues, when he wouldn’t have an accent. Ditto Laurence Olivier’s Jacob Lieberman [based on actual Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal] with his European accent.)

Two items in the plot—there because Levin wants them to be, probably for thematic reasons—bothered me.

When Lieberman discovers Mengele’s plan to have the civil servants killed, the “high command” or whatever it is (the post-War Nazi unit) decides to abort Mengele’s mission. But single-minded Mengele determines to soldier on without anyone else’s help. I guess I can understand why this has to happen—to set up the ultimate confrontation between Mengele and Lieberman—but it, in one way, diminishes the general Nazi threat by making it more the single-minded action of one man. And that final confrontation between Mengele and Lieberman involves several dangerous Dobermans. Again, I kind of understand why the dogs must figure in the plot because the young boy who’s one of the Hitler clones has to have a part in this confrontation, and the dogs become his “weapon.” Still, I always felt that the dog scenario was a kind of cop-out—I guess because it wasn’t the sort of Big Climax that I was looking or hoping for.

The film did play better this time than I remember it in 1978, and Levin’s ideas are ingenious (albeit dimmed by 35 years of cloning in fiction and real life), and I think both book and film are worth reading/seeing, at least once, and would make an interesting companion piece to MARATHON MAN, book and film, which are of the same vintage.

And you have to hand it to Levin. He came up with wild but plausible and downright scary stories that were all different: a coven of witches conspiring to insure the birth of the anti-Christ, a bunch of men conspiring to replace their spouses with perfect robotic substitutes, a group of Nazis conspiring to recreate Hitler. (Notice, however, that conspiracy figures prominently in each novel.)

In the dénouement of BOYS, Lieberman prevents the Jewish Defense League-like organization from hunting down and killing the Hitler clones, arguing that they are just children and that the Hitler hunters would be no better than the Nazis who killed six million. But both the book and the movie add (different) codas, suggesting that the cloning is working and that the Wheelock boy whom we’ve seen might very well grow up into the Nazi we fear, pretty much negating Liberman’s message of tolerance and kindness and non-intervention. I have no idea of this outcome represents Levin’s pessimistic view of the world or if he was just following a trend (that, one could argue, he started in ROSEMARY’S BABY) of having the bad guys win. In ROSEMARY’S BABY, Rosemary’s acceptance of her devil child is a maternal action and one that grows organically out of the plot. One might even be able to argue that the dire fate of the protagonist in THE STEPFORD WIVES makes sense, given the thrust of the story. But the tacked-on “downbeat ending” of BOYS is more perfunctory (as were the endings of too many movies that followed in the wake of ROSEMARY’S BABY’s success); it doesn’t need to be there.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad series of political thrillers as well as the Sam McCain series. He also edits anthologies, writes westerns and short stories, and is generally busy here.

One way you can tell you're getting old is when the good girl in the Gold Medal novel appeals to you more than the femme fatale.

Somebody wrote me about a review I'd written a few years ago of Bruno Fischer's House of Flesh. In my review I was agreeing with science fiction writer Dave Bischoff's contention that the book is a mystery that combines gothic elements with some really horrorific moments. It's one of Fischer's best novels, a very sleek, dark whodunit that lags only at the very end because he runs out of suspects. There is a particularly nasty scene wherein dogs set upon the remains of a dead horse, the carcass having rotted before they got to it. The word "flesh" has multiple meanings in the novel. And nasty is the operative word for long sections of the book. 

Before responding to the letter I decided to look through the book again. Held up very well. But as I read it I realized that Fischer had made the good girl so appealing--smart, funny, winsome, clean cut--that the protagonist seems sort of dotty to obsess over a rather odd woman whom he finds unattractive (but inexplicably sexy of course), aggravatingly mysterious and frequently irritable. 

I know, I know--this is noir land where gonadic response to fate is not only standard but mandatory, thanks to the Law of The Crotch as writ large and eternal by James M. Cain.

The only way I can explain this misjudgement is my age. But an evening with the sweet, amusing good girl promises so much more fun than a few hours in the clutches of The Dragon Lady...

By the time they plant me Ill probably be reading those old-fashioned Harlequin romances. The clean ones.

-----

The Evil Days by Bruno Fischer

Bruno Fischer had one of those careers you can't have any more. There's no market for any of it. He started out as editor and writer for a Socialist newspaper, shifted to terror pulps when the newspaper started failing, became a successful and respected hardcover mystery novelist in the Forties and early Fifties, and finally turned to Gold Medal originals when the pb boom began. His GMs sold in the millions. His House of Flesh is for me in the top ten of all GMs.

Then for reasons only God and Gary Lovisi understand, Fischer gave up writing and became an editor for Colliers books. But he had one more book in him and it turned out to be the finest of his long career.

Fischer shared with Howard Fast (Fast when he was writing mysteries under his pen names) a grim interest in the way unfulfilling jobs grind us down, leave us soulless. Maybe this was a reflection of his years on the Socialist newspaper. The soullessness features prominently in The Evil Days because it is narrated by a suburban husband who trains to work each day to labor as an editor in a publishing company where he is considered expendable. Worse, his wife constantly reminds him (and not unfairly) that they don't have enough money to pay their bills or find any of the pleasures they knew in the early years of their marriage. Fischer makes you feel the husband's helplessness and the wife's anger and despair.

The A plot concerns the wife finding jewels and refusing to turn them in. A familiar trope, yes, but Fischer makes it work because of the anger and dismay the husband feels when he sees how his wife has turned into a thief. But ultimately he goes along with her. Just when you think you can scope out the rest of the story yourself, Fischer goes all Guy de Maupassant on us. Is the wife having an affair? Did she murder her lover? Is any of this connected to the jewels? What the hell is really going on here?

Sometimes we forget how well the traditional mystery can deal with the social problems of an era and the real lives of real people. The hopelessness and despair of these characters was right for their time of the inflation-dazed Seventies. But it's just as compelling now as it was then when you look at the unemployment numbers and the calm reassurances by those who claim to know that the worst is yet to come.

A wily little novel that rattled me the first time I read it and rattles me still on rereading.

 THE RULES OF THE GAME by Georges Simenon

(Review by Deb)

If you handed this book to someone without telling them it was written by Georges Simenon, I think they would guess it was written by John O'Hara or John Marquand or one of the other mid-century American writers who focused on the interior lives of middle-class men reaching roadblocks in their attempts to navigate the social structures of their suburban worlds.  Certainly, a reader would not guess that this book was written by the creator of that quintessential Frenchman, Inspector Maigret.

Published in 1955 and written during a period when Simenon lived (and wrote several books set) in America, THE RULES OF THE GAME concerns a few pivotal days in the life of Walter Higgins, the manager of a large grocery store in Williamson, a prosperous Connecticut suburb.  For the second year in a row, Walter has applied to join the local country club.  The previous year, he was black-balled; this year, assures the friend who sponsors him, he is a shoo-in for membership.  To Walter, membership in the country club means he has arrived, that he is part of the group that runs things in Williamson, that his Little League coaching, regular chuch attendance, membership in the Rotary Club and VFW (he served in WWII), and volunteer work with the school board has been noticed and rewarded.  It also means he can let go of the memories of his difficult childhood in the rough, working-class town of Old Bridge.

But again Walter is black-balled and this time his life comes tumbling down with the imploding of his expectations. Despite the support of his wife and perceptive oldest daughter, Walter cannot adjust to the notion that people who control the admissions process do not think he is "worthy" of country club membership.  The scales have fallen from his eyes and at last he sees the social strata of Williamson and his place in it.  He realizes that everyone plays a game in this social interaction, but that he has failed to understand the rules (or even be aware that a game is being played). 

This new awareness leads Walter to a brave act: Supporting a proposal to raise local property taxes in order to build a new school that will accommodate the town's growing population.  There are some remarkably timely exchanges at the school board meeting (or perhaps it's just a case of "the more things change, the more they stay the same") where the town's wealthiest citizens (and their proxies) complain that the increase in taxes will hurt them the most, even though they have recently been willing to pay much more to erect a new building at the country club; while people on the other side of the issue claim that the new schools are necessary to produce the sort of educated workforce needed by the wealthy to run their factories and other enterprises.

Worried that his support of a tax increase will cause upper-class customers to stop patronizing his supermarket, Walter spends a morning at work in a state of near paranoia, fretting over every person who does (and does not) come in to shop.  Then a phone call summoning him back to Old Bridge leads Walter to confront his past and experience a "dark night of the soul."  The ending is, paradoxically, both happier and more cynical than we would expect from an American writer covering the same material.  We have a sense that Walter will now be better able to function in the society he has chosen, but we do not know what the price of playing the game will be for him and his family.

Sergio Angelini

Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby 
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Curt Evans
Elisabeth Grace Foley
Jerry House
Nick Jones
Randy Johnson
George Kelley  
Margot Kinberg

B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
Neer
J.F. Norris
Richard Pangburn
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer 
Michael Slind
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
Prashant Trikkanad
TomCat
Zybahn

My Life at the Theater: THE LAST SUMMER by Declan Hughes

This was the third play we saw at the Dublin Theater Festival and its subject matter was both timely and an important one. What kind of men did a group of boys who loved Ayn Rand and Rush in the late seventies turn out to be. So we meet them as teenagers and then again as older men. All of them are strongly and adversely effected by Ireland's rise and fall. The Celtic Tiger years came in their young manhood and the prosperity was a promise that turned out to a false one. The program notes "That tension between international success and ordinary Irish life lies at the heart of the play." This was the only play we saw that dealt with contemporary Ireland, and it gave us a lot to think about.

High School English Curriculums

Dave White, a middle school teacher  and a fine writer, said on the blog DO SOME DAMAGE, that in his school system by senior year, the kids are reading 90% non-fiction in English classes. What they read is mostly business reports and such to prepare them for their future in business.

Does you school system adhere to this sort of thinking? No wonder people don't read novels as adults when the school system devalues fiction like this. Reading fiction is a kid's thing they are in effect saying. What is more difficult to read: Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens or a business report. Which one teaches a kid critical thinking?Which one illuminates another world.

Where will kids ever be introduced to good writing if not in high school? Shame, shame on the school system. I pray this one is in the minority in this bad idea.

HORROR FACTORY

From the people behind CRIME FACTORY, comes HORROR FACTORY just in time for Halloween (or practically). Now available on KINDLE with a POD to follow.

Featuring interviews with champion Mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale; the “scariest guy in America” Jack Ketchum; and Lawrence D. Cohen and Tommy Lee Wallace discussing the making of ‘Stephen King’s IT with Lee Gambin.

New fiction by Ed Kurtz; David James Keaton; Andrez Bergen; Anonymous-9; Patti Abbott; Edward J. Rathke; Garnett Elliott; Matthew C. Funk; S.J.I. Holliday and John Hunt.

Clive Barker’s Harry D’Amour and the occult gumshoe phenomenon gets dissected by Ryan K. Lindsay; the life, death and career of the Maniac Joe Spinell is exhumed by Addam Duke; 10,000 pages of Japanese horror comics king Kazuo Umezu is injected into your brain by Cameron Ashley, and the Nerd of Noir, Peter Dragovich, plans your evening viewing.

This is my first story about an imp.

Opening Credits: Bullitt

What's Going on.

When Minor Characters Threaten To Sabotage a Show.

At first, Kalinda seemed like a great character on a great show. But over four years, her past, (referred to often) was still too murky and I began to lose interest. Strutting around only goes so far. And this year, with the addition of a sadistic husband, I dread seeing those black boots walk down the hall on THE GOOD WIFE. IN a TV show that manages to be lucid about other issues, why this enigma,

The supporting character problem is a potent one. If you don't develop them somewhat, there is not enough interaction on a TV show-or you lose all interest in them. JUSTIFIED has not done very well by Winona for instance. If you blinked last season you missed her. Marie got very little airtime on BREAKING BAD this year. And Betty Draper has pretty much signed off. (And what do these characters have in common?).

But not all supporting characters are equal. Large casts can't give equal time to all of its players. THE CLOSER never developed its supporting characters beyond the squad room and that was okay. (I do wish they had never introduced her parents however).

Now Kalinda's storyline is both underdeveloped and referred to too often. I have read several articles about this recently so I know my frustration with it is shared.

What supporting players should have been developed more on a TV show you like? Which ones less? Who is the best supporting character in TV history? If you watch THE GOOD WIFE, should they pull the plug on Kalinda's back story or do you still care?

Ocean City, New Jersey

We were a poor family. But every summer, for one week, we took a vacation at Ocean City, New Jersey. It was a family town, a place for people who wanted to spend time on a beach, to go to a modest amusement park at night, to go to a family restaurant.. No drinking, no gambling--the kind of place you could take your kids.

This is Ocean City, New Jersey today.There is no way, Ocean City, New Jersey, a half an hour south of Atlantic City is going to come back without help. Please donate to the New Jersey Food bank right here. Donate to the New York foodbank too.

How I Came to Write This Book: Fleur Bradley

                                           How I Came to Write This Book, Fleur Bradley

 

Double Vision is a story for reluctant boy readers, so when I tell people about the book, they assume I have boys. Actually, I have two daughters. But when I would go to my oldest's school for those open house type events, and she would get the teacher's praise, there was always that boy in the back of the classroom. Twinkle in his eye, a few friends in tow, watching. Waiting to see what trouble he'd get into.  

That's the kid I wanted to write a book for. Because that boy is probably a pain in the neck in the classroom, probably doesn't like to read all that much, but has plenty of skills. Just not the kind that will get you good grades in school.

Main character Linc Baker in Double Vision is that kid. After he gets into deep trouble, he ends up taking the place of a lookalike junior secret agent, goes to Paris, and uses those trouble making skills for good use. The story is fast-paced, fun--the kind of story that lets kids see that the class troublemaker could be a hero. 

I like the Linc Bakers of the world. I hope this book gets them reading.

Thanks, Patti!

Cheers,

Fleur

F.T. Bradley

Double Vision (Harper Children's, Oct '12)

ALEX RIDER meets THE DA VINCI CODE when a regular kid goes undercover in Paris...

Find out more about Linc and his first mission at www.doublevisionbooks.com

Forgotten Movies: Brother's Keeper

This 1992 documentary, directed by Joe Berrlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, broke the mold of what came before it because---well, listen to the director above. Up until this movie, documentaries were expected to have a POV and this one did not.

Four brothers live together in a shack in central New York. And when I say together, the four of them slept in the same bed and always had. When one brother dies, another is arrested. The townspeople come to believe that Delbert has been railroaded into a confession by the big-city cops. Certainly, he is mentally diminished and probably did not understand issues like waiving his rights.

This film covers much of the trial, community meetings, even benefits the town held to raise money for Delbert's defense. You won't come away from this with any definite answer on why he was killed or by whom, but you will learn a lot about the people involved. It was a real knockout in 1992,

For more forgotten movies, see Todd Mason with the links.

Movie Themes: Psycho

Hurricane Sandy Music: Here Comes....

What Single-Authored Story Collection Do You Come Back To

I am going with two: LOST IN THE CITY, Edward P. Jones and DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES, Alice Munro. Both were their first books and perhaps it is the old-fashioned writing style that pleases me. The authors write believing you have the time to read. Neither was in too much of a hurry to tell the story.
A lot of more recent short stories seem to dive into the water without poising on the board for a minute or two, giving it a little bounce before the plunge. Before I beat this metaphor to death, what are your favorite single-author short story collections. 

Sunday Night Poetry: E.E. Cummings

A Difference of Opinion at a Dinner Party

From Wikipedia, this is the plot of Shel Silverstein's THE GIVING TREE.

The Giving Tree is a tale about a relationship between a young boy and a tree. The tree always provides the boy with what he wants: branches on which to swing, shade in which to sit and apples to eat. As the boy grows older, he requires more and more of the tree. The tree loves the boy very much and gives him anything he asks for. In an ultimate act of self-sacrifice, the tree lets the boy cut it down so the boy can build a boat in which he can sail. The boy leaves the tree, now a stump. Many years later, the boy, now an old man, returns, and the tree sadly says: "I'm sorry, boy... but I have nothing left to give you." But the boy replies: "I do not need much now, just a quiet place to sit and rest." The tree then says, "Well, an old tree stump is a good place for sitting and resting. Come, boy, sit down and rest." The boy obliges and the tree is very happy.

Guest One at a dinner party said this story was a family favorite, handed down to the next generation as an example of selflessness. No story ever made more of an impression on her children. The book was a popular gift at baby showers and birthdays. Giving is the most important thing to learn.

Guest Two said, she hated this story. For her, the tree was a mother. A mother that was expected to give everything until she was all used up and completely spent. Shouldn't the child have seen this before the tree became a stump. Wasn't the tree's happiness a form of masochism?Or sadism on the part of the child?

Both of these women are giving, caring, lovely people. How can they differ so much? Is the tree a mother? Does the tree teach selflessness?

What do you think?

Beautiful Women of the Silver Screen: Charlize Theron

The Summing Up, Friday, October 26, 2012

 The Summing Up, Friday, October 26, 2012

Patti Abbott, Sleep and His Brother, Peter Dickinson
Sergio Angelini,  The Wench is Dead, Fredric Brown
Yvette Banet, River of Darkness, Rennie Airth
Joe Barone, The Laughing Policeman, Sjowall and Wahloo
Brian Busby , The Unchanged East, Robert Barr
Bill Crider, The Good Old Stuff, John D. MacDonald
Scott Cupp, The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
Martin Edwards, The Death Wish, Elizabeth Sanxay Holding
Curt Evans, The Arm of Mrs. Egan, Willain Henry Harvey
Ed Gorman, The Ever-Running Man, Marcia Muller Jerry House, In His Shadow, Dave Zeltserman
Randy Johnson, The Cutter Book
George Kelley Cold Hand In Mine: Strange Stories, Robert Packman
Margot Kinberg , Dying to Sin, Stephen Booth
Rob Kitchin, Death in Tuscany, Michele Guittiari
B.V. Lawson, Let's Talk of Graves, Worms and Epitaphs, Robert Player
Evan Lewis, Fortress of Solitude, Lester Dent
Steve Lewis/Dan Stumpf, Confesssions of a (English) Opoim Eater, Thomas De Quincey
Todd Mason, The Book of Fritz Leiber, The Best of Fritz Leiber, The Worlds of Fritz Leiber
Neer, Twelve Red Herrings, Jeffrey Archer
J.F. Norris,A Female Detective, Andrew Forrester
Richard Pangburn, Inside Job, Connie Willis
Deb Pfeifer, Uncle Paul, Celia Fremlin
James Reasoner, Raider of the Seas, Warren Hastings Miller
Richard Robinson, Nemesis, Agatha Christie
Ron Scheer, Death Valley Slim and other Stories, Pauline Wilson Worth
Kerrie Smith, A Quiver Full of Arrows, Jeffrey Archer
Kevin Tipple/Patrick Ohl, A Beast in View, Margare Millar
TomCat, Stalking Dragon, Mike Resnick

My review of LOOPER is right here.http://crimespreemag.com/blog/2012/10/film-review-looper-2.html 

Friday's Forgotten Books, October 26, 2012

UNCLE PAUL by Celia Fremlin

(Review by Deb)

Celia Fremlin's UNCLE PAUL, published in 1959, is a novel of psychological suspense that takes place in a run-down seaside town at the tail end of the 1950s in "Austerity Britain."  The story involves two sisters, Meg and Isabel, and their older half-sister, Mildred.  Many years before, Mildred was briefly married to a charming bigamist (the "Uncle Paul" of the title) who had attempted to murder his first wife and would doubtless have done the same to Mildred if he hadn't been identified and arrested.

It has been fifteen years since Paul went to prison.  Mildred has long been remarried to a wealthy man who provides for her materially but leaves her feeling dissatisfied emotionally.  She fills her life with endless rounds of clothes shopping and hair maintenance (one of Fremlin's wonderful touches is how she describes Mildred's ever-changing wardrobe and hairstyles).  Meg and Isabel (who were just school girls when Paul was arrested) are now, respectively, a single, working woman and a widowed mother of two young children who has just recently remarried.  Isabel and her family have gone to the coast for a holiday and Mildred has joined them, renting a nearby cottage.  But when Mildred discovers that the cottage is the very one where she spent her honeymoon with Paul, she is gripped by a strange fear that Paul is on his way to claim her once more.  Isabel, a dithery woman, distracted by the demands of her family and easily moved to tears, feels overwhelmed by Mildred's concerns and contacts Meg, who reluctantly agrees to join her sisters to try to allay Mildred's fears.

Meg is perceived (by herself and by her siblings) as the sensible, level-headed sister, and she arrives at the shabby little caravan where Isabel and family are staying with every expectation of logically dismantling Mildred's fears about the possibility of Paul's return.  She persuades Mildred take a room at the local down-at-heel hotel in town, offering the stay at the cottage in her sister's place.  Fremlin's descriptions of the cottage (primitive, weed-choked, with no electricity or running water) and Meg's attempt to explore it at twilight with the aid of only a candle begin to ratchet up the tension.  Yes, Meg is a woman of common sense, but isn't there something lurking about outside (or is it inside) that cottage?  Fremlin does an excellent job of showing how even the most sensible among us can easily fall prey to our imaginations when the environment is conducive.

As the story progresses, the action moves between the cottage, the caravan, and the hotel, with the sisters, other family members, and assorted minor characters in various combinations going back and forth between the three locations.  Fremlin's writing of domestic details, conversations between adults and children, and English class-consciousness are unsurpassed.  The writing is economical--not a word is wasted--so read carefully for clues and foreshadowing! 

The suspense continues to build as some truly fightening events occur and both Meg and Isabel begin to question if either of the men in their lives could possibly be Paul.  Isabel knew her new husband, a former Army officer, only briefly before marrying him; and Meg has known her new boyfriend, Freddy, for little more than a month.  Neither man seems to be Paul, but both the women discern vaguely-remembered elements of Paul in them.  (It is, incidently, a sign of how things have changed that Freddy's patronizing attitude, admitted selfishness, and so-called witticisms at the expense of others, notably Meg, could have been considered charming just 50 years ago; now, we would recommend any woman run a mile from such a "Peter Pan" character.)

A good-hearted but talkative neighbor, a snake, a missing hat box, a deep well, a fortune teller--all play their roles in the escalation of fear and terror for the three women.  To say much more about this tightly-plotted, satisfying book would be unfair.  This and Celia Fremlin's other books are well worth seeking out.  You will not be disappointed.

 Ed Gorman is the author of two long running crime fiction series as well as countless anthologies, westerns, and assorted short stories. You can find him here.

 Forgotten Books: The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller

Graham Greene spoiled me as far as thriller writers go. His thrillers (or "entertainments" as he chose to call them) always worked on at least three levels, the tension of the story itself and then the characters and the milieu they inhabited.

Cardboard cut-outs of Washington and its people just don't do it for me, whether CIA or FBI, the men too bold (though always with that One Serious Flaw) and the women too beautiful (though always with that One Serious Flaw). Thriller Writing 101.

Marcia Muller In her exciting new novel The Ever-Running Man shows us how to write a thriller that honors the Greene method--tension-filled story, with believeable characters in a carefully detailed milieu.

Private investigator Sharon McCone's husband is one of the owners of RKI, a security company that competes with the best and the brightest in the business. But RKI, home office and affiliates, has been set upon with a domestic terrorist who uses explosive devices with deadly cunning and precision. McCone, barely escaping such an explosion, glimpses the man who means to make things ugly for the company.

RKI hires McCone to see what she can find out. The search is intense, a relentless hunt to discover and stop the killer before he wreaks any more damage.

But in the course of the search McCone is forced to confront certain truths about herself, her husband and his business partners. Muller gives us the world as it is--the world of Starbucks, reading the Sunday paper, the inevitable misunderstandings in marriage--seamlessly enhancing the chilling plot.

An A+ suspense novel.

SLEEP AND HIS BROTHER, Peter Dickinson (Patti Abbott)

This is the fourth of the six Detective James Peeble books, the most famous probably being the first THE GLASS SIDED ANTS' NEST or the second THE OLD ENGLISH PEEP SHOW.. I read this book in 1989 and most of the others too, enjoying Peeble and his world.
This book takes place largely in a hospital for children with a peculiar illness: cathypny. Children with this disorder (fictional surely) barely move, are very chubby, lethargic, but lovable. Peeble comes to the institution on other matters but is fascinated with the children. As are their caretakers seemingly. (I wonder how many mysteries take place in institutions like this. Let's name them sometime). A side effect of the disorder is the children are psychic and herein lies the rub. What will evil forces do to use the kids for their own ends. It is up to Peeble to save them.

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby 
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Curt Evans
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg 
Rob Kitchin
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Dan Stumpf
Todd Mason
Neer
J.F. Norrisl
Richard Pangburn
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Patrick Ohl
TomCat

My Life at the Theater: HENRY V

We saw this at Stratford Shakespeare Festival this summer. A nicely mounted production but not my favorite play by any means. The actor playing Henry played Lenny in THE HOMECOMING last season and oh, my I liked him better in that. He was transfixing in that play.

I have to admit Shakespeare's history plays leave me cold except for Richard III.Am I a philistine?

Opening Credits: Halloween

What is your favorite TV Science Fiction Series?

And let's give a lot of latitude here. I am going with STAR TREK, THE NEXT GENERATION although there are many close competitors (The X Files, Battleshop Galactica). I love TNG combination of adventure, character, great plots and heart. How about you?

Tuesday Night Music: Suzi Quatro and Chris Norman

If this doesn't make you smile, nothing will.

Was Alexander Hamilton President?

If you put a face on money, people expect him to have been a President, I think. Franklin too.

Forgotten TV: THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW

I took a lot away from this show--one of the secrets of being an adult was knowing the ways of the flirtatious Bob Collins, a photographer who chased his models every week. Although I was 7-9 when this show aired, I remember it fairly well. Adored by his secretary,(Ann B. Davis) Bob was also joined in the cast by Rosemary DeCamp, as his sister, and Dwayne Hickman, as his nephew (who learned to chase girls too). The series was the first ever mid-season replacement and ran for about three years in the late fifties.But coming into it at a fairly advanced age, I think Bob Cummings soon seemed a bit old (for the networks at least) to be chasing models and they never were able to develop other story lines.BACHELOR FATHER was another show that mimed the girl-chasing theme, if a little less leeringly at around the same time. Apparently girl-chasing men were popular in the early days of TV.

Check with Todd Mason for more forgotten films and TV shows. 

Great Movie Themes: A Summer Place

Your Favorite Adult Series

 George sent this piece from the WSJ, which was very enjoyable so I am posting the link.



I am not really talking about series like the Poirot novels--where he is essentially the same character and the same age throughout the books. But instead a series where the characters change over time. Where we get a peek at the changes occurring in the world outside them too.

In the non-crime fiction world, I would have to pick Updike's Rabbit books. I was eager to read each one as soon as it was published. And I think he did a great job in capturing each era. Runner-up Richard Ford's series about Ralph Bascombe, beginning with THE SPORTSWRITER and ending with THE LAY OF THE LAND.

In the crime fiction world, I have two favorites-the four Kate Atkinson books about Jackson Brody and the Henning Mankell books about Kurt Wallender. There are many, many more I could have chosen, but I want to leave some for others.

What series do you like? 

Sunday Night Poetry: Siegfried Sassoon

One of my favorite sad songs.

What is your favorite sad song?

Saturday Night Music: Thin Lizzie

Hilary Mantel THE DEAD ARE REAL

Last week's NEW YORKER has a fabulous piece about the writer, Hilary Mantel, who just won the Booker for second time for her novel BRINGING UP THE BODIES, a sequel to the 2009 Bookered. WOLF HALL. Among the many interesting details of her life are several good ones about her writing process.

One of my favorites was this "Sit quietly and withdraw your attention from the room you are in until you're focused inside your mind. Imagine a chair and invite your character to come sit in it. Once he is comfortable, you may ask him questions."

The first time she tried this when she was writing a novel about a giant, the giant came in but before sitting down, he tested the chair to see if it would take his weight.From then on, she knew this technique would work for her and it has.

Have you ever tried such a technique, writers? What do you do to get inside the head of a stubborn character?.

Beautiful Women of the Silver Screen: Gong Li

The Summing Up, Friday, October 19, 2012

Megan at the Daggers with Ayo Onatade

Patti Abbott Ghost, Alan Lightman(link below)
Sergio Angelini, Veronica's Room, Ira Levin
Yvette Banek, Ethan Frome. Edith Wharton
Joe Barone, Hornswaggled, Donis Casey
Brian Busby, The Fabulous Kelley, Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Bill Crider, Frontier Lawyer, Lawrence L. Blaine
Scott Cupp, Road Trip, Mark Finn
Martin Edwards, Les Magiciennes, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
Curt Evans, The Third Eye, Ethel Lina White
Elisabeth Grace Foley, Wind of Destiny, Sara Lindsay Coleman
Ed Gorman, Having Wonderful Crime, Craig Rice (link below)
Jerry House, No lLade of Grass, John Christopher
Randy Johnson Juvenile Westerns
Nick Jones, Peter George
George Kelley, American Science Fiction, 1953-56; 1956-58, ed. by Gary K. Wolfe
Margot Kinberg , Raven Black, Ann Cleeves
B.V. Lawson, A Time for Pirates, Gavin Black
Evan Lewis, Silent are the Lead, George Harmon Coxe
Steve Lewis, The Jansen Directive, Robert Ludlum
Todd Mason, The Encyclopedia of Folk, Country & Western Music by Stambler & Landon; Blues Who's Who by Harris; The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists ed. Wallace & Manitoba
Neer , V is for (the ) Vision, Dean R. Koontz
Stephen Nester, True Confessions, John Gregory Dunne
J.F. Norris, The Deadly Truth, Helen McCloy
Juri Nummelin, The Captain Must Die, Robert Colby
Richard Pangburn, Thurber on Humor, Thurber
David Rachels, Ask the Parrot, Richard Stark
James Reasoner, The Cage, Talmadge Powell
Richard Robinson , A Caribbean Mystery, Agatha Christie
Gerard Saylor, Blood's a Rover, James Ellroy
Ron Scheer, The Red-Blooded, Edgar Beecher Bronson
Kerrie Smith, Well-Schooled in Murder, Elizabeth George
Kevin Tipple, The Last Call, George Wier
Prashant Trikanna, Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie 

A review of ARGO is up at Crimespree Cinema. 

Friday's Forgotten Books, October 19, 2012

I am thinking Ray Bradbury for our next author. Perhaps on December 7th. Maybe some people can do a short story or two in lieu of a novel. Or a work of non-fiction or a critical look at him. What do you think?

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad series of political thrillers and the Sam McCain series. You can find him right here. 

Having Wonderful Crime

I just finished reading Craig Rice's 1944 novel Having Wonderful Crime. Rice is, of course, the grand dame of mystery mixed with screwball comedy. I hadn't read the novel in thirty years so I came to it fresh. And I was surprised.

Yes, it's larky in its plotting, and as usual smart-ass in its dialogue but there are moments that are serious and amazing.

As an alcoholic, I became all too familiar with blackouts and hangovers that kept me in bed for two and three days. Rice opens the book with a long scene involving a man who lacks the strength to get out of bed. He is beseiged by the furies and terrified of what he might have done. This is one of the most powerful morning-after scenes I've ever read. I think most alcoholics would agree with me. And Rice, a terrible alcoholic herself, knew what she was writing about first hand.

Then there's part of a scene in which Rice (using interior monologue) assess a room full of glamorous people and their worth on the glitz scale. Her observations are worthy of Tom Wolfe at his best and nastiest.

This book makes a good case for what we call today the traditional mystery. It's a pleasure to read as pure entertainment but there's a also a wicked social voice relating the reality of this particular time and this particular strata of society. Despite her reputation, I don't think she's hardboiled. At least not in this book. She's just a very good storyeller reporting back from the eyries of the wealthy and privileged. And laughing up her silk sleeve.

Ghost, Alan Lightman (Patti Abbott)

I am reluctant to review a book I can't quite recommend but since I read it with this purpose in mind, here it is. Seemed like a good choice for this time of year. Those of you who like metaphysics might enjoy it however.
David is a man who is adrift in life, not as disastrously as Quell in THE MASTER, but similarly. He takes a job with a man even stranger than he who is a mortician. David shows an aptitude for dealing with the clients and is soon a fixture in the business. Then one day he makes the mistake of talking about a vapor he saw rising from a body. His explanation of what he saw is never more concrete (if vapor even can be) than this. A vapor with the suggestion of an intelligence is as far as he goes. He is immediately picked up by all sorts of crackpots and a paranormal society (gee, this really does evoke THE MASTER) and his divorced wife briefly returns, believing him to be more interesting than she had thought. Everyone thinks his experience has something to offer them, except David. He remains as enigmatic by the book's end as at its beginning.Maybe the vapor is a manifestation of David's personality.

A strange little book that is almost as difficult to explain as that puff of vapor. Lightman is also the author of EINSTEIN'S DREAMS, a much praised book

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone 
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Curt Evans 
Elisabeth Grace Foley
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
Nick Jones
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
Neer
Stephen Nester
J.F. Norris
Juri Nummelin 
Richard Pangburn
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson 
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
Prashant Trikannad

My Life at the Theater: THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

We saw THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY at the Abbey Theater on September 29th. What a special place to see this scary work by Oscar Wilde. The young actor playing Dorian was in his first play and he was marvelous. Sweeping around like the narcissistic prig he was. The production never showed the painting. They used a huge frame with a blank background. At first, I found it jarring, but eventually it came to seem like a good decision. Horror is scarier imagined, I think.

For anyone who's interested, I have an interview at Tom Pluck's Belly Up to the Bar. It's because I am widely known for my drinking prowess. 

Your Favorite Bogie Movie

And I gotta go with Casablanca here because damn, it's one of my favorite movies. Maybe the very favorite. What about you? There is an awfully long and great list to choose from.

Opening Credits: Taxi Driver

Wishing Megan

the best of luck with the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award in UK tomorrow night. She's going up against three heavy hitters: Robert Harris, Neal Stephenson, and Charles Cumming. Can a cheerleader triumph?