Saturday Night Music: Linda Ronstadt

What Song Reminds You Most of Your First Love?

Without a doubt for me, it's BE MY BABY. My first real love was a boy called Pooh. Pooh wrestled with a number of things--one of them was that being with me meant he could not steal cars and drink with his male friends. They had a lot more to offer him than the tame girl that I was at fifteen.

No, this is not a story but real life. Every time I started to slip away, he would give me a gift or make some promise he usually didn't keep. Pooh was very smart but got himself kicked out of several schools. I saw him once a few years later, when I was already engaged, and he apologized for a lot of things. I wonder where Pooh is now.

What song takes you back in time. I feel a bit like Casey Kasum even asking this.

Late Night Friday

Heard this in the movie THE DEEP BLUE SEA. What a knockout she was.

The Summing Up, Friday, April 6, 2012

The Summing Up, Friday, April 6, 2012

Patti Abbott, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, Joanne Greenberg
Sergio Angelini, , Murder at School, James Hilton
Yvette Banek, Darkness at Pemberly, T.H. White
Joe Barone, A Free Man of Color, Barbara Hambly
Brian Busby, "Now That Aprils' Here" ss by Morley Callaghan
Bill Crider, Red Diamond, Private Eye, Mark Schorr
Scott Cupp, Mean Little Old Lady at Work: The Selected Works of Ardath Mayhar, 1994
Jose Ignacio Escribano, Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi, Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares
Elisabeth Grace Foley, The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington
Ed Gorman, Saturday Games, Brown Meggs
Randy Johnson, Day of the Outlaw, Lee Wells
George Kelley, Dream Castles: the early Jack Vance, Vol. 2
Margot Kinberg, Don't Look Back, Karin Fossum
Nick Jones, Killy, Donald Westlake
K.A. Laity, Many Happy Returns, Groucho Marx
B.V. Lawson, A Different Kind of Summer, Jenny Melville, (Geraldine Brooks)
Evan Lewis, Captain Blood, Rafael Sabatini
Steve Lewis/Geoff Bradley, Please Kill My Cousin, Gerard Fairlie
Todd Mason, Blood and Burning, Algis Budrys, Jewel of the Moon, William Kotzwinkle
J.F. Norris, Happy Are Those Who Mourn, Andrew Greeley
Peggy Ann, Anna Katherine Green
David Rachels, They Shoot Horses, Don't They, Horace McCoy
James Reasoner, Bowman's Kid Gordon D. Shirreff
Richard Robinson, Trigger & Friends, James H. Schnitz
Gerard Saylor, Black Hole, Charles Burns
Ron Scheer, To the End of the Trail, Frank Lewis Nason
Kerrie Smith, The Secret of Annexe 3, Colin Dexter
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, Anthony Boucher
TomCat, The Stingaree Murders, W. Shepard Pleasants
Wuthering Willow, The Body in the Library, Agatha Christie

Friday's Forgotten Books, April 6, 2012

Next Friday is John D. McDonald Day. Join in with your favorite JDM book.

See my review of THE HUNGER GAMES at Crimespree Cinema.

Forgotten Books: Saturday Games by Brown Meggs

SATURDAY GAMES by Brown Meggs*

Here's a golden oldie for you: SATURDAY GAMES by Brown Meggs. If I'm not mistaken (and I often am) I believe this was the novel that was first submitted to acclaimed mystery editor Babara Norville when she was editing the fine line of Bobbs-Merrill mysteries back in the early Seventies. She gave Meggs advice on how to make his manuscript marketable and he did just that. And then (or so the story goes) he promptly sold it for a better deal to Random House.

The novel was good enough to be nominated for a first novel Edgar and to go through a number of printings here and abroad. It's a dazzler. Three upper middle-class Southern California types have a little too much grass and booze fun with a gorgeous wild woman named Emjay (this was the early Seventies remember). A private pool, a lot of sex and...Emjay somehow gets herself murdered. Which of the three men is guilty? Or are all of them guilty? Or none of them guilty?

This is a real puzzler populated by real people. The hip cop Anson Freres spends the book getting to know a number of people he'd rather not brush up against but must in the line of duty. The SoCal background is wittily sketched. And the sex scenes are truly torrid. They're also proof that less is more. The novel is saturated with sexuality but there's not a hard core moment to be found.

Meggs went on to write several other novels. I've read Saturday three or four times since its original publication. It's the reading equivalent of watching a really good athlete on a really good day. The craft here is dazzling.

I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN, Hannah Greene (Joanne Greenberg), Patti Abbott

I was reading a book of short stories and came across the name of Joanne Greenberg, which was familiar to me but not familiar enough to pin it down with googling it. And then, of course, I remember. In 1964 under the pen name of Hannah Green, Greenberg published the book "I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN. This was the origin of the phrase, not the song that came six years later.

A semi-autobiographical novel, the book tells the story of a teenager who suffers a breakdown. This was a huge success, one of the first books that dealt honestly and sympathetically with teenage mental illness. The protagonist invents her own kingdom to escape the pain of daily life.Her parents don't know how to cope with this in a time when such things placed a stigma on the entire family.

They finally commit her to a hospital where after three years of intense therapy she recovered.
The diagnosis now is that the pain and depression from early surgery set this into motion rather than a "true" mental illness. She was not helped by the anit-semitism directed at her. She recovered and went on to become a successful writer.

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Jose Ignacio Escribano
Elisabeth Grace Foley
Randy Johnson
Nick Jones
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
K.A. Laity
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Geoff Bradley
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Peggy Ann
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
TomCat
Wuthering Willow

My Life at the Theater: AUNT DAN AND LEMON

A play by Wallace Shawn, which we saw in 2003 expecting to like because of the rave reviews. It just didn't work for us despite our love of Lili Taylor.

The play told of Aunt Dan (Kristen Johnson)'s political seduction of a family friend's daughter. Aunt Dan is a facist, finding things to like in every far-right regime. Henry Kissinger evokes her most ardent feelings. The bombing in Vietnam was just and right for her. And a generation later, Lemon is spouting Aunt Dan.

I can appreciate what Shawn was saying in this play, but it is very hard to listen to such sentiments delivered for two hours a few feet away. It was, excuse the word, stagey.

Didacticism needs a more subtle voice than this play had for us. If a play can be shocking and boring at the same time, this one succeeded.

How I Came to Prepare This Collection: Anca Vlasopolos

First Signs

this afternoon a first mildness
after a hundred years of winter's thrall

a girl just on the edge of all the woes of love
let dangle her arm outside the window of a speeding car

watched her long fingers trail
thrill the warm skin of this rogue breeze

How I collect poems for a book

WALKING TOWARD SOLSTICE

Anca Vlasopolos

For me, the organization of my poems whether in a collection or for a reading becomes of utmost importance, as is thematic unity. I take my cue from my predecessors—the British Romantic poets who saw the unity of the whole poetic work, and their successors, Baudelaire with Les Fleurs du mal and its chapters, as well as W. B. Yeats and his books, each answering and continuing the preceding work. I want to guide the reader along a thread that traces the journey of the poems so that they’re not like beads on a string, each equal and separate though tied together, but rather like moments along a walk taken in hyper-aware solitude.

Sometimes the journey follows the cycle of seasons, as in my new book, which also follows the hope, despair, and, again, the small sliver of hope about my younger daughter; sometimes it offers a narrative of the inception, growth, cresting, and death of love; sometimes I reach for the cumulative effect, as when I read a series of poems about homeless people around the campus where I teach, in the inner city of Detroit, in the hope that the differences among the “homeless” begin to individualize them rather than treat them as a social phenomenon. I believe that the scatter-shot approach to reading that I’ve observed in so many readings tends to fatigue the audience instead of pulling them along.

At each reading and in each collection of poems I’ve written, I try to end with poems that lead to a sliver of transcendence, that much-despised word of postmodernity. If poetry does not draw us out of ourselves toward a region we have not hitherto explored and felt on our skins and psyches, there’s not much use for it, I opine.

Anca Vlasopolos has just published a new collection of poetry, Walking Toward Solstice, a detective novel, a memoir—No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement, various short stories, over 200 poems, the poetry collection Penguins in a Warming World, and a nonfiction novel, The New Bedford Samurai. You can learn more about Anca at http://www.vlasopolos.com.

The illustration in this lovely book are the work of Olivia D'Ambrogio, Anca's daughter, a marine biologist, writer and photographer.

This video was prepared about the time of the publication of Anca's last two books.

What Next?

I have completed all five seasons of Friday Night Lights. I have
never watched another series this way and I quite enjoyed it. And I stand by my early thoughts, this is one of the best series ever on television.

As the tears dry on my face, what should I watch next? What series do you recommend?

First Wednesday Book Review Club: The Lifeboat, Charlotte Rogan

Charlotte Rogan is publishing her first novel post age 50, which gives aspiring novelists a lift. And quite a novel it is. Set in 1914, as World War 1 is beginning, a ship, Empress Alexandra, goes down. Our narrator, a woman of 22, is one of the forty people that manage to get themselves on one of the lifeboats. Her recent husband does not.

We know from the start she is on trial for murder with two other women. They are accused of pushing the man who has commandeered the lifeboat overboard. The book examines what occurred on the life boat, which although said to be fit for forty is vastly overfilled. The weeks spent on the boat are full of degradation, hardship, starvation, madness.

There is an enigmatic quality to our narrator. How did she manage to wrestle her husband away from the woman he was engaged to? How did she manage to get a spot on the boat? How did she come away from the trial with a new husband in tow? Is she the naive woman she appears to be, taking her cues from more experienced travelers? Or is she more savy than her companions, push come to shove.

It will be up to you as the reader to judge her. Perhaps your judgement will be harsher than her jury's. Or perhaps more lenient than her fellow travelers. This is a deep and troubling book you will not soon forget. We learn very little about the men on this boat, but a lot about the woman.
This is fitting, I think. Highly recommended.


For more reviews, see Barrie Summy.

Tuesday Night Music: Guster

Your Favorite Kids' Movie

And I guess there will be some differences on what constitutes a kid's movie but let's keep it loose.

From my childhood, THE SECRET GARDEN with Margaret O"Brien
From my parenthood, E.T.
From my grand-parenthood, UP.

Forgotten Movies: THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR

This ranks pretty high with me on the romantic movie scale. Although I am not normally a big Rex Harrison fan, he pulled this one off well. The remoteness of playing a ghost seems to suit him.

A widow (Gene Tierney) comes to live in Gull Cottage with her daughter. She is warned the place is haunted. But the ghost, a ship captain, and Mrs. Muir get along very well. Well that is, until a younger man vies for her attention and she must decide where her future lies. Her decision may surprise you.

The score is a knockout too. A TV show with Hope Lange followed but Gene and Rex were more ethereal. For more forgotten movies, see Todd Mason

The Big Finish of Zoo Day

What incredible stories!
Thanks to all of the writers and readers. And as a finish, a zoo song. I hope you don't feel like the trapped fellow.

Flash Fiction Challenge: At Large in the Monkey House

At Large in the Monkey House

By Patricia Abbott

“I am interested in having a cape made. Do you do that type of work?”

The fellow across the counter, wearing a handsome dove-grey morning coat, looked familiar, but the tailor couldn’t place him. He spoke with an accent—one that Joseph’s Neapolitan wife, Vincentina, shared. But no relative of his wife dressed like this man.

Joseph Valentino made capes for women on occasion but never one for a man. But work was work even if Mulberry Street was slumming. Why not an uptown tailor?

“An opera cape, Sir?”

“No. It would be for outdoors.” The man wiped his brow with a large white handkerchief. “Perhaps something in fur. I like to walk in the park in fine winter weather.”

He walked to the door and stepped outside, pulling a tiny case from his breast pocket and putting a lozenge in his mouth. The humidity from Tina’s laundry business in the back of the shop took some getting used to.

Joseph reached for his pad and began sketching. After a few minutes, he signaled to his client, sliding the pad across the counter.

“Something like this perhaps?”

The man looked at it carefully and nodded. “And the fur?”

“Mink, I think. And a dark red lining would be elegant,” Joseph told him.

“There’s just one other concern,” the man said, turning the pad back so it faced Joseph. “I will need openings for my hands.” He drew a finger along the sides of the sketched cape. “About here, I think.”

“Normally a cape ties at the neck, allowing complete mobility for your hands, Sir.”

The man shook his head. “No. I’d need an opening on either side—at the bottom of the pocket.” He looked Joseph right in the eyes for the first time. “You can do that, I assume.”

“Certainly. A slit bound in silk would satisfy that requirement.”

“But not in red. A more discreet color, I think.” The man fairly hummed with pleasure.

“As long as I can acquire the proper materials, it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks.”

In truth, Joseph was a novice with fur. He used no regular furrier. Nor did he know what working with mink would entail. Perhaps his machine would need a special needle for the job—even a particular needle foot. But he would learn quickly because the price of this assignment would keep his family in coal for the winter and put red meat on the table. Perhaps there would be money enough to purchase Mr. Hoover’s new machine for Tina’s precious carpets.

The job went quickly despite the handwork needed. The cape was ready in less than a month.

As he made the final adjustments, Tina stood over him, breathless with wonder. “For a man, Joseph?”

“Yes, yes. And one I have seen before if I could just remember where.”

“This cape will make you famous.” She ran her hands through the fur again. “But why these silly slits?” She poked her fingers through the openings and wiggled them.

Joseph shrugged. “Rich people. Who can understand them? Something to make them stick out at the theater.”

“Stick out indeed,” Tina said, wriggling her fingers through the slits again.

Enrico Caruso walked into the zoo in Central Park in November, 1906. Over the summer, he’d taken his exercise at the Bronx Zoo uptown, but the recent commotion over Benga, a pygmy who slept in a hammock in the monkey house brought him here. John Verner’s exotic find brought riff-raff into the quiet of the monkey house. Benga, famous for shooting arrows into the bull’s-eye of a target set up amidst the primates, also marauded about the zoo on a hot day. On one distressful occasion, he followed the tenor himself, pretending to steal his cotton candy to please the crowd. Caruso would allow no more of that attention.

The zoo in Central Park was far less impressive but would do for Caruso’s purposes and save him the long carriage ride.

The cape was more glorious than he’d even anticipated. He strolled toward the monkey house, taking in the chill air. Once inside, adjusting his eyes to the darkness, he spotted her. He preferred blondes, and this woman was ideal for his game in her thin winter coat. She stood in front of the orangutan cage and watched a female nurse her baby.

Enrico looked around. Although his fur cape allowed him to blend into the dark enclosure, he had to be sure that pesky zoo guard had not spotted him. Only last week, the man had tapped him on the shoulder with his nightstick, warning him about standing too close to the women. He couldn’t identify himself in such circumstances, so he was forced to accept such treatment.

In a flash, Caruso stood behind the blonde, his knees pressed against her thighs. His fingers darted through the slits, grabbing a handful of the woman’s bottom. Just as quickly, he stepped away. Her scream echoed through the empty monkey house.

“Sir,” she said, spotting him in the dark.

He looked around, implying another person might be guilty of the crime. It was then that the same guard stepped out from behind a pillar fashioned with plaster of Paris to look like a tree. He gestured to the famous tenor.

“Joseph, Joseph,” Tina cried, waking him. “You’ll never believe who bought your cape.”

“Who?” he asked, throwing the blanket aside. His bare feet hit the chilly floor in a rush.

Tina was standing at the kitchen table with the New York Post spread open.

Joseph saw the face first—the face that had haunted him.

“It’s Enrico Caruso,” his wife said, before he could read the caption. “He’s been arrested for fondling a woman in the monkey house in Central Park.” She giggled and then covered her mouth. “He told the zoo guard a monkey did it. The police want to know where he acquired a fur coat with slits for his wandering hands.”

Joseph’s heart sank. Was he now to be part of a criminal case? Would he be ruined by conspiring with a masher?

“He’s going to have to go to court.” Tina told him, unwilling to let him read a word of the story himself. “But they’re permitting him to meet his obligations at the Met.”

Joseph made noise with his tongue. “The Met’s patrons run City Hall.”

“Why would a man like Caruso need to find his fun in the monkey house?” Tina asked.

Joseph shrugged.

“They’re talking about closing it down,” Tina read on. “There’s a petition by a women’s group.”

“The Met?” Joseph said, scanning the article for further mention of his cape.

“No, Joseph, the monkey house.” She paused, and then giggled. “Where will he ever find a place that dark?”

“The subway is finished,” Joseph said. “And it’s dark down on those platforms. Darker than a monkey house.”

“What upper-class gentleman would take the subway?” his wife asked him.

“What society gentleman would pinch a woman’s bottom in a monkey house?”

Caruso was found guilty and fined $10. Neither patrons of the Met nor the Italian community believed the charges. No one ever discovered the origins of Caruso’s cape.

Other stories centering on a zoo can be found at the following links.

Al Tucher

Cullen Gallagher

Fleur Bradley

K.A. Laity

Thomas Pluck

John Norris

Todd Mason

Loren Eaton

Rob Kitchin

John Weagly

Sandra Seamans

Kathleen Ryan

Yvette Banek

William Morgan

Greg Rossi

Tomorrow: At the Zoo Stories

Sunday Night Dance: Alvin Ailey's Revelations

Lucky to see this today. It never fails to knock me out.

Whose last (or latish) novel was their best?

I imagine there are few writers who turned out their best work at the end of life. But...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV as his final novel at age 60. A case can me made that this was his best and if not (CRIME AND PUNISHMENT) it certainly shows no diminution of talent.

Who else held the torch high later in life?

Saturday Night Music: The Decemberists

How I Came to Write This Book: Ian Ayris

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK

I never intended to write a book. I never intended to write much of anything, really.

And then, a couple of years ago, a voice came into my head. It wasn't a very nice voice, if I'm honest. 'Some people deserve to die,' it said. Took me back a bit. I'm a nice bloke, see, by all accounts. But the voice continued its story, and I listened, and I wrote down what I heard. Six months later, the words I'd written were published as 'My Mate, Tel' in the first 'Radgepacket' anthology from Byker Books. I wrote another couple of stories, both at gunpoint, as it were, getting used to the fact that the closer I listened and the quicker I wrote, the sooner these bloody voices would leave my head. The two further stories were subsequently published in the following two 'Radgepackets'. Three out of three. Blimey, I thought, this writing game's a piece of piss.

The third of these first three published stories was entitled 'The Rise and Demise of Fat Kenny' – the story of John and Kenny and a certain gangster by the name of Mr Ronnie Swordfish. Unlike the previous two stories, there was something about this one that was different. The voices had spoken, I'd written down what I'd heard and what I'd seen, but the characters hadn't gone away. They just sat there, in this grotty mock-up of an East-End pub inside my head, looking at me over their warm pints of beer. Expectant. I looked back, into there eyes, and saw such pain.

I knew what I had to do.

To tell the whole story, I knew I had to go back to childhood, to the East End streets where John and Kenny grew up. Kenny was to be the main character. John, as in the short story, merely the narrator. And the story told itself. I had no plan, no outline, just a need to follow wherever the feelings were most painful.

And bloody hell, it hurt.

My inner world began to show itself through John and Kenny – John, the son of a fanatical West Ham supporter, from a tight-nit family, where love and humour comfort the soul and keep the pain at bay; Kenny – brought up in the house across the street, timid, distant, confused – the other me, dazed and vulnerable, long ago having withdrawn into a simple world of his own making.

And so with John and Kenny established, chapter after chapter continued to go by. School. Christmas. The Queen's Silver Jubilee. The death of Elvis. Cup Finals and the Winter of Discontent. My childhood memories.

The first half of the book was done. What lay ahead, I had no idea. So I carried on listening.

And what followed, blimey. Ripped my heart out to write, it did. Even typing these words, I'm taken back to the edge of that darkness, that awful, terrible, darkness. The two boys became separated which, from a psychodynamic point of view, was always going to be a difficult one for me. If they were separated, so was I. But in that separation I saw the direction I was intended to follow. Reconcilliation. Understanding. Redemption. The renewal of hope.

So I carried on writing into the darkness.

Mental insitutions. Prison. Separation. Loss. The return of Mr Ronald Swordfish.

I wrote the searingly painful second half of the book in a blur of coffee and chocolate in less than two weeks. Thirty thousand words. I now realised this was the way it had to be. I had to endure, as John had to endure. Kenny, he had his own way of looking at things. But John, John was suffering. Really suffering.

The situation was hopeless. Get mixed up with a psycho like Ronnie Swordfish, and it's never ending good. But in the most dire of situations, there is always hope. It's 1989. Tiananmen Square. John don't watch the news. It's a load of old shit. But soon as he turns the telly on, he can't get his eyes off it. There he is, this bloke, frontin up a tank. Two tanks. Three tanks. And he ain't got nothing but a couple of fuckin shoppin bags on him. And that, my son, that is courage. That is hope.

When the end of the book came, I had tears running down my face. They wouldn't stop. They're still there now.

And I hope they never leave.

ABIDE WITH ME is available through Amazon UK:

Amazon US:

Blog: http://www.ianayris.com

Publisher: http://www.caffeine-nights.com

The Summing Up, Friday, March 30, 2012

Check out my review of Coriolanus on CRIMESPREE CINEMA, right here.

The Summing Up, Friday, March 30, 2012

Patti Abbott, The work of John Marquand
Yvette Banek, The Mummy Case Mystery, Dermot Morrah
Joe Barone, The Will of the Tribe, Arthur W. Upfield
Brian Busby, The Deadly Dames, Malcolm Douglas
Bill Crider, Who Done It, Alice Laurence and Issac Asimov
Martin Edwards. Crime on the Coast and No Flowers by Request, (Round Robins by various wrtiers)
Jose Ignacio Escribano, The Mystery of Sintra Road, Eca de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigao
Ed Gorman, The Crimes of Jordan Wise, Bill Pronzini
Jerry House, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter S. Tevis
Randy Johnson, Mute Witness, Robert L. Pike
Nick Jones, A Time to Kill, Geoffrey Household
George Kelley, Falconer, John Cheever
Margot Kinberg, The Case of the Velvet Claws, Erle Stanley Gardner
Rob Kitchin, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, Douglas Lindsay
K.A. Laity, The Life of Christina of Markyate, C.H. Talbot
B.V. Lawson, Voice Out of Darkness, Ursula Curtis
Steve Lewis/Walker Martin, The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Vol 1, Frederick Nebel
Evan Lewis, "The Pools of Piranhas" Robert Leslie Bellem
Heath Lowrance, Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor
Todd Mason, 1978:Ariel: The Books of Fantasy; Whispers; Fantastic Stories; The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
J. F. Norris, The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
David Rachels, Five Million in Cash, Tiffany Thayer
James Reasoner, One of a Lonely Number, Bruce Elliott; Black Wings Has My Angel, Elliott/Chaze
Ron Scheer, The Great K & A Train Robbery, Paul Leicester Ford
Kerrie Smith, Gideoln's Night, John Creasey (.J. Marric)
Kevin Tipple, Heroes Often Fail, Frank Zafiro
TomCat, Dead Skip. Joe Gorres
Wuthering Willow, Aslauga's Knight, Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
Zybahn, Breakheart Pass, Alistair MacLean