Friday's Forgotten Books: PATRICIA HIGHSMITH DAY

Here is Patricia Highsmith on Desert Island Discs


Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921 and spent much of her youth abroad. Her first novel was STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (later a Hitchcock film) and that set the bar high indeed. Her most popular character was Tom Ripley who appeared in five books but Highsmith did not gain the success she deserved in the U.S. Possibly she was too dark of a writer for that time. The author of more than 20 books, she earned many awards in her lifetime including the Edgar Award and an award from the Crime Writer's Association of Great Britain. She died in 1995.


Patricia Highsmith 's Snail Obsession by Kelly Robinson

Here is a fun site, put together by Highsmith's Publisher: W.W. Norton.  You can figure out through this what Highsmith is for you. Also a nice video on there.

Small g: A Summer Idyll by Patricia Highsmith (Review by Deb)

Patricia Highsmith’s Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously in 1995.  In fact, it had been rejected by Highsmith’s publisher just a few months before her death.  Perhaps the publisher found the book so atypical for Highsmith that they weren’t sure how to market it.  Certainly it does not contain the oppressive sense of dread and foreboding that is a hallmark of much of Highsmith’s work.  With its roundelay of love affairs and heartbreak involving a large number of people, Small g put me in mind of some of Iris Murdoch’s novels of the early 1970s (without the philosophical trappings, however); and I think this work, as unlike anything else that Highsmith ever wrote, is a fitting coda for her body of work and perhaps even goes some way toward humanizing a woman who even her closest friends had to admit was a very difficult and demanding person.

Set in Switzerland during the 1990s, Small g covers a few eventful summer weeks in the lives of an interconnected group of lovers, friends, and acquaintances—some gay, some straight, some still finding their way—who live and work in the same Zurich neighborhood.  The hub of this circle is a local restaurant-bar called Jakob’s, designated in local guide books with a lower-case g to indicate it caters to a mixed gay and straight clientele.

Most of the events in the book are filtered through the perceptions of Rickie Markwalder, a middle-aged commercial artist who is still recovering from the grief of losing his young lover, Peter, to a stabbing some months before.  Police believe Peter was the random victim of a botched robbery committed by drug addicts looking for money, but Rickie is not so sure.

Within Rickie’s circle is Luisa Zimmermann, a young apprentice seamstress who has run away from an abusive family and was in love with Peter.  Although her love for Peter was unrequited, Luisa remains close to Rickie, at first because it helps her feel closer to memory of Peter, but eventually she and Rickie become good friends.  This friendship is a morale booster for Luisa, who lives with and works for the dominating Renate Hagnauer, an ugly homophobe who none-the-less spends several hours a day at Jakob’s.  By a combination of emotional blackmail and controlling the purse strings, Renate keeps Luisa under her thumb.  Renate also poisons the mind of Willi, a mentally-disabled handiman who repeats and believes the gossip and rumors (which almost always reflect badly on gay individuals) that Renate relays to him.

Into the mix come some more people:  Teddie Richardson, a young Swiss-American man who becomes an object of both Rickie’s and Luisa’s affection; Dorrie Wyss, a vivacious lesbian who finds Luisa attractive; and Freddie Schimmelman, a married, bisexual policeman who begins an affair with Rickie.  Freddie is presented in an interesting way--his marriage and his other relationships are depicted in a very matter of a fact manner; his sexuality hardly an issue.

With the main characters in place, and lots of others in supporting roles, the story can begin in earnest.  It all starts with an attack on Teddie Richardson and Rickie’s single-minded pursuit of the culprit. Freddie uses police connections to help prolong interest in a case that the police would undoubtedly have allowed to go cold.  The reader knows who attacked Teddie (and Rickie has very strong suspicions), but will the police ever have sufficient evidence to charge the person?  Meanwhile, Luisa must skulk around, making secret telephone calls and even using Rickie as a go-between in order to meet with either Teddie or Dorrie, or even to slip out of the apartment for a cup of coffee with someone other than Renate.  It all sounds a bit soapy, but Highsmith’s sure hand and attention to detail keep the plot running efficiently.

If I have a quibble with the book it’s that we really never see into the emotional lives of the characters; we can only guess at their motivations.  We can deduce that part of Renate’s homophobia (and overbearing, protective attitude toward Luisa) may stem from her own suppressed lesbianism, but Renate never reveals that aspect of herself.  Also, we can infer that Rickie pursues Teddie’s attacker because Peter’s killer(s) were never caught, but Rickie never lets that element of his pursuit come to the forefront of his emotions.

At this point, I must also address an act committed by Rickie’s doctor that is so unconscionable as to be both illegal and baffling [SPOILER]:  The doctor tells Rickie that he is HIV-positive and allows him to continue believing this for several months, even though the doctor knows this is not the case.  The fact that both the doctor and Rickie (and, apparently, by extension, Highsmith herself) think that what the doctor has done is fine and “for the patient’s own good” is mind-boggling to me and reinforces my belief that, whatever her virtues as a writer, Patricia Highsmith is not someone I could have personally liked.

Eventually, an accidental death, sets the plot spinning into an entirely different orbit.  Ends are tidied up a bit too neatly perhaps, but there’s a sense of the characters reaching certain points in their lives and have learned lessons (some rather harsh).  The summer idyll is over and life continues on even when the weather changes.

LITTLE TALES OF MISOGYNY (Patti Abbott)

 

I walked into a fabulous bookstore in Chicago two weeks ago and found a stash of Highsmith novels and collections. I eventually chose LITTLE TALES OF MISOGYNY and put aside the novel I had intended to reread.

I am going to go against the grain here and say I found this collection largely dissatisfying-something I would never have thought possible.To me there is an art to a really short story-or flash fiction piece. For it to succeed with me, it has to be a character study, something with a real surprise at the end, something that is very atmospheric, or something funny. And in a collection, those goals take on an even greater importance.You cannot simply assign a laundry list of annoying traits to a character and call it a day.

These stories seemed too plot -driven to succeed. Plot-heavy succeeds best in novels for me. I can see that many people would find these pieces humorous, but coming from a female writer, I found  more than a hint of self-loathing or at least gender- loathing.

Women were punished for wanting too many children, for wanting too much sex, for wanting perfection, for being a prude, an invalid. But underneath all of their superficial traits was largely the same sort of woman: a narcissist who refused to see the world from any vantage point other than her own. Or the husband who was like this. 

And I wouldn't have minded that except the scalpel Highsmith uses cuts the same incision too often. There is a weary sameness to these tales. They are depressing in a way that Ripley never depressed me.

Other Highsmith reviews

Sergio Angelini, THIS SWEET SICKNESS
Nick Jones, DEEP WATER
Randy Johnson, THE PRICE OF SALT
George Kelley, RIPLEY"S GAME
B.V. Lawson, THE ANIMAL LOVERS BOOK OF BEASTLY MURDER
Todd Mason, SPRING FIRE and THE PRICE OF SALT
J.F. Norris, THE TREMOR OF FORGERY
Kelly Robinson, ELEVEN
Richard Robinson, ELEVEN
Kevin Tipple/Patrick Ohle, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN


Other Reviews

Bill Crider, MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH ROBERT SILVEBERG
Martin Edwards, BORN TO BE HANGED, Paul McGuire
Curt Evanss, THE CORPSE AT HAWORTH TANDOORI, Robert Barnard
Ed Gorman, CROSS COUNTRY, Herman Kastle
Margot Kinberg, NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK, Ernest Mallo
Evan Lewis, Books with Bones in the Title
Steve Lewis/William Deeck,DESIGN FOR MURDER, KUMMER
James Reasoner, THE CASE OF THE SLEEPWALKER'S NIECE, Erle Stanly Gardner
Gerard Saylor, BAD GUYS, Eugene Izzi
Ron Scheer,  WILD ONE, John Reese
Kerrie Smith, B IS FOR BURGLAR, Sue Grafton
Zybahn, IN THE SHADOW OF THE GARGOYLES, Kilpatrick, Nancy & Thomas S. Roche, eds.

Friday's Forgotten Books, June 22, 2012

Next week is an off week for FFB unless someone else can pick up the links. Maybe we all need a rest anyway.




Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad and Sam McCain series of books. You can find him here, blogging about just about everything.

Forgotten Books:Home Town by Georges Simenon

Home Town is one of two short novels that appear in the book On The Danger Line. When the two stories first appeared (1944) The Green Thermos, the second of the pieces, was thought to be the superior of the duo. But time has changed some minds.

deRitter has lived on the edges of the underworld for many years. He is basically a small-time con artist who needs particularly gullible victims to be successful. For a reason even he can't understand, he returns to his home town with Leah, a prostitute, in tow. He has a fake emerald he hopes to make serious money with.

The story moves up and down the timeline. The reader sees deRitter as a boy growing up in a small, dull town--very much like the one that Madame Bovary despised--filled with trouble. Off to war he went in his later teen years and after that he discovered how to beat the monotony of regular employment by working minor cons short and long.

In town again he sees old friends and old relatives; his strange relationship with his mother being the most disturbing. He also runs his con with the emerald and here the reader comes to see that he is not good at his work at all. And even when he scores he's unhappy. Which is where Leah the prostitute comes in.

She is plump--as he never forgets or forgives--she is ignorant in many ways and she is eager to get out of the town and back to what she consider civilization. But she also understands deRitter in ways he never understands himself.

He does not seem to know, for example, that he is afraid to let go of her. They have sex occasionally but their real bond is a version of the familial. More than girl friend she is mother/sister/consoler. And forgiver. She even manages to be amused about the occasional shame he feels for traveling with a prostitute. And she knows that the con he's running will lead to the tragedy that ends the short novel.

deRitter is a familiar figure in hardboiled crime fiction. The nickel-dime grifter that the real players use and toss away. Simenon turns the stereotype into a real human being. And his story into a bleak snapshot of self-unawareness and despair.

THE ICE HOUSE, Minette Walters

When a copy of the soon-to-be released INNOCENT VICTIMS by Minette Walters fell into my hands, it reminded me of two favorites by her from some years back. I had a difficult time deciding which one to to because THE SCULPTRESS is such a powerful story. But eventually I decided on THE ICE HOUSE.

Winner of the John Creasey Award, THE ICE HOUSE was a terrific debut novel.

Three women live in seclusion in English country house and have served as a topic of gossip for their neighbors for years: witches, lesbians, murderers. Or all of the above since one of their husbands disappeared years before. Did he walk out as she suggests or was it murder? So when a faceless corpse turns up in Streech Grange ice house, Chief Inspector Walsh can't wait to make a case of it. While Walsh attempts to arrest Phoebe for murder, his colleague takes an interest in one of her roommates.

Walters is a terrific writer and I have enjoyed all of her books. This one was made into an excellent TV movie. THE SCULPTRESS is brilliant too.

Joe Barone

Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Curt Evans
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
Nick Jones
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Barry Gardner
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Juri Nummelin
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Bill Selnes
Michael Slind
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
Prashant Trikannad
TomCat

My Friday Forgotten Book A Day Early: Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey

Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey


GHOSTS IN THE VALLEY

New Hope, PA










In 1963, my parents decided to send me to a private school. It was there that I became friends with Lynda Jeffrey, a senior to my junior. We were cheerleaders together and spent the next summer living and working in New Hope, PA as waitresses at the Crystal Palace. We shared a small room above a boutique, footloose and fancy free at a young age. Somehow we stayed out of trouble

Lynda was a bridesmaid when I got married. And then, we drifted apart. Communication was harder then. Phone calls expensive. She became a teacher and lived in D.C. I lived in New Jersey and then Michigan.

Forty years went by (although neither of us looks a day older). And then Facebook happened and we reconnected.

One of the best things about having Lynda for a friend in the sixties was knowing her mother. The lovely woman you see in the photograph above was the first real writer I ever knew. She got up each day, went to an office she'd rented for this express purpose, and wrote books. Books that required research. Books that required dedication. And the kind of books she wrote was something pretty special.

Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey wrote about ghosts, tracking them down-or at least tracking down the places they were spotted, talking to the people who saw them. She was the first ghost hunter I'd ever met. During her lifetime, she published over ten books on the supernatural including, THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE, which came out just as the subject became a hot topic in the seventies. Although that book served her well financially, it was the ghost stories in Bucks County that remained her first love.

Lynda remember her mother saying, "Hurry up and finish your homework so we can get to that seance!" Or "Today we're going to interview a real witch!" These statements were neither ironic nor meant to be humorous. Telling stories was serious business to Mrs. Jeffrey.

The first book Adi-Kent published was pamphlet-like, but despite its modest wrappings, THE GHOSTS IN THE VALLEY sold 40,000 copies in less than a year in the early seventies. Its sequel was equally successful. The town where many of the stories are set, New Hope, PA, is a revolutionary-era village a few miles from the site where Washington crossed the Delaware in 1776. Many of the buildings date from that era too.

New Hope is utterly charming, and it is not hard to believe ghosts beat a path to it along with the tourists who came later. It was the home of James Michener, Pearl Buck, and many other literary figures as well as a host of artists and craftsmen. Marijane Meaker (Vin Packer) and Patricia Highsmith shared a home there for years.

Abbie Hoffman spent his last years here under an assumed identity. New Hope was an artist colony, tolerant of alternate life-styles long before most places. A good place to hide out for Abbie or for ghosts.

As interest in her books grew, Adi-Kent designed a ghost tour that still exists twenty years after her death. She was its first tour guide, in fact, because her oral story-telling skills equaled her written ones.



"Swinging her candle-lit lantern and looking like the New York city model she once was, my mother would lead people through the shadowy streets and darkened alleyways of New Hope regaling them with one ghost story after another." Lynda Jeffrey Plott

Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey's books about the ghosts of New Hope: GHOSTS IN THE VALLEY, MORE GHOSTS IN THE VALLEY, and HAUNTED VILLAGE AND VALLEY are available online and in Farley's Bookshop in New Hope, PA. Farley's is almost as magical as Adi-Kent. They provided the books at NOIRCON last year and became part of the conference.

Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey's website is www.ghostsinthevalley.com.

When Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey died, she left it to her daughter, Lynda Jeffrey Plott, to continue the task. Lynda kept that lantern alight by finishing the trilogy, through ushering in new editions, and doing interviews about her mother's work.




My favorite quote about Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey came from Sonya Hamilton at WBZ-TV BOSTON. "Looks like an angel. Writes like a witch." Indeed!

She was an inspiration to me and to all who knew her. Check out her delightful books.

Friday Forgotten Books, April 27, 2012

Friday's Forgotten Books is four years old this week!!! Thanks to all the people who have made it possible. I especially want to thank Bill Crider who has written a review every week for four years. That's 208 reviews. I remember still my surprise the second week we did this when he posted a second review. I never expected anyone to do it more than once. And I didn't expect it to last more than a few months.

Thanks also to Todd Mason who helps me when I am away either physically or mentally. And thanks to all the folks below--some of whom stand right behind Bill in the number of reviews they have done.
I didn't dream what devotion the people listed below have. I estimate we have reviewed in excess of 4000 books in those four years. On a personal note, I have enjoyed the people I have met in the real and virtual worlds though this and other projects. You guys are the best.

Friday, June 1 is Margaret Millar Day. Everyone is invited to write a review of her work.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Sam McCain series and the Dev Conrad series as well as multiple anthologies and westerns. You can find him here.

American Murders ed. by Jon and Rita Breen(no cover found)

Literary time travel

One of my fondest memories of growing up was reading the magazines my folks subscribed to. The Saturday Evening Post was great for western short stories and The American was even better for mysteries. To name just two.

In 1986 Jon and Rita Breen edited a fine anthology called American Murders which reprinted 11 short novels from the American Magazine(1934-1954). By now I've probably read and reread it cover to cover four or five times. For me it's literary time travel.

My favorites are those short novels published during the war years. I suppose this is true because they tally with my first memories of--everything. Dads abroad at war, Moms struggling with jobs and kids and ration books and the fear of a uniformed man knocking on the door with bad news. And popular culture of every sort vibrant and vital with propaganda.

One of the great war-time images in the Breen anthology occurs in "Murder Goes To Market" by Mignon Eberhardt. She writes of going shopping with her ration book to a then-new concept known as a Supermarket. The way she describes this place is almost science-fictional. My God--aisles! Shopping carts "that look like perabulators!" And the choice of "(carrying) your loot away in a paper bag or in a market basket or (letting) a boy carry it for you." Zounds!

This reminds me of the way John D. MacDonald highlighted air-conditioning so often in his pulps stories of the Forties and his early paperbacks of the Fifties. A revolution was at hand!

F. Paul Wilson once noted that detective stories give us "snapshots" of an era better than any other kind of fiction. I certainly agree.

llow authors who knew him and his work. Extraordinary!”

Patti Abbott

Ball Four, Jim Bouton
This was a book that was read and reread at our house thirty years ago. My son adored it and so did I. It was the first book about baseball that gave an accurate depiction of what went on in the clubhouse, what the players' lives were like, the finances of the game, the pressures put on players, the drugs, the womanizing.

Bouton recounted his year as a pitcher on the Seattle Pilots in 1969--the team's only year of play. It was a tumultuous year for the country as well and Bouton doesn't hesitate to give his views on everything.

Bowie Kuhn called the book detrimental to the game because it blew the fairy dust off. He tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book was fictional, a baseball version of M*A*S*H.

Baseball players also came down hard on him. Pete Rose, that noble player, swore at him whenever he took the mound.

It was not a good year for Bouton on the field, and he is honest about that too. This was one of the great books about sports. That dogeared copy is one book I won't give away.

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Bill Selnes
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
TomCat
Prashant C. Trikannad
Wuthering Willow
Zybahn

Friday's Forgotten Books, April 20, 2012

The Summing Up probably won't go up until tomorrow. I'll be gone most of today.









Continental Drift, Russell Banks.

It is hard for me to choose between AFFLICTION and CONTINENTAL DRIFT as my favorite novel by Russell Banks. But I am going with this one today. You may have seen the filmed version of AFFLICTION, a tremendous film with Nick Nolte and James Coburn.

Bob Dubois is a furnace repairman in a blue-collar town in New Hampshire, a state the American Dream has bypassed. Although Bob has a wife, three kids and a steady, if low-paying job, he is persuaded to look for a better life in Miami by his brother.

Bob is a good man although not a smart one. The sixties has persuaded him that there is something better out there. That it is foolish to be satisfied with a meager living in a depressed town.

Another character is also seeking a better life in Miami. A female Haitian refuge, who truly does need asylum and comes to the U.S. in a perilous manner. These two lives intersect in a Florida that is the antithesis of paradise, both characters suffering tragedy. This is not a happy book or one to escape into, but it is one that presents characters and situations that seem real and compelling.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad and Sam McCain series of crime novels. He blogs at

Forgotten Books: The Great American Paperback by Richard Lupoff

Penzler Pick, October 2001: There may be some irony in the notion that a book devoted to paperbacks (the most inexpensive book format--small, easily transportable and disposable) is a huge, expensive, beautifully produced hardcover volume that is certain to be a gem in any collector's library.

For several centuries books in America customarily were pages bound between hardcovers and, in this century, had dust jackets wrapped around them, initially just to protect the cloth covers, but eventually as an attention-grabbing advertising poster.

In 1938, an experiment was launched. The cloth cover was exchanged for a paper one, and the colorful illustration and information that appeared on the dust jacket (author, title, publisher, a few lines about the book) was printed directly onto those paper covers. Cheaper paper was used, since these artifacts were no longer expected to form part of a permanent library, but were to be as disposable as a newspaper or magazine. And they were cheap: a 25-cent price made books affordable for a huge portion of the population. They became immeasurably successful almost overnight.

Today many of those books are highly sought-after collectors' items. In spite of the huge numbers printed, they are scarce now simply because almost no one ever thought to save them in colorful, pristine condition. The Great American Paperback illustrates in glorious full color more than 600 of the most interesting and collectable paperbacks, each with an informative caption that provides as much fascinating anecdotal information as the text, which is a masterly and scholarly history of the American paperback, tracing its roots to the early 19th century and concluding with a look at the future.

There are samples of the paperback originals of Ed McBain, Richard Stark, Jim Thompson, Harlan Ellison, and James M. Cain, as well as illustrations of such rarities asThe Maltese Falcon, which was issued as a paperback with a dust jacket, and Ellery Queen's Halfway House, which was offered in two formats by the publisher, one bound the usual way, the other bound at the top edge.

If this massive work hadn't been produced in Hong Kong, it would have cost twice as much and is, believe it or not, a bargain, even at a price as hefty as the book itself. --OttoPenzler

Ed here: Dick Lupoff has distinguished himself as a writer of both mystery and science fiction and fantasy. He has also been and editor and biographer of great renown. I first heard of him when he and his lovely wife Pat began publishing the legendary science fiction/comic book XERO back in the early 1960s. If you'd like to know (or remember) what genre fiction as all about in that lost age I suggest you but the hardbound collection of XERO's including Donald E.Westlake'sscorching goodbye to his science fiction career.

But this magnificent history--because it's nothing less--of paperbacks books in America would be enough to make you well known and respected. The covers are knock-outs and the text is packed with stories and tales of writers andeditors and publishers are told with Dick's usual wit, high style and erudition.

There are many books about paperbacks but I can't think of any that come even close to this sprawling, hilarious, melancholy, fact-packed tribute to the highs and lows of American publishing.

This is a singular accomplishment and Dick Lupoff should be honored for it.

Serge Angelini
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Elisabeth Grace Foley
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Bill Selnes
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
TomCat
Wuthering Willow
Zybahn

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, April 13, 2012

John Dann MacDonald (July 24, 1916 – December 28, 1986) was an American crime and suspense novelist and short story writer.

MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many of them set in his adopted home of Florida. His best-known works include the popular and critically acclaimed Travis McGee series, and his novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962, MacDonald was named a grandmaster of the Mystery Writers of America, and he won a 1980 U.S. National Book Award in the one-year category Mystery. (Wikipedia)

Take a look at some covers.

Interview with John D. MacDonald by Ed Gorman

From Ed today..Which brings me to John D. MacDonald. I was one of the lucky ones who was old enough to read most his books as they were published. He sold big time in the heyday of paperback originals and when he switched to hardcovers with his Travis McGee series he became and remained for approximately fifteen years an enormous international bestseller. He was feted by some of the world's most important critics and the McGees became a benchmark for a certain kind of adventure fiction.

I don't think I've ever seen a writer's books fade from popularity as quickly as MacDonald's did. The McGees are in print but little else. For those of us who believe that MacDonald's best work was often in the stand-alones he wrote for Gold Medal this is sad news because few if any of them in print today. Even the critical acclaim has waned. He doesn't seem to appeal much to people under forty-five. I understand that the McGees have dated. MacDonald got pretty pontifical and silly about modern life in his speechifying. But when you read End of The Night and Cape Fear (The Executioners) and The Last One Left and many of his other books you're in the hands of a master.

Sez me.

But not enough of other people to bring him back into print. So what we're left with are some good sites that steer us to his books and his very interesting life. Maybe the next couple generations up will rediscover him all over again.

For those of you who grew up with the internet, I'm sure all this sounds crazy. So who didn't know there were a lot of sites dedicated to the work of dead writers? Well, a lot of us actually. I had never heard of Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, for instance. I saw a reference to her on a site, ordered a used book of hers and was hooked for life. Her suspense novels walk right on the edge of horror, almost fever dreams. She was so good Raymond Chandler called her "the best suspense writer of (my) generation." I'm told she's about to get a serious website. And maybe some serious new readers, too.

Zombies aren't the only dead people who deserve attention.

From The Thrilling Detective Website. A look at the entire oeuvre.

April Evil, John D. MacDonald (Patti Abbott)

I think this is the first novel, other than all the Travis McGee series that I have read in many years by John D. MacDonald. I had truly forgotten what a great writer he is. There is not a page of this book when things don't happen, when the story isn't speeding along, when you will want to put it down.

Three men, one newly out of jail, and a woman converge on Flamingo, a Florida town. Their plan is to rob an old man who keeps all of his money in a safe in his house. There are at least a dozen other players who make things hard for this trio for various reasons. This story has three critical female characters. And a kid who noses around too much. It is vicious in spots, but also tender, observant, and clever. The atmosphere is excellent. I can't think of one good reason not to read this book.

John D. MacDonald, Border Town Girl (Gold Medal, 1956).

Review by Jeff Meyerson

I am far from an expert on the works of John D. MacDonald, though I’ve read two dozen of his books over the years, mostly in the 1970’s and 1980’s., about half of them Travis McGees. The most memorable to me were probably The End of the Night (1960), that so eerily evokes the Manson killings of a decade later, and his book of correspondence with the late Dan Rowan, chronicling the rise and fall of their friendship (A Friendship: The Letters…1967-1974). But rather than talk about one of those I thought I’d read one of the several unread MacDonalds on my shelf, picking this one more or less at random.

Border Town Girl consists of two 75 page novellas, the title story (originally published in Dime Detective Magazine in 1950 as “Five Star Fugitive” - a stupid title in my opinion) and “Linda” (1956). These are (apparently) meant to be two tales of femmes fatales, so-called “B girls” trapping hapless men in their web, but they are really quite different. The first has former war correspondent Lane Sanson, deep in the bottle in Mexico, getting dragged into a drug smuggling operation on the Texas border. For me the most memorable character in this one was the thug Christy, a man who likes to hurt people with the power of his bare hands. The “fatale” turns out…well, I won’t tell you in case you want to read it yourself.

“Linda” is a different, much colder thing indeed. The incredibly foolish narrator Paul Cowley can’t believe the beautiful Linda has married him. They become friends with another, much richer, couple and end up vacationing together on a small key on the west coast of Florida where it takes a decidedly nasty turn. From that point on the story is riveting and you can appreciate MacDonald’s slow buildup. This is one you probably won’t forget once you’ve read it.

THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY by John D. MacDonald, reviewed by Deb Pfeifer

About Deb Pfeifer: I was a technical writer for two decades, then a stay-at-home mom for a while. Now I work in a special ed classroom with severely autistic students. It's challenging work, but also very rewarding. I love to read across all genres, but mysteries are my favorite.

I was in my teens when Disney World first opened in the 1970s, The highlight of our family's summer was an annual trip to Florida, starting in St Augustine and ending at Disney (where we'd promptly buy extra E-tickets). To get from St. Augustine to Orlando, we would drive along miles of newly-constructed interstate running through sparsely-populated areas. I have returned to Disney World a number of times in the intervening four decades and one thing I can tell you is that, other than the Everglades, there is no longer an uninhabited mile anywhere in Florida.

First published in 1974, THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY, John D. MacDonald's 16th Travis McGee mystery, shows us a Florida tottering on the verge of the over-development and over-commercialization that has now claimed most of the state. Here is McGee's analysis of how this process happened to the small coastal community of Bayside:

"There had been a little town on the bay shore, a few hundred people, a sleepy downtown with live oaks and Spanish moss. Then International Amalgamated Development had moved in, bought a couple of thousand acres, and put in shopping centers, town houses, condominiums, and rental apartments just south of town. Next had arrived Consolidated Construction Enterprises and done the same thng north of town. Smaller opeators had done the same thing on a smaller scale west of town. When downtown decayed, the town fathers widened the streets and cut down the shade trees in an attempt to look just like a shopping center. It didn't work. It never does. This was instant Florida, tacky and stifling and full of ugly and spurious energeis. They had every chain food-service outfit known to man, interspersed with used-car lots and furniture stores."

Phew! If that doesn't sum it up in microcosm, I don't know what does.

THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY begins with McGee asleep on his boat, The Busted Flush, when a woman from his past shows up. The woman is named Carrie Milligan (with that name, it was hard for me not to visualize her looking like actress Carey Mulligan). Carrie arrives with a suitcase full of cash and a request that, "if anything happens" to her, McGee get the money to her sister. Within a few days, Carrie is dead--supposedly the victim of a hit-and-run accident. McGee doesn't buy it and, aided by his enigmatic and lugubrious sidekick Meyer, sets out to discover what actually happened to Carrie in the aforementioned town of Bayside. Naturally, every time McGee thinks he's getting closer to solving the mystery of what happened to Carrie and why, he discovers only deeper layers of deception. Not surprisingly, the investigation into Carrie's death brings McGee face-to-face with some unsavory characters including drug smugglers, shady developers, crooked politicians, on-the-take lawmen, drunken marina owners, unscrupulous insurance agents, and, of course, beautiful women. Not all of these women are duplicitous--but all of them want to sleep with McGee and none of them feel the slightest reticence in letting him know it.

And this is what I find to be the biggest road-block to whole-hearted enjoyment of the McGee books: the attraction EVERY female character instantly feels toward McGee the moment she meets him. Perhaps this aspect is just part of the seventies time-capsule that these books represent, but somehow the fact that McGee is a magnet for every woman in a ten-mile radius makes him seem less of an adult and more of a me-decade caricature, especially when the rather cold and clinical sex scenes are presented in McGee's first-person narration as if he were doing a favor for the woman in question. In this regard, THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY is no diferent from many other less well-written books from the same era. That being said, THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY is also an ingeniously-plotted, well-developed narrative that not only solves the mystery of one particular crime, but also exposes the larger "crime" of what it took to turn Florida in less than half a century from a sleepy southern state blessed with lots of sea and sunshine into the over-developed, over-crowded monolith it is today.

(the book jacket for DREADFUL kept throwing everything off, so I omitted it)

MacDonald Reviews

Scott Cupp

Bill Crider

Roger Ebert column

Cullen Gallagher

Jerry House

Randy Johnson

Nick Jones

George Kelley

B.V. Lawson

Steve Lewis

Steve Lewis.David Vineyard

Todd Mason

Jeff Meyerson

J.F. Norris

Olman

David Rachels

James Reasoner

Richard Robinson

Steve Scott

Bill Selnes

Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang

John Weagly

Non JDM choices

Yvette Banek

Joe Barone

Brian Busby

Scott Cupp

Martin Edwards

Marjorie KInberg

Rob Kitchin

Evan Lewis

Ron Scheer

Kerrie Smith

TomCat

Zybahn

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

Friday's Forgotten Books, March 23, 2012

Reminder: April 13 is John D. MacDonald week. Let me know if you'd like to do a review if you don't ordinarily do one.





Ed Gorman is the author of BLINDSIDE, the newest Dev Conrad story. You can find him here.

The Plastic Nightmare, Richard Neely


Richard Neely wrote non-series crime novels that pretty much covered the entire range of dark suspense. I mentioned that in the best of them the weapon of choice is not poison, bullets or garrote. He always prefered sexual betrayl.

Plastic is a good example. Using amnesia as the central device ,Dan Mariotte must reconstruct his life. Learning that the beautiful woman at his bedside all these months in the hospital--his wife--may have tried to kill him in a car accident is only the first of many surprises shared by Mariotte and the reader alike.

What gives the novel grit is Neely's take on the privileged class. He frequently wrote about very successful men (he was a very successful adverts man himself) and their women. The time was the Seventies. Private clubs, privte planes, private lives. But for all the sparkle of their lives there was in Neely's people a despair that could only be assauged (briefly) by sex. Preferably illicit sex. Betrayl sex. Men betrayed women and women betrayed men. It was Jackie Collins only for real.

Plastic is a snapshot of a certain period, the Seventies when the Fortune 500 dudes wore sideburns and faux hippie clothes and flashed the peace sign almost as often as they flashed their American Express Gold cards. Johny Carson hipsters. The counter culture co-opted by th pigs.

The end is a stunner, which is why I can say little about the plot. Neely knew what he was doing. Watching him work was always a pleasure.

THE UNQUIET NIGHT, Patricia Carlon

Reading Michael Robotham recently and it reminded me of Patricia Carlon, another Aussie who I read about a decade or so ago when my library purchased copies of her reprinted books (Soho Press).

This was her novel that truly impressed me. Martin Deeford, a lonely clerk picks up Rose Gault, a young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy Sunday afternoon. She is willing to have sex, but he wants to talk and it ends badly for Rose. Leaving afterward, he runs into a woman walking nearby with a child. He then tries to find and silence the witness.

The woman, a jeweler, hasn't witnessed anything at all and Rose, it turns out is not dead. This is a game of cat and mouse, where neither party knows his/her role in the game. At 190 pages you can read this in a sitting and you probably will. Carlon reminds me of Margaret Millar with her psychological insights into the lives of two lonely people.

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Elisabeth Grace Foley
Randy Johnson
Nick Jones
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
K.A. Laity
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
TomCat
Zybahn