Friday's Forgotten Books 1, November 19, 2010

Quinn Cummings is the author of Notes from the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life. She can be found blogging at quinncummings.com and she can be found on Twitter as Quinncy. Mostly, she can be found driving her daughter to extracurricular activities while also drinking tea.

The Portable Dorothy Parker

I don't know why short stories have withered as an art form. Really, they couldn't be more modern. All the pleasure of eavesdropping on the table behind you, only with a good editor. In the modern arena where we're all gladiators competing to see who has the shortest attention span and the most to do, what could be better than a beginning,a middle and an end in the time it takes the plumber to snake the bathroom drain?

And if you're going to read short stories, you're going to want to read Dorothy Parker. Even if you don't think you know Dorothy Parker, I'll bet you do. Men don't make passes...

If you just thought, ...at girls who wear glasses, you know a little Dorothy Parker. If you're a bookish type (And we know you are; you're reading this) you probably know she wrote for The New Yorker and the Constant Reader, was the Clever Girl in Manhattan in the 20's and 30's, was the Hermione Granger at the Algonquin Round Table.

Some of her stories are funny. Some are snorting-into-your-sleeve funny; my mother gave me "The Waltz" to read when I was eleven and I can't think of a better gateway drug to Ms. Parker. "From the Diary of a New York Lady" gleefully exposes the stupidity and lack of self-awareness of a society dame, some primordial Paris Hilton. But while I've never turned down Dorothy in high humor, the stories which have stayed with me were her more serious stories, which inevitably circle around how people, knowingly and unknowingly, hurt one another. Her serious short stories have the precision of Flaubert and the scrupulous attention to detail of an autopsy. I don't wish people pain, so I'm not pleased Ms. Parker had a well-documented difficult romantic life. Having said that, there have been times in my dating life where I thought back to some moment or sentence from a story of hers and thought, "Oh. That's what she was talking about" and felt oddly mollified if not exactly happy. Her stories are clear and bright, very much of their era but also timeless. They are excellent company which fits in your purse.

And here is my copy of her book, which I've had since I was twelve years old. If use=love, this is a most-loved book.

Yvette is an illustrator, a great reader, a new grandma, a cancer survivor and a blogger at: http://yvettecandraw.blogspot.com She grew up in NYC in the 1950's when Manhattan was a giant playground - or so it seemed.

The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders by Marshall Browne

Marshall Browne (1935 - ) is one of those Australian authors whom, it appears, very few have ever heard of possibly because some of his books are so hard to come by in this country. But I recommended Browne to an Australian blogger asking for Australian author recommendations recently and even she had never heard of him. Go figure.

Born in Melbourne, Browne is a sixth generation Australian, an international banker by trade (the family business), an author of crime and historical novels by choice.

I first discovered Browne when struck in the fancy by the title of his novel: The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders. You have to admit, this is a great title, never mind if

the book is good or not. I’m rarely swayed by something so tenuous as an interest in a clever title, but this time out I couldn’t resist. The book was published in 1999 by St. Martins and is still available, though I can’t say the same for the third Inspector Anders book, Inspector Anders and the Blood Vendetta, which I have yet to read though it was published in 2006. If I sound disgruntled, it’s because I am. (And don’t get me started on Browne’s second Franz Schmidt novel, The Iron Heart, which doesn’t seem to have been published here at all.) This guy is just too good a writer for this kind of hide and seek.

Inspector Anders is a police inspector of northern Italian roots considered, with some irony, a hero in his Italian homeland for action in the fight against the Red Brigades –terrorists of the 80’s – in which he lost a leg. He is on the edge of retirement when called upon to take up one last job. Limping slightly on his artificial leg (government provided) and carrying a spare in his luggage, he is sent south by train from Rome to a city which is never identified. Anders is meant merely to make a few perfunctory interviews and publish a glossy final report – nothing too daunting. In the south, he finds a city polluted with corruption, a city in which the murders of a judge and an investigative magistrate – the crimes he’s theoretically come to investigate - are greeted with a shrug by everyone he talks to. A city in which the mafia stranglehold is unbreakable and to speak the truth is to earn a death sentence – a city which works as another character in the book, its evil corruption a living, breathing, foul thing.

At first, the careful Anders tries to look the other way and live to return to Rome, make his report and retire to write his magnum opus, the life of an ancestor, a poet named Anton Anders. But in the end, he is just too inherently noble. He simply cannot bring himself to go along to get along yet again and once the mafia begins flexing its muscles, he has no choice.

On another note, one of the more interesting things about Anders, is the attraction he still has for women. The stump that is his leg seems not to hinder his sexual conquests in the slightest. At age fifty he still has a good eye for a certain sort of older, voluptuous female and makes no effort to hide this interest as he conducts his investigation. When he meets two totally different women: the earthy bartender/owner of the small hotel in which he’s staying and the judge’s more sophisticated widow, both are quite willing to share their beds with Anders. Perhaps it’s his politeness and the unabashed gleam in his eye. A man who truly likes women is hard to resist.

Once Anders decides to do something about the mafia’s chokehold on the city, he sets about concocting an outrageous plan (with a surprise twist) which, if you stop to think about it, goes against anything anyone’s ever been taught about the niceties of law and the workings of justice.

With the help of Matucci, a loud-mouthed cop who appears to be more than the sum of

his parts, the slain judge’s widow, and his own basic guile and intelligence, Anders performs a miracle of retribution. This is a darkly violent novel with a fairly oppressive dystopian outlook of Italy which is unsettling to say the least.

The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders won the Ned Kelly literary prize for best first novel and was an L.A. Times Book Award nominee.

Jake Hinkson blogs at THE NIGHT EDITOR. He has the lead story in BEAT TO A PULP: ROUND ONE and you can find his stories in many fine publications. Check out his blog today for a review of the movie made from the book.

The Condemned Jo Pagano, 1947

To understand The Condemned, Jo Pagano’s strange hybrid of social commentary and gritty noir, a little background is in order. Born in 1906, Pagano was the youngest son of Italian immigrants who came to Colorado at the turn of the century so Pagano’s father could work as a miner. Jo quickly figured out that writing stories beat the hell out of swinging a pickax, and by the thirties he had started selling stories to magazines like The Atlantic, Scribners, Reader’s Digest, and Yale Review.

He moved to Hollywood, and by the late thirties, he was working at RKO Pictures. Around this time Pagano became friends with the novelist William Faulkner. The great writer was in Hollywood doing script rewrites for Howard Hawks, but he spent most of his days chasing girls and getting shitfaced with other scribblers. At the time, Faulkner’s work was little read outside highbrow literary circles, but Pagano was already a devoted fan. Because Pagano could match the Mississippian drink for drink, the two men became fast friends. Faulkner became Pagano’s literary mentor and took special care to warn him about the hazards of selling out to Hollywood. Talent, Faulkner believed, couldn’t survive the compromises one had to make with the studios. He told Pagano simply, “Jo, you have got to get out of this town.” In the midst of this tutelage with Faulkner, Pagano published his third book, The Condemned, in 1947.

The novel was based on the true story of Thomas Harold Thurmond and John M. Holmes, who in 1933 had abducted and murdered a wealthy man named Brooke Hart. After the killers were apprehended and confessed to the crime, thousands of angry people descended on the Santa Clara County jail in San Jose, dragged the men from their cells, and hanged them from two trees across the street. Pagano changed the names and turned the story into a serious crime drama. The central conflict is that of Howard Tyler, an everyman living in postwar California. He can’t find work to support his family, so he takes a job as getaway driver for a small time crook, and big time psycho, named Jerry Slocum. This decision turns out to be a catastrophic mistake because soon Jerry has decided that he and Howard need to move up the criminal ladder to kidnapping.

Neither of Pagano’s previous books—both of which were affectionate evocations of family life among Italian Americans—would have prepared a reader for The Condemned. This novel is a serious literary attempt to deal with Hart’s murder and the subsequent lynching of Thurmond and Holmes. As such, it marks a sharp departure from his previous books in terms of both focus and tone. It is also something of a swing for the fences in terms of style. It bears unmistakable Faulknerian touches such as shifting perspectives, shocking violence, and buried psychosexual motivations, but it also owes a debt to Steinbeck’s social consciousness. It was Pagano’s attempt to write a great, important novel.

After its initial printing in hardback failed to bring literary glory, however, the book was radically abridged and repackaged as pulp (a process that would continue for years: Zenith Books re-released the book in 1958 under the title Die Screaming). The book isn’t entirely successful. Pagano’s weakness as a writer was preachiness. He gives us the character of Dr. Simone, an Italian professor who functions as the film’s moral and intellectual color commentator. This character mouths all of the appropriate leftist horror at the American financial and judicial systems. Moralizing in noir usually comes in the form of boring authoritarians espousing a right wing point of view, but Dr. Simone’s sermons prove that preaching doesn’t work any better when it comes from the left.

In many ways, the abridgment makes for a better read. It focuses more on the central story of the killers—in particular on Howard Tyler’s terrible guilt. After all, the key tension in the story is Howard’s gnawing sense of his own culpability, the tortured humanity of a normal man who fumbles into theft and murder and then watches in horror as his life falls apart. Soon, Pagano accepted the job of adapting the book into a screenplay for producer Robert Stillman. The resulting film that Pagano and director Cy Endfield delivered, The Sound Of Fury, was a masterpiece, a dark and serious look at American society in the post-war era. Endfield rightly seized on Pagano’s strongest material and brought it to the front of the film. He also kept Pagano’s strong supporting cast of characters: crazy homme fatale Jerry Slocum, the careless newspaperman Gil Stanton, and Hazel, the odd young woman who exposes Howard to the police.

The film met with great opposition, with theater managers across the country catching flack for running such an “anti-American” picture at the outset of the Korean War. The film was re-titled Try And Get Me! and peddled around as a genre piece (much as the book had been), but it quickly sank into obscurity. Stubbornly, the film lived on, and as film geeks rediscovered it, its reputation grew. It is now in line for a major restoration by the Film Noir Foundation. Pagano’s novel doesn’t have the same reputation that film the does, but this strange and beguiling work is well worth seeking out. Read Jake Hinkson’s review of Endfield’s movie adaption The Sound Of Fury at The Night Editor.

Ed Gorman is the author of several crimes series, many westerns, several collections of short stories, and edits many anthologies. You can find him here.

SCANDAL ON THE SAND by John Trinian

John Trinian was a working name of Zekial Marko. He was a formerconvicted criminal who started publishing when he got out of jail in the early sixties. His first novel was under his real name(Scratch a Thief, Fawcett Gold Medal 1961, also as Once a Thief), after which he started using the pseudonym. As Trinian, he published five or six novels with various paperback houses, such as Pyramid. Scratch a Thief is an excellent novel, you should try it. That's
the only book I've read by him, sadly, so I can't comment on the others. -- Juri Nummelin (on Rara-Avis)

Further information on Trinian has him writing for The Rockford Files and other TV shows. While I don't think he was as good as Malcolm Braly, another Gold Medal author who served hard time, I do think his novels had both a lyrical and sexual aspect that we don't find in most of Braly.

I just finished Trinian's SCANDAL ON THE SAND (1964) and I have to say that it offers just about everything I ask for from a novel. A unique story, a strong voice, a definite worldview and several compelling characters, most notably the rich young woman at the book's center, Karen Fornier.

A dying killer whale washes up on a stretch of deserted Southern California beach. Karen, hungover and dismal that she finally gave into the childish wanna-be macho man Hobart, the one her parents would like her to marry...she leaves their beach motel hoping to lose him. Wandering along the beach she finds the whale and for her its appearance is almost religious. The way she bonds with it is moving and is a credit to Trinian's skill.

Hobart insists that the whale is dead and should be cut up for cat food. He finds a sinister, arrogant young cop, Mulford, who agrees with him. Mulford orders a tow truck to come in and drag it away. He then orders Hobart and Karen to leave the area. Hobart sees in the harsh machismo of Mulford everything he's secretly wanted to be, that not even his considerable inheritance could buy him. He sides with Mulford and tries to drag Karen away. But she defies them both and stays. Not even when the whale proves to be alive will Mulford stop the tow truck. He says he'll shoot the whale.

All this is being observed from close-by a hood named Bonniano who is to meet a runner who will give him enough money to escape to Mexico. Bonniano is in the news for being a hit man who last night iced a prominent mob figure. Everybody's looking for him.

These and others play into the story of whale on the beach. The character sketches show the influences of Sherwood Anderson and John O'Hara and the cutaways to life on the beach bring the 1964 era alive. Boys wearing white clam digger pants--girls lying about in pink bikinis with transistor radios stuck to their ears--and just about everybody managing to grab themselves a little marijuana whenever the opportunity comes up...all this being the lull before the flower power storm that was less than two years away.

A cunning little book. Trinian was the real deal.

Joe Barone
Paul Bishop
Michael Carlson
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Randy Johnson
Lois Karlin
George Kelley
Rob Kitchin
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller
Steve Lewis/Jeff Meyerson
Todd Mason
Andrew Nette
Juri Nummelin
Eric Peterson
James Reasoner
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple

Thursday Night Music-Julie London

Short Story Challenge at Yvette's Place:In So Many Words

Check out this cool idea for a short story challenge at Yvette's blog.

How I Came to Write the Book, Milton Burton

“Nights of The Red Moon.” Milton T. Burton

Years ago I heard a legendary old East Texas sheriff say that he’d let one elderly black moonshiner make about fifty gallons of corn whiskey a year because, as he put it, “He didn’t sell the stuff. He gave most of it away, and it was a matter of art with him rather than profit. Besides, it was damned good whiskey. He gave me a couple of gallons every year.”

Such accommodations are common among rural law enforcement people in my part of the world. Just about every old lawman I ever knew allowed a few bootleggers to operate so long as they didn’t sell to kids, and they turned a blind eye to black working men who had their dice games going in deserted sharecropper shanties every Saturday night. The payoff was that these people had their fingers in the local criminal underworld, and they were expected to pony up the information when the sheriff needed to know who had just burgled the hardware store, of if someone was planning to rob the local jeweler.

So I started thinking about a rural county where this sort of thing still went on. Thus was born Sheriff Bo Handel and his elderly black moonshiner friend, Ira Blevins. Bo’s backstory is that he came from a prosperous timber family, and that he was in Rice University majoring in classical piano forty years earlier when his father’s death in the middle of his senior year necessitated his returning home to take over the family business. A decade later, the longtime sheriff came down with cancer and talked the commissioners’ court into appointing Bo to fill out the remainder of his term. Bo liked the job and has been running every four years since. For anyone who is interested, the original short story, “Old Ira’s Still,” can be found here: http://obscuredestinies.blogspot.com/2009/07/old-iras-still.html

Once I finished the short story, I realized that Bo was too good a character to abandon. Several years earlier I had written a novel about an eighty-one-year-old retired Texas Ranger who goes back to solve his very first case, the disappearance of a wealthy oilman during the early days of the great East Texas Oil Field. The story was told by a young ex-marine friend who accompanied the old Ranger on his travels to unravel the case. My agent could never sell it because the know-it-all gremlins who run the publishing industry said the sidekick narrator was “ineffective.” Never mind that it worked for Arthur Connan Doyle in his Holmes and Watson series, the most famous duo in all crime fiction. Never mind too that these stories are still in print over a century later. The gremlins know all.

So... I had begun a second book with this old Ranger as the protagonist, but abandoned it due to its lack of marketability. I had three chapters and the ending, so it was a simple matter of two hours work to convert it to a Bo Handle book, told in the first person---Nights of The Red Moon, which is slated for release on December 7 by St. Martin’s Minotaur. Pre-release reviews have been universally enthusiastic. I am currently working on a second book with Bo as the protagonist. This will be the second of a series. I was very fortunate to get jacket blurbs from Bill Crider, Dave Corbett, and retired Texas Ranger Captain/U.S. Marshal Jack Dean, for which I am very grateful. I was especially gratified when I got an email from Captain Jack telling me he had gotten his manuscript copy from the publisher at four the previous afternoon and had finished it about ten that evening. It is one thing to satisfy mystery fans, but when a man with nearly fifty years of high-level law enforcement experience tells you he couldn’t put your story down... Well, folks, such a complement is like that Old Time Religion: it just makes you love everybody!

Milton Burton is also the author of THE ROGUES' GAME and THE SWEET AND
THE DEAD.

If you have a book coming out you would like to write a piece about, please email me.

What 's your favorite comedy?

I love a good comedy--and not necessarily a romantic one, just a funny one. They are pretty rare lately--unless you're a teenage boy.

I am going with GROUNDHOG DAY, which is a romantic one. But I think it is profound as well as funny, romantic and sweet.

Being profound is not required here though. What is your favorite comedy?

La Ronde, Part Seven-Eric Beetner

My dad made it through the surgery ( 4 hours at age 96, go Dad!) and I thank you for your good thoughts and words.


Part Seven "Mirror Image" on Eric Beetner's blog. Go on over and tell him how much you liked it.

Part Six "The Lesser Evil" on Evan Lewis' blog.
(Where one cool guy makes a surprise appearance.)

Part Five "It's a Dog's Life" on Rob Kitchin's blog can be found here.

Part Four, "Enter the Fat Lady" can be found on Sandra Seamans blog. Right here.

Part 3 "Provocateur" was on KA. Laity's blog.

Part 2 "Blinded by the Brilliance of His Own Reflection" was on Dana King's blog.

And here's "The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon" the original story

This Week's Books

I didn't buy all these books, but this is what came into my house in one week. Todd Mason sent me the first four on the right. (Thanks, Todd). I bought THE HUNGER GAMES (Borders coupon), THE CONTINENTAL OP ($1), FLORIDA GOTHIC STORIES and a book of stories by Chandler (FIVE MURDERS $1) that you can't see. The first three on the left were won Limon, Jones, and THE LOST CITY OF OZ. And I took THE DAMAGE DONE, OCTOBER COUNTRY, and the Sherman Alexie stories from the library.

What's new or are you reading this week?

My Dad fell and broke his hip this morning so I may not be around much to respond. Carry one without me.

STEAMPUNK

This word had been flying around me recently and only today did I decide to find out about it. What are the best steampunk movies and novels IYHO? Where did the word come from, how long has it been used to describe its world, and are you attracted to the genre.

NEW QUESTIONS: What does the punk in steampunk mean?

Is either the Downey Sherlock Holmes movie or the new series on PBS steampunk?

Those Who Died Too Young/

I am not talking about those who died in childhood or of drug overdoses or suicides in their twenties or thirties. But rather people who had an impact at a distance on your life and died too young from your perspective. Three women I most revered growing up all seemed to disappear too early: Lee Remick, Elizabeth Montgomery and Audrey Hepburn all died before the age of 65 and all died in the early nineties from similar cancers.

I most remember Lee Remick's back in Anatomy of a Murder, Elizabeth Montgomery's nose in Bewitched and Audrey Heprburn's neck in Charade. And in many other films, of course. All three were charming at any rate.

Who died too early for you?

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, November 5, 12, 2010

November 12, 2010

Ian Ayris, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane
Joe Barone, Double Deuce, Robert Parker
Paul Bishop, The Burning Season, Wayne D. Dundee
Paul Brazill, Andy Warhol's Dracula, Kim Newman
Bill Crider, Death by the Day, Lawrence Fisher
Scott Cupp, Expiration Date, Duane Swierczynski
Martin Edwards, The Second Shot, Anthony Berkley
Jose Ignacio Escribano, The Poisoned Chocolate Case, Anthony Berkley
George Kelley, The Naked Sun, Issac Asimov
Ed Gorman, Secret Window, Secret Garden, Stephen King
Randy Johnson, The Lone Wolf, Louis Joseph Vance
B.V. Lawson, Ghost of a Chance, Kelley Roos
Steve Lewis/Jeff Meyerson, A Three-Pipe Problem, Julian Symons
K.A. Laity, Renegade, Mark E. Smith
Evan Lewis, Spurs West, edited by Joseph T. Shaw
Todd Mason, Forgotten Magazines: Weird Tales, ed. Dorothy McIlwraith, Fantastic Adventures, Howard Browne
Eric Peterson, Impossibly Funky: A Cahiers du Cinemart Collection, Mike White
James Reasoner, Gangland's Doom, Frank Eisgruber
Gerard Saylor, Eleven Days (1998), Known Dead (1999), Big Thaw (2000), Code 61 (2002)
A Long December (2003) Don Harstad
Jeff Segal, The Fiend in You, edited by Charles Beaumont
Kerrie Smith, Bergerac: Crimes of the Season, Andrew Savill
Kevin Tipple, Tequila Sunrise, Michael Bracken

From November 5 (And thanks to Todd Mason for rounding these up)

Paul Bishop: Whiteout and Black Camelot by Duncan Kyle
Bill Crider: The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
Scott Cupp: Pixie Dust by Henry Melton
Martin Edwards: Heir Presumptive by Henry Wade
Ed Gorman: The Crime Lover's Casebook (aka The New Mystery) edited by Jerome Charyn
Glenn Harper: The Coast Road by John Brady
George Kelley: The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (the new edition)
Steve Lewis's The Mystery File, as usual, has a plethora of arguably FFB reviews.
Todd Mason: Death Qualified by Kate Wilhelm; In Deep by Damon Knight
Ann Parker: Rose by Martin Cruz Smith
Eric Peterson: Men, Women and Chainsaws by Carol Glover
James Reasoner: Tarzan and the Lion Man by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Kerrie Smith: Deadly Variations by Paul Myers


Peter Enfantino's story-by-story run through the issues of Manhunt magazine
B.V. Lawon's round-up of crime-fiction ezines

Friday's Forgotten Books, November 12, 2010- 2

This is an unsolicited and wonderfully surprise contribution to Friday's Forgotten Books from Gerard Saylor, Library Director at Lake Mills Library in Wisconsin, who has quite a nice inventory of audio book reviews you can find on you tube. I went through them after seeing this one.

But this is his pick for this week, a forgotten writer, and a great change of pace. I am so happy he sent it our way. I think we will all be looking for these books. I am going to post the rest separately below.

Friday's Forgotten Books 1, November 12, 2010

1)THE SUMMING UP WON'T GO UP UNTIL TOMORROW.
2) Someone asked me to label the people in the pictures I posted a few days ago so I will do that as best I can.

Ian Ayris lives in London with his wife and three children. He has had over twenty-five short stories accepted for publication, both in print and online. His stories can be found in the likes of A Twist of Noir, Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers, Byker Books' 'Radgepacket' collections, Curbside Splendor, Pulp Metal Magazine, and The Flash Fiction Offensive. Other stories will be appearing shortly in Powder Burn Flash, Yellow Mama, Beat to a Pulp, and Out of the Gutter Issue 7. He has recently completed his first novel, and can be found hanging about at http://ianayris.blogspot.com/

MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS, Stephen Crane (1893)

At just seventy-six pages, 'Maggie' is more a novella than a novel. But don't let that fool you into thinking this is a bit of light reading. So stark and brutal, in fact, is this book, no publisher at the time would touch it. So the twenty-one year old Crane published it himself.

The story is set in the slums of the New York Bowery, at the end of the nineteenth century, and follows Maggie Johnson in her struggle to overcome the poverty and degradation she is born into. And like a tooled up Mark Twain, with knuckle dusters and a flick-knife, Crane carves the words of Maggie's plight into each and every page, with a mixture of beauty and brutality the like I've never seen.

Here's a sample of what I mean from the opening of the book:.

A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him. His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths.

"Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley child.

"Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me run."

And that's the Mark Twain thing. The dialogue. It's written like this, in the vernacular, the whole way through the book. Some of it is barely intelligible, but once you get used to it, it's like the whole thing is being played out inside your head.

Jimmy is Maggie's little brother, a feisty urchin; another child trying to find his way in this living hell. But he's a scrapper, Jimmy. And a good one at that. Maggie is the philosopher, she sees the chaos around her, and wonders if this is how her life will always be. The fight continues:

The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head. His wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon.

On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles.

Finally: A stone had smashed into Jimmie's mouth. Blood was bubbling over his chin and down upon his ragged shirt. Tears made furrows on his dirt-stained cheeks. His thin legs had begun to tremble and turn weak, causing his small body to reel. His roaring curses of the first part of the fight had changed to a blasphemous chatter.

In the yells of the whirling mob of Devil's Row children there were notes of joy like songs of triumphant savagery. The little boys seemed to leer gloatingly at the blood upon the other child's face.

'Maggie' portrays the slums of the Bowery as a seething mass of drunken debauchery, a place of blood and death, where the only four letter word anyone dare not use is 'hope'.

We follow Maggie through her childhood and her run-ins with her drunken mother and begin to yearn for her escape as much as she does herself. When she finds love in the form of 'Pete', we feel her hope. But Crane, he doesn't let us off that easy. This is no sentimental yarn. There are no ruby slippers here. There are no slippers at all.

Crane published several more notable novels after 'Maggie', the most noteworthy being 'The Red Badge of Courage' in 1905. By the age of twenty-eight, Crane was dead from tuberculosis, and he was all but forgotten. Thankfully, his reputation has grown due to the discovery of his work in the middle part of the twentieth century, and 'Maggie' is now seen as the first work of naturalism in American fiction. You can purchase a copy from Amazon or download it for nothing on The Gutenberg Project.

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

Forgotten Books: Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King; Executive Pink

You're right. No novel or story by Stephen King is forgotten. But his newer material sometimes causes pieces of his enormous and generally excellent body of work to fade from time to time.

Secret Window, Secret Garden is contained in a fine collection called Four Past Midnight. Originally published in1990, in 2004 it became a feature film starring Johnny Depp, Maria Bello and John Turturro. I pretty much liked the movie but I missed the richness of King's writing.

Morton Rainey is a best-selling novelist living alone in isolated western Maine in a cabin that was once the summer home of Rainey and his wife. They have just divorced and Rainey is devastated. His emotional distress has led to his inability to write. He sits uselessly at his computer.

One day a strange man shows up at Rainey's. He is Southern Gothic, the mutant offspring of a marriage between William Faulker and Flannery O'Connor. He introduces himself as Johnny Shooter, an unlikely name. He accuses Rainey of plagiarizing a story that he, Shooter wrote, some years ago. Rainey recognizes Shooter for what he is. A lunatic.

But a relentless and crafty one. He wants Rainey to confess his sin and will settle for nothing less than that admission. Bizarre and terrible things begin to happen, not the least of which is Rainey's cat being nailed to Rainey's back porch.

I don't want to do any spoiling so I'll simply say that just about all of King's virtues are on display here. The land, the local customs, the sweaty Woolrichian desperation and the absolute gripping storytelling. I've read this novella three or four times but I was flipping the pages the same way when I read it most recently. It is a startling piece of suspense writing and demonstrates why he still dominates the book charts.

Alternately moving--King gives us a believable and moving look at a lost marriage--and terrifying--Rainey's interior monologues are a miasma of horror, dysfunction, sadness and rage--making the characters every bit as stunning as the plot. Fine work by a master.

---------------
Joe Barone
Paul Bishop
Paul Brazill
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Jose Ignacio Escribano
Glenn Harper
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
K.A. Laity
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Jeff Meyerson
Todd Mason
Eric Peterson
James Reasoner
Jeff Segal
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple

Some Observations About Noircon 2010

Lou Boxer, who organized Noircon along with his partner in crime, Deen Kogan, has to be the least pretentious doctor in the country. Perhaps the least pretentious person. From the look on his face for seventy-two hours, it was clear he was having as much fun as anyone else. Lou, you are the best.

Cameron Ashley has some Australian kangaroo trick of being everywhere at the same time. I think he carries a second Cam in his pouch. He's in all my photos and all of everyone else's.

Seth Harwood might be the tallest man I've ever spoken to. I feared for the future of my neck.

Hilary Davidson is the most radiant woman I've ever seen. She lights up a room with her presence. Even a room the size of the one in the Mummers Museum. Buy her book!

Laura Lippman is the best interviewer around. She is ego-less in her questions and each question was a beaut. She should have a talk show. Pelecanos just stopped everyone cold. Hard to imagine a more generous soul. He works at youth facilities.

Christa Faust has the best trained dog I've ever seen. Also the best trained hair and back. She made the greatest entrance in the history of conferences. I had the perfect seat to watch her exit a taxi on the fly, and whirl in carrying Butch in his little case. If you need anything whipped into shape, she's your girl. And I mean that in the best way because she is delightful.

The panels were excellent from start to finish. The question of what noir is became a joke, but not something every panel wrestled with as I feared.

None of us ever got over the fact that David Thompson wasn't there. If you want to honor his memory, buy DAMN NEAR DEAD 2. or any of the books Busted Flush published.

I loved the guys from Farley's bookstore (bookseller to Noircon) and I urge you to consider putting them on your book tour. The two guys sat through every panel, even asked a question or two. Farley's is in New Hope, Pa. If you're near, stop by and buy a book from another struggling indie. These guys were so excited to be a part of the activities and they took all the unsold books back with them rather than sending them to the publishers.

It is nearly impossible to imagine Vicki Hendricks writing the books she does. Sweetness personified. On a trip to the Mutter Museum (medical oddities) she screamed as often as Phil.

The Doubletree Hotel in Philly was terrific. I highly recommend staying there on your next trip. It was in a great location, and right around the corner from a neat little restaurant called the GOOD DOG. They had a BLT with the T fried the way my mother used to make them.

The Society Hill Playhouse has a fascinating history. Richard Roundtree played there in THE GREAT WHITE HOPE the same time he was doing SHAFT. Looking at the posters, I realized again how much I love theater. It is totally exhilarating. Deen Kogan gave me a tour through the ages. I want to live right next door.

I met a ton of nice people but no sense listing the names. Thanks to those who shared a meal, a drink, a panel, or a moment with me. A special thanks to the one who brought salt water taffies. You know who you are
And also to the one who brought me a story. Nice.

And lastly to my daughter who tolerates her tag-along parents awfully well.

How I Came To WRITE THIS BOOK-Richard Wheeler

Richard Wheeler's Work in Progress

I had proposed a novel about Baby Doe and Horace Tabor, the most poignant of all the legends of the West, but Forge turned it down. My alternative proposal was an historical novel about the copper kings of Butte, Marcus Daly, William Andrews Clark, and Augustus Heinze, and their "war" that involved corrupting the whole Montana legislature. My editor, Bob Gleason, went for it, saying his Finnish grandfather had worked in those mines.

The story resonates today because of the recent discovery of a 104-year-old daughter of one of the copper kings, Huguette Clark, sequestered for 22 years in a NYC hospital and possibly being milked by various people. Clark's fortune rivaled John D. Rockefeller's and the daughter still commands a fortune.

The book proved to be far more befuddling to write than I had imagined. The story, difficult to follow in nonfiction accounts, is too complex (and repetitious) to turn into a novel on its own. For months I wrestled with ways to tell the story about complex bribes, theft of mines, crooked judges, underground warfare with rival crews invading neighboring mines, the efforts of Clark to become a Senator by bribing the legislature, which resulted in the amendment establishing the direct election of senators, Heinze's bald theft of ore and property, etc.

I resolved the deepening dilemma by creating numerous fictional characters who are affected by the war of the copper kings. The kings corrupted the Montana press, so I created J. Fellowes Hall, a vain editor who sells his soul. The copper kings dealt with the miners union in various ways, so I have created Big Johnny Boyle, union head and a dealer. The kings radicalized Butte, so I created Alice Brophy, widow of Singing Sean Brophy, who becomes Red Alice, the Socialist Workers Party radical. I created Slanting Agnes Healy, a miner's widow with a fey gift. And I've created Royal Maxwell, an undertaker opposed to safety regulation of the mines, and a man who secretly scorns Butte's Irish and spends every spare dime in the restricted district.

I'm interweaving their stories with the struggles of the copper kings to own the richest hill on earth. There are also real characters, such as Judge William Clancy, an unkempt and barely literate Populist whose notion of law and justice is to remove property from those who have it and give it to those who don't. And of course there is the finest of the copper kings, Marcus Daly, who loved horse racing and built the finest racing stable in the nation. A portrait of his great horse Tammany, rendered in hardwoods, was embedded into the parquet floor of Daly's elegant hotel, and whoever stepped on Tammany had to buy drinks for the house.

The novel is finally yielding, after stubbornly resisting all my efforts to write it, and I expect to finish by the end of the year and it might be out near the end of 2011 or early 2012.

Richard S. Wheeler is the 2001 recipient of the Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to Western literature. He is a four-time Spur Award winner from Western Writers of America, and author of more than forty books.

If you have a book coming out you would like to write a piece about, feel free to email me.

What Do Men Really Think?

Mummers Museum-tacky but terrific.

On a recent trip to NY, I bought a pair of shoes and a purse. I don't have a closet full of such things but they are always a temptation.

My husband confirmed my intuition that only woman notice such things. (Except for Kalinda's boots on THE GOOD WIFE)

Do men ever notice shoes or purses? (Earrings or necklaces?)

Or do women buy them for other women or themselves. Neither item requires a size two figure and no man ever rejected a woman for big feet. Okay maybe a fetishist might.

When was the last time you noticed the shoes on a woman's feet or the purse on her arm?

IF ANYONE CAN COME UP WITH THE EXACT LINE CHENEY USED WITH PRES. BUSH REGARDING GETTING RID OF SADDAM, I WILL BE GRATEFUL. HAD IT YESTERDAY BUT IT DISAPPEARED.

Your Favorite Collection of Short Stores-Single Author

Yesterday Dennis Lehane chose his favorite short story collections--an excellent list.

There are so many short story writers, I revere: Andre Dubus, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Antonya Nelson, John Updike and Cheever, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor to name a few.

But when I was beginning to think about writing in a more serious way, this was the book that most inspired me. SHILOH AND OTHER STORIES, Bobbie Ann Mason.

I know Mason is now disparaged for an overuse of brand names and such, but she wrote about the people I was interested in reading about--not the country club set, or those on the Upper East Side. Real people who have trouble paying their bills and staying out of trouble.

What single-author collection of stories do you like most? What one do you come back to?

LA RONDE, Part Six

Part Six "The Lesser Evil" on Evan Lewis' blog.
(Where one cool guy makes a surprise appearance.)

Part Five "It's a Dog's Life" on Rob Kitchin's blog can be found here.

Part Four, "Enter the Fat Lady" can be found on Sandra Seamans blog. Right here.

Part 3 "Provocateur" was on KA. Laity's blog.

Part 2 "Blinded by the Brilliance of His Own Reflection" was on Dana King's blog.

And here's "The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon" the original story.

A FEW NOIRCON PHOTOS

1 Cullen Gallagher, Lou Boxer and ?
2. Scott Cupp and Cullen Gallagher










































































































3. Scott Phillips
4 Neil Smith
5. Cam Ashley's back, Hilary Davidson, Steve Weddle
6. William Boyel, Vicki Hendricks
7. Scott Philips and Roseanne Coleman
8. Christa and some people I don't know.
9. Cam and Reed
10 Kieran Shea and Cam
11 Guys from Farley's Bookshop
12 Lou and Seth Harwood
13 Wallace Stroby
14. Roseanne, Sarah Weinman, Judy Bobalik
15. Us

THE ABBOTT FAMILY PHOTO WAS TAKEN BY JEFF WONG, THE ARTIST WHO ALSO DID THE PROGRAM COVER AND THE COVER FOR DAMN NEAR DEAD 2 AND ONE NICE GUY.

What Happened to Woody Allen?

What advice would you give him? How can he correct this downward spiral that began at least ten years ago? Tell Woody what to do? He needs some advice--despite the fact he can still attract great actors.

Friday's Forgotten Books, November, 5, 2010

There might be book reviews out there today. But I am with Rocky.

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK-Bill Crider

How I Came to Write Murder in the Air.

It was easy. Whenever I finish one book, I start thinking about what I might do next. My brother is often a source of ideas, and he suggested this one. He lives out in the country near our hometown, only a short distance from a factory chicken farm. He says that the place has had a serious effect on his quality of life. Not a good effect, either. The stench is bad enough, but he believes the air has affected both his own health and his wife’s.

What I’ve said about those farms in the book is pretty mild compared to the reality that he describes. He’s spent much of the last five years writing letters to the editor, to various county and state officials and air quality boards, and to anybody else he can think of. Not that it’s done any good. So he said to me one day when I was visiting him, “You ought to write a book about these chicken farms.” That clicked with me, and after I thought it over for a while, I started writing Murder in the Air.

There’s a lot more in the book than chicken farms, of course, but that conversation with my brother is where it all started. Come to think of it, a lot of my books seem to begin that way, with some remark a member of my family or a friend has made. I don’t think I’ll tell them, though. They might start thinking they deserve a cut of the advance.

Bill Crider is the author of MURDER IN FOUR PARTS, OF ALL SAD WORDS, MISSISSIPPI VIVIAN, and A MAMMOTH MURDER. He's also the editor of DAMN NEAR DEAD 2, debuting this week at NOIRCON.

If you have a book coming out you would like to write a piece about, please email me.

First Wednesday Book Review Club, November 3, 2010

THE HELP, Kathryn Stockett

I read THE HELP for my book group. All of us (6) agreed it was a good read. We'd never given enough thought to the plight of black women in the nineteen sixties in the South. Few books before THE HELP gave that particular topic much thought. It might be alluded to here and there in books like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD or A MEMBER OF THE WEDDING but not as a primary topic of concern by a white writer.

And yet, we had little to talk about this month. Certainly, we agreed that the African-American women in Jackson, Mississippi had been used and abused as servants in white households. Paid too little, worked too hard, loved too little by their employers, dismissed for minor reasons. Any number of indignities were forced on them.

Now I am going to cover my head as I say this but when it came down to it, it was the white woman in the book who stuck in our minds. Why? Not because she was worthy of more print but because the writer gave her more, fleshed her out beyond her black sisters. The black women were largely viewed in their role as servants. Ironic, huh? But who am I to argue with the thousands of resoundingly good reviews on Amazon?

I must come back to this: why is the one white woman in THE HELP given so much time? Why are the black women shown only in their roles as housekeepers, nannies.

Instead it is Skeeter and her trouble with her mother, boyfriend and publisher that stand out. Why couldn't we hear more about the servants' home lives? Why didn't their stories drive the plot rather than their grievances? Sorry to repeat myself here.

This book was certainly worth reading. It would have been better had it been written by Toni Morrison or Alice Walker. A black woman should have told this story and subjected the white women to minor roles. We didn't need a white woman to tell their stories. They have their own voices.

Find more book reviews at Barrie Summy's place.

Your "List" Aria

In the Mikado, there is a famous aria where a government official lists all the annoying people whose heads he'd like to chop off.

What people would you put on your list? Who won't be missed if you put him/her on the list? Whose head needs chopping?

1. People who talk during an opera.
2. Arms dealers
3. Box Cues

LA RONDE, Part Five

I HAVE SOME VERY BAD FEELINGS ABOUT TODAY SO BACK TO BED TO PULL THE BLANKET OVER MY HEAD ONCE I READ ROB'S PIECE.

Part Five "It's a Dog's Life" on Rob Kitchin's blog can be found here.

Part Four, "Enter the Fat Lady" can be found on Sandra Seamans blog. Right here.

Part 3 "Provocateur" was on KA. Laity's blog.

Part 2 "Blinded by the Brilliance of His Own Reflection" was on Dana King's blog.

And here's "The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon" the original story.

Tomorrow's Election

There have never been so many potential senators, reps, governors and members of state houses so ill-prepared, so unfeeling, so ready to dismantle every government program that helps people. These people regard those needing help as not deserving it. They would send our boys to fight a war and then deny them medical treatment to survive it. Survival of the fit.

There has never been so much vicious, lying negative campaigning, supported by the majority of the US Supreme Court. Corporations pouring money into campaigns of people with the platform of ending environmental protection. BP is still stirring the pot despite their near annihilation of the Gulf Coast. The very people on Wall Street who brought us to our knees three years ago depend on Republicans to raise them up again. The fix is in.

I beg you to vote tomorrow and vote for people with the experience, heart and intelligence to run this country. We can't expect the economy to be turned around in two years. Except we can expect the country to be turned around in the next few. By people who would return to the days of 1800. We thought we were living in a post-racist era but instead we are living in a neo-racist era. For a few minutes in time, the world applauded the election of a humane, smart, progressive American President.

The scariest words in the English language: President Sarah Palin.

What Movie Defines The State You Live in Best?

Hat tip to Bill for the list.
UP IN THE AIR carries the banner for Michigan. I can't really argue with that. But I always have loved ANATOMY OF A MURDER with its more rural setting, which is what most of Michigan is like. And I like that a Michigan writer wrote it.
And if I were going to pick a movie that best expresses my neighborhood, there is one set there: THE VIRGIN SUICIDES.

Check out your state on the list. Do you agree with it? If not, what would you choose. I wonder how many states we can get represented here?