Friday's Forgotten Books, November 16, 2012

***I will be taking next Friday off from Forgotten Books since I am cooking the day before. If anyone posts a review, I will pick them up late in the day Friday or on Saturday. Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving. 

 Ed Gorman is the author of the Sam McCain and Dev Conrad series of crime fiction novels. You can find him here

I  spent a good share of last night reading Hard Case Crime's snappy edition of A Touch of Death by Charles Williams and I'll say what I've said before about this book. It likely has more plot turns than just about any suspense novel I can ever recall reading.

One of Charles Williams' amoral failed men narrate. He was briefly a football star. Now he's a busted real estate agent. No wonder he gets interested, after initial reluctance, in stealing an one hundred twenty thousand dollars that a bank president took from his own bank. The woman who convinces him to help her makes it sound simple. It's probably in this mansion. All you have to do is get in there and find it. The bank president's wife won't be home for two days. You'll have plenty of time.

Right. Well, we know better than that, don't we? Yes, he gets in but he finds he's not alone. The woman is there, beautiful beyond description, and drunk beyond belief. But so is a killer. After saving her life, failed star takes her to a cabin in the woods where he plans to persuade her to tell him where the money is.

That's the beginning. Everybody in this book is a professional liar. And the bank president's wife is the most fatale of femmes. She lies on virtually every page and occasionally almost gets them killed. That she knows where the money is is obvious. That she killed her husband is also obvious. But who is trying to kill her and why?

While Touch isn't as rich in characterization as most Williams its construction is so dazzling it doesn't matter for once. And as always there is the mordant undertow of all major Williams novels--failure, violence, oblivion.  Most Williams is now available on Otto Penzler's Mysterious Press e book site.

LOOKING-GLASS JUSTICE by Jeffrey Ashford
(Review by Deb)

I picked up Jeffrey Ashford’s LOOKING-GLASS JUSTICE the day after the election.  I was expecting a competent mystery of the “British police procedural” genre—and I certainly got that; but perhaps because the vitriol of the presidential campaign was still ringing in my ears—with its talk of “one percent,” “ninety-nine percent,” “job creators,” “makers and takers,” “free stuff,” etc.—I also found an interesting subtext in the book: Almost everyone in it, including members of the police force, feels some resentment toward other people who apparently have more wealth, power, or possessions than they have (especially when the objects of that resentment act in peremptory and arbitrary ways to achieve their ends)—and they sometimes make far-reaching decisions based on that resentment.  As one character puts it, “It’s not money that’s the root of all evil—it’s the need of money.”

The book opens in Africa, where we are introduced to a man named Esme Lynch.  He is in Sierra Leone to acquire “blood diamonds.” In a few short pages, Ashford lets us see that Lynch is a thoroughly unpleasant character, not one to run afoul of.  In quick succession we meet Dijkstal, the Dutchman who possesses the diamonds Lynch covets, Drury, a man whose function is never made explicit, and Carol, a faded prostitute hired to be a “diamond mule.”  Because this is Sierra Leone and because the diamond trade there is illegal as well as highly-profitable, we’re not surprised that both Lynch and Dijkstal travel with the protection of well-armed mercenaries; nor are we surprised when violence erupts as the men meet to transact the diamond exchange.

Meanwhile, back in England, the marriage of a wealthy couple, Dick and Portia Frayne, continues on its unhappy path.  Portia, a nouveau-riche shrew, has married the penniless Dick because of his “to the manor born” background, but she uses her money (and the threat of its withdrawal) to cudgel those around her—husband, friends, servants—into doing her will, even when it’s the wrong thing to do.  Dick has reconciled himself to his marriage to the colossally self-centered Portia in exchange for the material goods she can provide.  He is, however, in love with the married Francesca, whose husband is in the final stages of early-onset Alzheimer’s.  Francesca reciprocates Dick’s feelings, but she remains loyal to her husband, who lives in a nursing home.  Dick knows that he cannot forgo the world he lives in due to his wife’s money, but he still visits Francesca and takes solace in her quiet strength and integrity (which he knows he does not possess).  Although she is in very reduced circumstances, Francesca is the character who least envies what others have.  In a way, she is the moral center of the book—and the only one who commits a completely selfless act to help another.

But what does a mismatched suburban couple have to do with blood diamonds?  Nothing—until Carol, recently returned from Sierra Leone and still in possession of the diamonds, is killed at dusk by a hit-and-run driver on a lonely rural road not far from Dick and Portia’s home.  The Fraynes come into the police’s orbit when a car similar to Portia’s is witnessed driving away from the accident that killed Carol.  Dick sees immediately that Portia’s antagonism and stubborn refusal to allow the police to examine her vehicle will only make her appear guilty in the eyes of law enforcement, but his attempts to explain this reasonably to his wife fall on deaf ears. 

Portia’s friend, Winifred, can provide her with an alibi for the night in question; but Portia fails to see that Winifred (like Dick, a member of the upper class who has fallen on hard times) resents Portia’s wealth and the high-handed attitude that goes with it.  Thus, when the police arrive to interview Winifred, the alibi she provides for Portia is neither solid nor given with much conviction. This—along with Portia’s own intransigence—leads the police to eye Portia with much more suspicion than they previously had.  Portia continues obliviously on her obstructionist path, assuming that her wealth and her very expensive lawyer will keep her safe from the clutches of the law.

Yes, Portia is safe from the law—but is she safe from Esme Lynch?  While Carol’s body lays unclaimed in the local morgue, Lynch is being forced to borrow heavily from underworld “creditors” until he can retrieve the diamonds.  We already know that Lynch is not above any level of violence—including murder—to attain his ends.  When he decides that he must intervene in police matters to ensure that Carol’s body is released, things begin to look very bad for the Fraynes—especially Portia.

The very title of the book implies that when justice comes, it will not come through the usual channels, but will be dispensed in a sort of karmic looking-glass fashion.  This is exactly right.  The long arm of the law sometimes isn’t long enough, but the guilty are punished, in a fashion, anyway.  LOOKING-GLASS JUSTICE isn’t a comforting book, but—in today’s polarized economic climate—I found it an extremely relevant one.

THE SEARCH FOR WARREN HARDING, Robert Plunket (Patti)

I read this book in 1990, but I believe it was first published in 1983. Jonathan Yardley declared it one of the funniest books American has produced and I remember it as a pretty good read. I am always looking for a funny novel, which seem scarcer every year.

Elliot Weiner is a young historian specializing in President Warren G. Harding. In  search of a new angle, he moves to LA and into the pool house of Rebekah Kinney, Harding's former mistress. Elliot eavesdrops and insinuates himself into her life (via her granddaughter) with comic results. He eventually learn that there's a trunkful of Harding letters in the main house so the novel's second half involves his screwball efforts to get  the trunk.

This is a novel that will either work for you and seem zany and hilarious or instead seem strained, heavy-handed or mean. Weiner's observations on LA life are of the catty sort--he is not a terribly likable character.

Most people doing research on Presidents usually are though in my experience.

Sergio Angelini
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Curt Evans
Randy Johnson
Nick Jones
George Kelly
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/William F. Deeck
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Richard Pangburn
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Michael Slind
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Patrick Ohl
Prashant Trikannad
TomCat

My Life at the Theater: Love and Anger

George F. Walker is a renown Canadian playwright whose work should be performed in the U.S. more often. I saw this play at the Attic Theater in Detroit in 1992. Sad to say, I have little memory of it. It originally opened at the Factory Theater (Toronto) in 1989 to positive reviews and standing ovations. It examines a variety of moral issues through the metaphor  of class conflict as embodied in the lives of society's downtrodden. But it is also a comedy.

Walker wrote 19 comedies in 20 years at the time that this one was in Detroit. He is known for making the bizarre believable.
The Attic Theater was big on socially relevant plays as I look through my programs from the years it existed. The Attic was the baby of Lavinia Moyer who still directs theater in Detroit.

All the News That's Fit to Print

I rarely watch the evening news for various reasons, but Phil still turns it on and last night I couldn't help hearing that the bad review in the NYT of Guy Fieri's new restaurant on Times Square was mentioned. On the news! The review in the Times yesterday was perhaps the worst review of anything I have ever read. My favorite line was that the marshmallows taste like fish. Why marshmallows I wanted to ask?

But why was the restaurant or the review mentioned on the news? Fieri is certainly more of a celebrity than a chef--is this why? Will this bad review and the media delight in it hurt or help him? Perhaps tourists, clearly the intended patrons of a restaurant on Times Square, will only remember his name and it will be a huge success. I know (ahem) a lot of men who love his FOOD NETWORK show.

If you google his name today, not a single publication or news outlet fails to mention this review. Maybe there is not such thing as bad publicity but read the review and you will wonder.

With all that's going on in the world, can an 18 minutes network newscast afford to waste time on this? Well, yes, because the news spends its last 5 minutes on similar stories every night. Stories geared to the aging population that hasn't discarded its habit of getting their news this way.

Do you listen to the evening news? How do you get your news?

For the record, I read the NYT in the morning although not thoroughly. And I listen to NPR off and one over the day. And I catch bits and pieces from MSNBC, which is on after five here, pretty much nonstop. 

Howard Hawks

I have a friend who whenever I mention a movie always knows the director. Or if he doesn't, it's the first question he asks having grown up on the auteur theory despite being the same age as me. I grew up on the movie star theory so I usually know who acted in the movie. But directors are pretty darn important and one of my favorites is Howard Hawks. There are a dozen movies of his that rank in my top hundred, but if I had to chose one it would be BALL OF FIRE.




Hate to mention actors again, but these are two of the best. 

What is your favorite Hawks movie?

Tuesday Night Music: Nick Drake

Because I knew nothing about him until my son said, look him up.

From Wikipedia

Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician, known for his gentle guitar-based songs. He failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime but his work has gradually achieved wider notice and recognition.^[2][3][4] Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old and a student at the University of Cambridge, and released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. By 1972, he had recorded two more albums—Bryter Layter and Pink Moon. Neither sold more than 5,000 copies on initial release.^[5] Drake's reluctance to perform live, or be interviewed, contributed to his lack of commercial success.
Drake suffered from depression, particularly during the latter part of his life. This was often reflected in his lyrics. On completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. There is no known footage of the adult Drake; he was only ever captured in still photographs and in home footage from his childhood.^[6] On 25 November 1974, Drake died from an overdose of amitriptyline, a prescribed antidepressant; he was 26 years old. Whether his death was an accident or suicide has never been resolved.
Drake's music remained available through the mid-1970s, but the 1979 release of the retrospective album Fruit Tree caused his back catalogue to be reassessed. By the mid-1980s Drake was being credited as an influence by such artists as Robert Smith, David Sylvian and Peter Buck. In 1985, The Dream Academy reached the UK and US charts with "Life in a Northern Town", a song written for and dedicated to Drake.^[7] By the early 1990s, he had come to represent a certain type of "doomed romantic" musician in the UK music press and was frequently cited as an influence by artists including Kate Bush, Paul Weller and The Black Crowes.^[8] His first biography appeared in 1997, and was followed in 1998 by the documentary film A Stranger Among Us.

Forgotten Movies: MOVIE, MOVIE

From IMDB:

Directed by Stanley Donan in 1978, three movie genres of the 1930s are satirized in this spoof of the traditional double feature. In "Dynamite Hands" a delivery boy turns prizefighter in order to raise enough money for his kid sister's eye operation. Later, however, he turns his back on his father-figure manager and librarian girlfriend when he is distracted by a flashy gangster and sexy night club diva. Intermission has a coming-attractions trailer for "Zero Hour," a World War I aviation drama. In the second feature, "Baxter's Beauties of 1933" a Broadway impresario hears he has only a month to live and is determined to mount one more hit on the boards. When his drunken diva of a star cannot go on opening night, he finds that the ingénue he chooses to replace her is his long-estranged daughter, whom he has not seen since she was a girl. All three stories feature the same cast.

That same cast starred George C. Scott, his wife at the time Trish Van Devere, Red Button,Harry Hamlin, Eli Wallach, Ann Renking, etc.

It may not have been a great movie but it was a fun one.

Theme Music: Dr. Who

I wish I were the kind of woman, like the one on the street right now, who is walking her dog wearing a yellow slicker with matching hat and boots instead of setting out in my regular fraying jeans and an old jacket with an umbrella that turns inside out. Perhaps her boots are too much so I would go with green wellies.
I wish I were the kind of woman who had a dog.

I wish I were the kind of woman who hops in her car and drives across the country, alone and fearless, to help Sandy victims, visit a pueblo, learn to make sourdough bread, get out the vote for President Obama.
I wish I were the kind of woman who drove a car.

Or I'd like to be the kind of women who can walk steadily in high heels, who learned to draw a perfect line on her eyelid at sixteen, who knows that the dress with the animal print that the clerks at Lord and Taylors call the Lion King dress, will not be a good choice for my daughter's wedding.
I wish I didn't have shoes, blouses, pajamas and a coat with an animal print in my closet.

I wish I read 450 books a year like Sarah Weinman. I can tell myself that I get more out of the 100 books I do read, but since I could not give you the plot of ones I read six months ago, this is not persuasive.

I wish I were the kind of person who did not create excuses to eat.
Like it really doesn't count if you eat standing up so go ahead and grab a piece of angel food cake as you walk past the box. Or that bread is so thin, three pieces of French toast will be the same calories as two. 

I wish I didn't feel compelled to report on the night's sleep I just had. And I wish Phil didn't feel compelled to tell me about his dreams.
They are so much more exciting than mine.

I wish I was finishing the story I am stuck on instead of telling myself that stream of consciousness writing can open up those brain passages.

And I did just think of an ending.

Thanks for listening.

Philip Roth Throws in the Pen after NEMESIS

 

I have read more than half of his output, I guess. My favorites are AMERICAN PASTORAL, NEMESIS, and GOODBYE, COLUMBUS.  Not such a fan of the Zuckerman saga though.

And he never really wrote strong female characters. His women tend to be nagging mothers/wives, revolutionary daughters, fickle college girls, characters who remain in the background despite being on the page a lot. I am not sure that he hates women as much as he finds them uninteresting, unknowable, non-players. 

How about you? Any Roth fans out there?

What male writers write great female characters?  Greg Rucka says he does, right here.

Sunday Night Poetry: Margaret Atwood

I love this!

TV Comedians Before 1970

I was surprised at the number of people who said they did not enjoy comedies last week. I am always grateful for a laugh-for a Charles Willeford book or a movie like Shaun of the Dead.

Of late, there are lots of comedians I find funny. Louis C.K stands out. But there are many funny comedies on TV in the last two decades. The humor is verbal, quick, incisive. THE BIG BANG THEORY is a sure thing for me. So too was THE OFFICE in its day.SEINFELD never failed until the last years.

But if I look back to my childhood, it's very different. Which early comics did you find funny? For me, not very many. I never laughed at Jackie Gleeson, Jack Benny or Milton Berle. I think I would have probably enjoyed Mike Nichols and Elaine May but they were before my time. Also never a fan of the Carol Burnett show or Lucille Ball. Monty Python was only sporadically funny although I love Fawlty Towers. Bill Cosby's albums were funny as were Bob Newhart's.

Who made you laugh from that earlier era?Who makes you laugh now? 

Saturday Night Music: Desire

Beautiful Women of the Silver Screen: Scarlett Johannson

The Summing Up, Friday, November 9, 2012

The Summing Up, Friday, November 9, 2012

Don't forget December 7th is Ray Bradbury Day here. 


Patti Abbott, The Expendable Man, Dorothy B Hughes
Sergio Angelini, The Yellow Dog, Georges Simenon
Yvette Banek, Maigret;'s Christmas, George Simenon
 Brian Busby, The Pioneer Preacher, Neville Trueman
Bill Crider, Bad Monkeys. Matthew Ruff
Scott Cupp, The Blues Ain't Nothin', Tina L. Jens
Martin Edwards. My Brother's Killer. D. M. Devine
Curt Evans , The Hugh Rennert Detective Novels of Todd Downing
Elisabeth Grace Foley , Ten Forgotten Authors
Jerry House , Blood Dance, Joe R. Lansdale
Randy Johnson, The Cutler Books, Pt. 3, H.V. Elkin
Nick Jones, The Volcanoes of San Domingo, Adam Hall
George Kelley, Storm Front and Fool Moon, Jim Butcher
Margot Kinberg, Executive Privilege, Phillip Margolin
B.V. Lawson, The House of Balnesmoor, Hugh C. Rae
Evan Lewis, TV Tie-Ins, Kurt Peer
Steve Lewis/Mike Nevins , Fools Die on Friday, A.A. Fair
Todd Mason, Harlan Ellison: 4 collections, 1 anthology: THE BOOK OF ELLISON, SLEEPLESS NIGHTS ON THE PROCRUSTEAN BED, STALKING THE NIGHTMARE, STRANGE WINE, MEDEA: HARLAN'S WORLD
J.F. Norris, Auntie Beardie, Joseph Shearing
Deb Pfeifer, Compulsion, Meyer Levin
James Reasoner, The Case of the Daring Decoy, Erle Stanley Gardner
Richard Robinson, The Private Practice of Michael Shayne, Bret Halliday
Ron Scheer, The Backwoodsman, Charles G.D. Roberts
Ron Scheer, Find a Victim, Ross Macdonald
Michael Slind, A Fatal Inversion, Barbara Vine
Kerrie Smith ,The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, Catspaw Ordeal, Edward Ronns
TomCat, Ellery Queen
Prashant Trikanna, Journey Toward Death, Amos Aricha

Friday's Forgotten Books

COMPULSION by Meyer Levin

(Review by Deb)

Meyer Levin's COMPULSION is a lightly-fictionalized account of the sensational Leopold and Loeb murder case that gripped the nation in the mid-1920s.  Meyer's fictionalization (published in 1956) is very light indeed, with much of the dialog being taken verbatim from transcripts of police records and court testimony.  Even so, the novel is more than just a retelling of a senseless and horrific crime, it is a perceptive study of what the French call a folie-a-deux, wherein two people who are utterly toxic for each other are none-the-less hopelessly attracted to each other and, in the thrall of that attraction, commit acts that neither would necessarily have done without the dark-mirror image of the other goading them on.

In Levin's book, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb become Judd Steiner and Artie Strauss, neighbors in Chicago's wealthy and close-knit German-Jewish community. (There's a small but telling detail when Judd informs his aunt that he's going out with a girl named Ruth Goldenberg and his aunt sighs, "Oh, Russian-Jewish I suppose.")  Both men were child prodigies who had graduated from university by the time they were 18 years old.  As the book begins, both of them are still in their teens (as is Sid Silver, a newspaperman who narrates part of the book and plays a pivotal role in uncovering some of the evidence).  Adopting the guise of Nietzschean "supermen" who do not need to follow the laws applicable to average beings, Steiner and Strauss plan the "perfect murder."  They eventually kidnap a randomly-selected neighborhood boy on his way home from school.  They kill the boy, pour acid on the corpse, hide the body in a drainage ditch, and then put into motion an elaborate red-herring of a kidnapping-ransom plot.

This perfect murder rapidly unravels, starting with the victim's body being quickly discovered and identified.  Then damning evidence stacks up against the men:  Steiner's glasses--traced to him by their unique hinge mechanism--are found beside the victim, there is blood on the back seat of a car the men have rented, papers typed on Steiner's discarded typewriter match the typing on the bogus ransom notes, and Strauss's attempts to inject himself into the investigation (in order to discover how much the press and police actually know) backfire spectacularly.  Their alibis in shreds, the men confess to the crime, each blaming the other for striking the fatal blow (although, as Sid Silver points out, in that regard, one of them had to be telling the truth).

Considering that the book was written in the 1950s about a crime in the 1920s, one aspect that I found surprising (and rather refreshing) was its refusal to take the "easy" way out and blame the men's actions on the fact that they were closeted lovers, although society at the time certainly did, blaming all manner of depraved behavior on homosexuality.  However, narrator Sid Silver is puzzled by how much stress the authorities place on the men's relationship and asks of it, "In all the history of human behaviour, of the sick and ugly and distorted and careless and sportive and mistaken things that humans did, was this so much more?" 

In fact, Levin does not present the men as sexually "set," but rather most likely bisexual, with Judd being more interested in dominance and submission rather than the gender of his partner, and Artie using his good looks, affable facade, and charisma to attract both men and women.  I was also surprised at the frankness of the book, given the time it was written--Judd's dark fantasies, especially involving rape, are quite explicit.  Levin's book makes us feel if not sympathy then at least some understanding, particularly for the intense and brooding Judd whose infatuation with the manipulative and self-centered Artie is as inexplicable as its dreadful outcome is inevitable.

But I've only covered the first half of the book.  The second half, which centers on the mens' trial, is interesting, although it drags in places due to pages of legal arguments and long-winded explanations of Freudian psychology with which we are now completely familiar.  In order to avoid a jury trial and a sure death penalty, Steiner and Strauss plead guilty in the hopes that arguing before a judge might result in a life, rather than a death, sentence.  Aging lawyer Jonathan Wilk (a fictionalized Clarence Darrow) mounts a brilliant legal defense at their sentencing hearing that saves the men from execution, although they both receive sentences of “Life plus 99 years.”  And, other than a brief coda, there the book abruptly ends, with Steiner and Straus entering prison and fading from public memory. 

But this abruptness works in the book's favor by indicating that there will be other events and other atrocities that will come to overshadow the "crime of the century."  First of all, the rise of "some gangster named Al Capone" (as he is described in an offhand remark by one of Sid's colleagues about a gangland shooting) and the associated violence of Prohibition.  And then the actual "crime of the century"--the Nazi atrocities of World War II and everything the world was to learn about the "Superman" ideal and where it leads.

Meyer Levin wrote this book in part to assist Nathan Leopold in his attempt to be granted parole, which finally happened in 1958. Leopold moved to Puerto Rico, married, worked as an x-ray technician, and died in 1971.  Richard Loeb was not so fortunate: In 1936, he was stabbed multiple times by a fellow inmate who claimed Loeb had made sexual advances toward him.  Although the story was easily discounted, especially since Loeb was covered with defensive wounds and the inmate who killed him was unscathed, no charges were ever filed in his death.

(Patti)
THE EXPENDABLE MAN, Dorothy B. Hughes

A resident at UCLA hospital reluctantly gives a teenager a ride on a deserted road near Phoenix. Right from the beginning, he seems guilty, worried, and we wonder if he perhaps is an unreliable narrator. His actions seems blameless so why the fretting. The girl comes to his hotel room later that night, demanding an abortion, which he refuses to do.

But after 50 or so pages of his fretting and pacing, we find out why he is overly concerned and it changes everything we have thought about him until that point. Irritatingly, many reviews will give this away so if you plan on reading the novel, stay away from other reviews. I think this moment in the novel is far too imporatnt to be divulged. Written in 1963, THE EXPENDABLE MAN was one of Hughes' last works and it reflects much of what is coming in the later sixties. Although she didn't die for another thirty years, her only other writing seems to be a biography of Erle Stanley Gardner.

I found this to be a moderately exciting read although I must confess that Hughes' progressive thinking in some areas is undercut by her judgmental attitude in others. Perhaps this reflects the time but she comes down very hard on doctors who provide abortions and girls who need them. It is well written and the characters are deftly drawn. We get a good sense of Phoenix at the time. All in all, a good if not perfect read.

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Curt Evans 
Elisabeth Grace Foley
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
Nick Jones
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg 
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Mike Nevins 
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Ron Scheer 
Ron Scheer
Michael Slind
Kerrie Smith 
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
TomCat
Prashant Trikannad

My Life at the Theater: THREE SISTERS

I have never seen the movie shown here (is it a parody?) but we saw the play THREE SISTERS by Anton Chekhov at the Stratford Festival in 2008. I must confess I far prefer Chekhov's stories to his plays, which seem overly lethargic, dramatic, enigmatic. For me, a play is immediate and I have little patience with enigmatic characters on a stage. Especially a cast full of them. When reading a play, you can stop to mull a line over but on stage, the action or inaction continues.

But I am sure there are some great fans of his plays.

Spencer Tracy

As more books come out recounting his life, it is clear Tracy was an enigmatic, very depressed person. But I don't like to dwell on that, instead on his great film career. I am especially fond of ADAM'S RIB and all the films he did with Hepburn for that matter.

f you look at the list on IMDB, it is clear he did it all: horror, western, poltical, romance, crime. He always radiated a natural intelligence though.

What is your favorite Tracy film?

Megan on Swedish TV Explaining Cheerleading

http://www.svtplay.se/video/568879/del-6-av-12-kobra-om-cheerleading


It will be in English after a few moments. 

Opening Credits: Scooby Doo

First Wednesday Book Review Club

                                                    Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward

This is one of those books you admire, you are in awe of, yet something about it doesn't quite draw you in. And in this case, it is the hyper-focus on saving newborn puppies for a future in dog fighting that is the problem for me. Now I well understand why this poor black family in the days leading up to Katerina are in the business--they already own a prize winning pit bull. With no mother and an alcoholic father, one brother seizes on this as a solution to their economic plight. These puppies will sell for a a high amount since their mother is a local legend. The fourteen year-old daughter, Esch, tells the story. She is pregnant, and that of course contrasts well with the attempt to save the mother and the new puppies. Ward nails so many things including how a girl that age is more concerned with getting the romantic interest of the father than what lies ahead for her as a teenage Mom. I liked this family; they vibrated with life.

What is most remarkable here is the writing. It is lush, original, gem-like. And the evocation of the storm is brilliant too. A little less talk about birthing puppies might have made this my favorite book of the last six months. As it is, it is still near the top. 

For more book reviews, see Barrie Summy

The Critical Influence

I am not particularly influenced by amazon reviews-I have seen too many bad ones of books I have read and loved to take them seriously. But I am influenced by professional critics. I was reading a book by a writer I have enjoyed (but not always) in the past. I was really into it. So I went online to read reviews of it, which almost all were negative, citing the big fall-off in the second half.

I put the book aside-deciding I did not want to finish a 500 page book that would let me down in the end.

Would you have finished it? I was on page 120.

How Do You Feel on Waking?

Clarification: I don't actually experiences nausea, I experience terror. Sorry.

I was watching a trailer for a new documentary called BRIEF ENCOUNTERS. The film maker said he woke every morning feeling sick at his stomach. I have never heard anyone else say this, but I wake every morning feeling sick at my stomach. It's not stomach related--it's non-specific fear, I think. It is not based on bad events ahead or behind me. No matter how great the day might be, I awake feeling sick at my stomach. It disappears after a bit.I've been up fifteen minutes as I type this and it is mostly gone.

I have been told it is a brain chemistry thing but I wonder how common it is.

How do you feel on waking?

Forgotten TV: Checkmate

Anthony George, Doug McClure and Sebastian Cabot solved mysteries on CHECKMATE. At the time (1960-62) this seemed like the height of sophistication to me. Very debonair and cultured. Eric Ambler had something to do with the show and Johnny (John) Williams wrote the jazzy theme. You can watch episodes on you tube if you want a taste. I wonder why detectives were always portrayed as sophisticated in that era?
Or perhaps everyone was before the advent of realism that came five or so years later.The entire series is on DVD.

BLACK SWAN

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that is a surprise (to the observer), has a major effect, and after the fact is often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight.

We spent a lot of time at a dinner party Saturday night discussing this theory.

(Menu was butternut squash soup, stuffed chicken breasts with cherry glaze, Israeli couscous, cucumber, leek and pear salad with granny apple dressing, fruit tart)

Is Hurricane Sandy a black swan, an October surprise or just a horrible storm? Of course, global warming comes into play.

What event would you categorize as a black swan? The classic example is 9/11.

Books to Die For

I am reluctantly finishing this book, which I have so enjoyed. I can't imagine any of you would not. More than 100 current writers choose a crime fiction book they admire and write an essay about it. Each one approaches it a bit differently. Some of the essays are scholarly. Some are personal. Some discuss the author more than the book. But nearly every one is worth reading. It is interesting to see how one writer has influenced another's work too. Some of them make perfect sense. With some the connection is less clear.

I had a hard time thinking of a book I would have included that wasn't here. In a review in the Washington Post, the reviewer asks where is Nicholas Blake and a few other golden age writers, but on the whole there are not too many great books not represented. Most of the books chosen do not come from the cozy sub-genre though.

I had read only half the books essayed here. Some I had never heard of. A few of the essayists were new to me too. But I sure went over to my TBR pile for three books I own but haven't read.

What book would you have chosen for your "book to die for?"

I would have chose THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY. Although Highsmith is remembered for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN-a very clever novel, I think Tom Ripley is a more memorable and important character. Perhaps a book of characters to die for would be fun. 

Sunday Night Poetry: William Wordsworth

This one has been running through my head for days.

Your Least Favorite Genre (for lack of a better word)

I was reading about a new movie by Barry Levinson, described as eco-horror and realized that sort of thing is my least favorite genre for a book or movie.Give me a horror story that is completely fictional like vampires, ghosts or zombies any day. Eco-horror is too likely to occur to derive any pleasure from reading about it or watching it. I have kept my distance from these sorts of books/movies since COMA, which seemed all too likely--and it is.

What subject matter do you shy away from?

The Summing Up, Friday, November 2, 2012

 A review of SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS is on Crimespree Cinema.


The Summing Up, Friday, November 2, 2012



Anthony Ambrogio, The Boys from Brazil, Ira Levin
Sergio Angelini, The Beast of the Camargue, Xavier Marie Bonnet
Joe Barone, The Sky Took Him, Donis Casey
Brian Busby, The Soul Eater, Thomas P. Kelley
Bill Crider, Angel, Gil Brewer
Martin Edwards, Dead Men's Morris, Glady Mitchell
Curt Evans, Sisters Are Doin' For Themselves: The Sisters of Cain, Mary Collins
Elisabeth Grace Foley, Poor Dear Margaret Kirby, Kathleen Norris
Ed Gorman, House of Flesh, Bruno Fisher
Jerry House, The Dead Boy Detectives, Jill Thompson
Randy Johnson, The Cutler Books, Part 2, H.V. Elkin
Nick Jones, Man Hungry, Alan Marshall
George Kelley, The Leiber Chronicles, ed. Martin Greenbert
Margot Kinberg, Blood and Groom, Jill Edmondson
B.V. Lawson, Aristotle Detective, Margare Doody
Evan Lewis, The Continental Op, Dashiell Hammett
Steve Lewis, The Affair of the 39 Cufflinks, James Anderson
Todd Mason, Ghost and Things ed, Hal Cantor; Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories to Be Read
With the Door Locked, Harold Q. Masur
J.F. Norris, Someone Like You, Roald Dahl
Richard Pangburn, Heaven's Keep, William Kent Kruger
Deb Pfeifer, The Rules of the Game, Georges Simenon
James Reasoner, Flint, Gil Dodge (Arnold Hano)
Gerard Saylor, Multiple Man, Ben Bova
Ron Scheer, Woodsmen of the West, Martin Allendale Grainger
Michael Slind, Doll. Ed McBain
Kerrie Smith, The Scarlett Inheritance, Robert Ludlum
Kevin Tipple, The Surest Poison, Chester D. Campbell
Prashant Trikkanad, The Ninth Configuration, William Peter Blatty
TomCat, The Body Beautiful, Bill S. Ballinger
Zybahn, Children of the Night, John Blackburn

Friday's Forgotten Books, November 2, 2012

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

                                          THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, Anthony Ambrogio

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

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

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

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

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

But my friend is missing the point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----

The Evil Days by Bruno Fischer

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

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

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

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

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

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

 THE RULES OF THE GAME by Georges Simenon

(Review by Deb)

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

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

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

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

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

Sergio Angelini

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

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

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

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

High School English Curriculums

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

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

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