Forgotten Movies: RACHEL, RACHEL

RACHEL, RACHEL

Margaret Laurence is one of my favorite Canadian writers and this movie comes from her book, A Jest of God. This was the first movie Paul Newman directed and he chose his wife to play the lead. This was expert casting because Woodward excelled at playing characters like this one.

Rachel is a single woman in her thirties, an "old maid." Her siblings have grown and moved away from Manawaka, the small town in Canada where the book.movie takes place. Rachel is the unwilling caretaker for her mother, who is frail and needy.

Rachel is needy, too. She would like to find love, a husband of her own, and have children, but she does not know how to escape the ties that bind her to the small town and her unrewarding life. Margaret Laurence and Paul Newman in turn lets us feel her frustration and longing.

Unexpectedly, Rachel is faced with a challenge, and with it a chance for growth and fulfillment. It is interesting to find out how Rachel meets this challenge. The movie was made in 1968 and I remember it well.

If I were to make a list of forgotten actresses, Woodward would be near the top.

Eighties Music: Michael Jackson

Eighties Music Week: Kim Carnes

The Writing Life: Matt Weiner

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kalinda?

I remember when Kalinda was the hottest thing going a few years ago. And then the writers on THE GOOD WIFE gave her a husband who turned out to be a big jerk. And suddenly Kalinda lost her appeal too. Can she recapture it? I don't know. The writers don't seem to know what to do with her either sexually or job-wise.

There are characters on every show that seem to wax and wane over time. I am also thinking of the actor who plays Joel on PARENTHOOD. Suddenly he became a jerk this year. Sorry, but people don't change like this. And now they may have to write him off the show to settle this issue. Can we ever forgive him for letting his newly adopted son down? Does anyone walk away from their family this easily?

What other actors bear the brunt of bad decisions on the part of writers?

Saturday Night Music: EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY

Saturday Morning Music

Um Peixe Grande read aloud

If you clink the link saying Listen to the Podcast, the story is read aloud by a terrific reader. A great thrill for me. I have never heard anyone read my stories before and it was quite an experience.

http://www.plan-b-magazine.com/um-piexe-grande-by-patti-abbott/

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, April 11, 2014

Next Friday, April 18, B.V. Lawson (In Reference to Murder) will be collecting the links, right here. 

A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine, reviewed by Deb Pfeifer

First published in 1987, A Fatal Inversion was the second book Ruth Rendell released under her alternate pen name of Barbara Vine.  Unlike the majority of the Ruth Rendell books--police procedurals featuring DCI Reg Wexford of the Kingsmarkham police force—the Barbara Vine novels focus less on the solution to a specific crime and more on the unintended and far-reaching consequences of past actions, often committed by people with social, emotional, or mental limitations, on present situations.  Although they contain much of Rendell’s atmospheric descriptions of natural and architectural beauty and keen insights into the psyches of damaged individuals, the Barbara Vine novels are also darker and more psychologically fraught than most of the Rendell books, with muted endings that are both downbeat and inevitable.  In these ways, A Fatal Inversion is very much a “typical” Barbara Vine work.

A couple digging in a pet cemetery to bury the remains of their beloved dog uncover the skeletons of a woman and an infant.  Authorities determine the bones to have been in the ground about a decade and start an investigation.  The news of the discovery of the bones has a shattering impact on three men:  Adam, Rufus, and Shiva.  None of them has had any communication with the others for over ten years, but each thinks back on the summer of 1976 when they were about twenty years old and lived in a commune-like setting at Wyvis Hall, a large manor house that Adam unexpectedly inherited from his great-uncle.  The decision by this great-uncle to skip Adam’s father (the presumed heir) and will an enormous house (with its related responsibilities and upkeep) to the far-too-young, inexperienced, and underfunded Adam is an inversion in the order of things that will shatter many lives.

As each of the men remembers elements of that long-ago summer, we also learn of their lives in the present.  Adam has become a fussy man, neurotically obsessed with the health of his infant daughter who he loves in equal proportion to the contempt he feels for his sensible wife.  Rufus is a successful, charming Harley Street doctor, unaware that his “secret” drinking is a secret to no one but himself.  Shiva, born and raised in England but always aware that his skin color and Indian ancestry mark him as someone different and the focus of neighborhood racism, has never fulfilled his earlier potential as a promising medical and pharmacy student.

There were also two women at Wyvis Hall during the summer of 1976:  Vivien, Shiva’s sometime girlfriend, a maternal earth-mother type, and Zosie, whose mental instability is obvious to the reader but not so much to the others—perhaps because of their youth or perhaps because Zosie’s hippie/waif look so much embodies the standard of beauty of her era.  Zosie is briefly Rufus’s girlfriend, but transfers her affections to Adam who falls head-over-heels in love with her, even when she commits a shocking act (another “inversion” to the natural order) that will have terrible consequences for everyone.

Vine carefully and cleverly uncovers the secret of Wyvis Hall and what happened during the summer of 1976, moving between the present and the past with ease.  She does some very clever technical work, since we essentially are reading six different viewpoints:  Each of the three men in the present and each of their memories of the past.  She keeps us guessing as to the identity of the two skeletons and how they got into the ground.  In the end, one would have to say that “punishment” (such as it is) for the guilty is not meted out in proportion to the level of responsibility each one assumes for what went on that summer.  And, possibly, the guiltiest person of all ends up in the happiest of circumstances.  Such is the world of Barbara Vine.


Sergio Angelini, FEAR, L. Ron Hubbard
Joe Barone, TOO LATE TO DIE, Bill Crider
Brian Busby, WASTE NO TEARS, Hugh Garner
Bill Crider, NO CHANCE IN HELL, Nick Quarry
Curt Evans, Ruth Rendell and Gladys Mitchell
Ed Gorman, THE DARK SIDE OF THE ISLAND, Jack Higgins
Rich Horton, Sylvia Cary, Frances Parkinson Keyes
Jerry House, THE DARINGS OF THE RED ROSE, Margery Allingham
Randy Johnson, TWO ARCHER SHORTS, Ross Macdonald
Nick Jones, TOO MUCH, Donald Westlake
George Kelley, UPON THE SEA OF STARS, A Bertram Chandler
Margot Kinberg, A PRIVATE VENUS, Giorgio Scerbanenco
Rob Kitchin, HURRICANE PUNCH, Tim Dorsey
B.V. Lawson, MURDER AT THE VILLA ROSA, A.E.W. Mason
Evan Lewis, GREEN ICE Raoul Whitfield
Steve Lewis/William Deeck, MISS HOGG AND THE MISSING SISTER, Austin Lee
Todd Mason, REDUX: Breaking Barriers
Neer, ONE OF US MUST DIE, Anna Clarke
J.F. Norris, THE CORNISH COAST MURDER, John Bude
James Reasoner, MODESTY BLAISE: GRAPHIC NOVEL, Peter O'Donnell and Dick Giordano
Richard Robinson, GONE NO FORWARDING, Joe Gores
Ron Scheer, RIMROCK JONES, Dane Coolidge 
Kevin Tipple , A PATCHWORK OF STARS, Kaye George
TomCat, THE DELL MAPBOOKS
Prashant Trikannad, PUBLIC MURDERS, Bill Granger

Final Scene: ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

Theme Music: THE MUPPETS

Your contract with the author.

In a book I'm reading, the central character, a teenage girl, is dissatisfied with the abrupt ending of a book she was loving. She

said the author broke his contract with the reader.

Do you feel an author has a contract with his/her readers? Does he/she have completely autonomy in telling the story or is their an unwritten contract that certain obligations much be met?

Tuesday Night Music: Levon Helm

Moments That Made the Movies

Really enjoying this book, which takes a group of movies and looks at a specific scene that you as a viewer probably take away with you. For instance, the scene in LAURA where Dana Andrews falls asleep in front of the painting of Laura, waking to find her there.
Or this one from 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING.

What scene from a movie defines it for you?

RIP: MICKEY ROONEY

Jeff Goldblum

A few weeks ago I saw LE WEEKEND, a film about a older British couple on a weekend in Paris,  and was amused by Jeff Goldblum's performance. He was playing a character very like himself, but who does it better? He was the smart narcissist that really had a heart beneath all the pomp. He managed to seem completely absorbed by both the person across from him and himself, seemingly flirting with both. It's as if the person across from him functions as a mirror .

Great little movie. Smart, surprising, surly.

He also played himself equally well in THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

A lot of actors used to play themselves (Cary Grant, John Wayne, Clark Gable) but it is rarer today.

My favorite Goldblum performances are in BETWEEN THE LINES, THE FLY, THE BIG CHILL and his time spend on the TV show TEN SPEED AND BROWN SHOES.

What actors play themselves to perfection?

On Writing: David Simon

Saturday Night Music: Lester and Coleman

Take a Look at the Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat- Kickstarter Project via Andrez Bergen

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/754267967/tobacco-stained-mountain-goat-the-graphic-novel

How About a Dance Scene? BILLY ELLIOTT

Check out my review of ENEMY at Crimespree Magazine.

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, April 4, 2014

 The next special Friday on FFB, listed to the left, will be on May16 and reviewed books will be crime fiction from the 1950s.  (written then, not set then)

Of course, any review is welcome. If you haven't read a book from the fifties recently, you may find one lurking in your archives.

Six years of forgotten books this month. It's been a privilege to work with so many great reviewers.

Set the Night on Fire by Libby Fischer Hellmann (2010)

This is one of the few books I’ve read in recent years that uses sixties’ radicalism in a crime fiction plot. And uses it to good avail. Hellmann tells an interesting story with just the right amount of attention to the climate of the sixties to anchor it. Her characters are fleshed out well, and we come to care about them in the past and in the present.

Dar Gartner is newly released from jail after serving a long prison sentence for an act of radicalism. In trying to put a new life together in Chicago, he also touches base with some members of his old group of friends. Friends who begin to die after his re-entry into their lives. His life seems in jeopardy as well.

One of the friends who dies is the father of Lila Hilliard. Hilliard, along with Lila's brother, perish in a house fire seemingly caused by faulty Christmas tree lights. Except Lila remembers unplugging the lights before she went out. As she investigates her father’s business affairs and the fire, her own life is threatened and she realizes there were things about her father and his tale of her long-dead mother that never quite added up. 

So Lila and Dar begin circling each other, Lila is wary at first until in desperation they collectively put the puzzle together. Both are at risk and neither knows precisely where the threat is coming from, but both eventually conclude it's coming from past activities of the group of friends. 

The reader travels back to the late sixties and watches the group of women and men living together, making the decisions that will affect the rest of their life. Through their circle, we're treated to insight into the types of young people drawn to radicalism and what price they were willing to pay to reform society. And also, what lengths they were willing to go to to cover their trail and how that history impacts the present.

The race of Lila and Dar to piece together the plot against them and act swiftly enough to save their lives makes this a thrilling read.

This was a very fine and compelling story.


Sergio Angelini, THE TODD DOSSIER, Robert Bloch
Yvette Banek, NOBODY WORE BLACK, Delano Ames
Brian Busby, OVERNIGHT ESCAPADE, Stephen Mark
Bill Crider, A CANDLE FOR THE DEAD, Hugh Marlowe
Martin Edwards, ROSE'S LAST SUMMER. Margaret Millar
Jerry House, STRANGE GATEWAYS, E. Hoffman Price
Rick Horton, A SPORT AND A PAST TIME, James Salter
Randy Johnson, TREACHERY AT ROCK POINT, Peter Dawson
Nick Jones, RUSSIAN ROULETTE, James Mitchell
Margot Kinberg, WOLF HALL, Hillary Mantel
Rob Kitchin, THE LONG GOODBYE, Michael Lister

B.V. Lawson, A DRAM OF POISON, Charlotte Armstrong
Evan Lewis "Hop Cargo" Robert Leslie Bellem
Steve Lewis/William Deeck, FOLLOW THIS FAIR CORPSE, Laurence Dwight Smith

Todd Mason, 100 GREAT FANTASY SHORT SHORT STORIES, edited by Terry Carr, Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
Neer, MURDER AT THE PAGEANT, Victor L. Whitechurch
J.F.. Norris, THE CASE AGAINST MYSELF, Gregory Tree
Erica Obey,  THE RED CARNELIAN, Phyllis A. Whitney
James Reasoner, THE LONELY GUN, Gordon D. Shirreffs
Richard Robinson, FINAL NOTICE, Joe Gores
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, TOO LATE FOR TEARS, Roy Huggins
TomCat, MY TRUE LOVE LIES, Lenore Glen Offord

Happy Birthday, Doris Day

Few actresses have conducted themselves with more grace.

YAs

YAs continue to be mysterious to me. When I see TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD on a list, it makes no sense. Sure kids should and do read it, but it would probably resonate more with adults. I guess the explosion began with the S.E Hinton books of the 1970s. For the first time, books exclusively about teenagers sold very well. Some adults read them (like me because I wanted to see why kids liked them) but on the whole their audience was YAs. And then the Harry Potter books came along and middle school books were read by adults.

What makes a book YA? Simply having a protagonist that is a teen? Is the plot more simple? The writing?Go into a book store and the sheer volume of kids' book will blow you away.

I just finished THE FAULT IN THE STARS, which I liked a lot. And only in certain sections did it seem a book written for teens (mostly when they were playing computer games).

Same with THE BOOK THIEF. Megan's last several books, sometimes labeled YA, seem far too mature for teens. Although when my kids were ten or eleven, they were reading adult books. As did I in an era when there were not YA books though.

I think the truly invested teen reader will probably move onto adult books more quickly than the reluctant one.

What is your favorite YA if you have read any?And now we have a new category the new adult reader.

Theme Song: I LOVE YOU ALICE B TOKLAS

First Wednesday Book Review Club: THE HUSBAND'S SECRET, Liane Moriarity

At heart this is a domestic novel set in Australia. But Liane Moriarty was clever enough to put enough twists and turns to keep a reader who likes suspense engaged. It entwines several women and their respective families, all connected to the same school, and gives them stories rich and complex enough to allow them interact on several levels.

Of course, the very title seduces you.

One character, mother of three girls, and a woman who prides herself on being on top of things, finds a letter addressed to her from her husband with the warning it is not to be read until after his death. What she does with this letter forms the first part of the novel. But we also having a grieving mother about to lose her beloved grandchild in a move to the US,, and a marriage threatened from an odd angle.

The stories are all interesting enough to keep you turning pages in the second half of the book. And the first surprise is not the only one.

The strength of the book lay in its "what-ifs." The repercussions of human behavior, often the actions that occur without thought or notice,  is at its heart.

For more book reviews, visit Barrie Summy. 

Tuesday Night Music: April in Paris

Forgotten Movies: Pelle, the Conqueror

I have been rating movies for about twenty years. I see about 75 movies a year (at least) and in that entire time, I have only rated one as a 10. And this was the one.

Max Von Sydow plays Pelle, who with his son is forced to emigrate to Denmark after Sweden cannot sustain them. Their life is hard in Denmark. Not speaking the language is a severe deficit. As they come to speak the language, things improve for both of them.

This is certainly a movie full of heart. Directed by Billie August in 1988.

Opening Credits: Dr. Strangelove

Desert Island Package Trip

You can take a book, a movie, and the complete episodes to a TV show to your island. What do you take? (PS Would have liked to include a CD but couldn't come up with just one.)

I take The Best Short Stories of the 20th Century, edited by John Updike
The Complete MAD MEN series.
FANNY AND ALEXANDER, THE THEATRICAL VERSION

Writing: Michael Chabon on TELEGRAPH AVENUE

Saturday Night Music: Tom Jones

My review of THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL in on Crimespree Magazine.

Keynote Speaker at SLC

Megan, just after delivering the keynote address at the Southern Literary Conferencel in Oxford. Laura Lippman to her left, Tom Franklin to her right.

Friday's Forgotten Books, March 28, 2014

From the archives.

R. Narvaez was born and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His work has been published in A Thousand Faces, Indian Country Noir, Murdaland, Plots with Guns, Spinetingler, Shotgun Honey. He is President of the MWA-New York chapter.

Am Thinking of My Darling, Vincent McHugh
A virus. The City. Civic chaos. Government collapse. The stuff of zombie flicks and terrorist scenarios in 2010. But back in the ’40s, such a plot could still be light-hearted. In Vincent McHugh’s 1943 novel I Am Thinking of My Darling, a virus infects New York City—but it's a happy virus! The infected follow their bliss, feverishly losing their inhibitions (for you Trekkies, think "The Naked Time" episode). The problem is that no one wants to work. Honestly, who would?

Acting planning commissioner Jim Rowan returns home from a trip to DC to find cheerful chaos quickly spreading across town—and his actress wife Niobe missing. She’s infected and on the lam, looking to live out a succession of character roles in a kind of Method fervor. Meanwhile, in an emergency management meeting (consider what that term evokes today), the mayor announces he has the virus—and would rather play with model trains than lead the City. To avoid panic, Rowan is secretly made acting mayor.

The plots riffs genially from there, with Rowan hot on the trail of his slippery wife, cabbing from City Hall to Harlem across a Cityscape in Mardi Gras mode—all the while consulting with civil services to keep things running and with scientists to find a cure. (The fact that the virus apparently originated in the tropics, implying that people there are inhibition-less, may be another artifact of the past.) A polymath (when being a polymath was simpler), Rowan narrates in sensual, informed detail about now-bygone architectural wonders, regional accents, lab science, and jazz music.

This book, with its glad-rag view of a long-lost era, has been a favorite of mine since it was recommended to me decades ago. (I still have my first copy, bought in the now-bygone Tower Books in the Village). McHugh, a poet and a staff writer for The New Yorker in the ’30s, employs a prose style that winks slyly at Chandler and pulp. (Once Rowan is inevitably infected, he’s like Marlowe on E.) Darling also features a nice amount of sexual frankness that may surprise modern readers who forget that people in the ’40s had sex. The novel was made into the very '60s movie What's So Bad About Feeling Good?, but by then the times had already been a-changed enough that the conceit no longer had the right kind of jazz.




Sergio Angelini, THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN, Gil Brewer
Joe Barone, THINNING THE TURKEY HERD, Robert Campbell
Brian Busby. POST-WAR PULP NOVELS
Bill Crider, WRITING FOR SURVIVAL, John D. MacDonald
Martin Edwards, THE WALKING STICK, Winston Graham
Curt Evans, SCARWEATHER, Anthony Rolls
Ray Garraty, SLAYGROUND, Richard Stark
Rich Horton, STONE OF CHASTITY, Margery Sharp
Jerry House, NIGHT OF SHADOWS, Ed Gorman
Randy Johnson, TRAIL OF THE LONG RIDER, Lee Martin
George Kelley, CONAN: THE ROAD OF KINGS by Karl Edward Wagner.(Link to follow)
Margot Kinberg, BLEAK HOUSE, Charles Dickens
B.V. Lawson, MURDER AT THE FOUL LINE, ed. Otto Penzler
Evan Lewis "A Corpse in the Hand" Carroll John Daly
Steve Lewis, MURDER TO GO, Emma Lathen
Todd Mason, LIVING IN FEAR: A HISTORY OF HORROR IN THE MASS MEDIA, Les Daniels
Neer, UP AT THE VILLA, W. Somerset Maugham
J.F. Norris, DEATH GOES TO A REUNION, Kathleen Moore Knight
James Reasoner, ARCTIC WINGS, L. Ron Hubbard
Gerard Saylor, THE BOMB, Steve Sheinkin

Ron Scheer, THE HANGING TREE, Dorothy Johnson
Kevin Tipple, "Artie and the Long-Legged Woman" from THE ARTIE CRIMES, Jan Christensen

Final Scene: TOY STORY 3

Three of My Favorite TV Cops

Peter Falk as COLUMBO, Dennis Franz as Andy Sipowicz on NYPD, and Regina King as Detective Lydia Adams on SOUTHLAND.

Who are you favorites?

Theme Music: True Detective

FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE: "YOU CAN"T LEAD A MAYBE LIFE"

Tuesday Night Music: Marvin Gaye

Definitely on my top ten.

I Find This Ridiculously Funny

Rabbid Invasion: The Museum

Overlooked Movies

Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus and 2012 

This was my second road movie in the last week and a very odd one too. Michael Cera and Gabby Hoffman star in it along with three Chilean brothers (the director's brothers, in fact). It was written and directed by Sebastian Silva and concerns the trip these five take to hunt down a San Pedro Cactus, which one can make mescaline from.  They encounter significant problem in getting the cactus. They want to distill the drug and sit on the beach and enjoy the hallucinations. Simple pleasures. 

Hoffman, a hippy and rather a bossy one, is the thorne in Sera's side during the trip. The brothers, only understanding some of what she says, are more laid back about her coming along. 

What is your favorite movie about a road trip? 

Opening Credits: DIRTY HARRY

Your Favorite Opening Credits (and Music) to a TV Show

There are so many good choices. Some opening credits are strong on music, some on information, some on atmosphere. I think this one does a great job of setting the story and you can't beat the music for me.

Runner -up would be the opening credits to Mary Tyler Moore.

What do you like?

Writing Advice: Salman Rushdie

The Best War Movies

We were out with friends, great western and war movie lovers, on Saturday night and they had just watched TWELVE O"CLOCK HIGH, which they said was one of their favorite war movies.Then Bill Crider chose one for a forgotten movie this week, saying it was his favorite as a kid.

What are the best war movies ever? This can be a pretty wide-ranging question so let's say that is has to actually have battlescenes or be set in a war zone. In other words, SCHINDLER'S LIST would not qualify unless it has war scenes I don't remember.

Here are three to start it off: GO TELL THE SPARTANS, FULL METAL JACKET and MASH.

My review of ABOUT LAST NIGHT is on Crimespree Magazine. 

How About a Dance Scene: BLUE VALENTINE

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, March 21, 2014: Ed McBain Day

Ed McBain was one of the many pen names of the successful and prolific crime fiction author Evan Hunter (1926 - 2005). Born Salvatore Lambino in New York, McBain served aboard a destroyer in the US Navy during World War II and then earned a degree from Hunter College in English and Psychology. After a short stint teaching in a high school, McBain went to work for a literary agency in New York, working with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and P.G. Wodehouse all the while working on his own writing on nights and weekends. He had his first breakthrough in 1954 with the novel The Blackboard Jungle, which was published under his newly legal name Evan Hunter and based on his time teaching in the Bronx.
Perhaps his most popular work, the 87th Precinct series (released mainly under the name Ed McBain) is one of the longest running crime series ever published, debuting in 1956 with Cop Hater and featuring over fifty novels. The series is set in a fictional locale called Isola and features a wide cast of detectives including the prevalent Detective Steve Carella.
McBain was also known as a screenwriter. Most famously he adapted a short story from Daphne Du Maurier into the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). In addition to writing for the silver screen, he wrote for many television series, including Columbo and the NBC series 87th Precinct (1961-1962), based on his popular novels.
McBain was awarded the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1986 by the Mystery Writers of America and was the first American to receive the Cartier Diamond Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. He passed away in 2005 in his home in Connecticut after a battle with larynx cancer. (From his author page on Amazon)

LAST SUMMER

One of my favorites of Ed McBain's books was written under his real name Evan Hunter.LAST SUMMER is the story of three teenage friends - Sandy, David, and Peter  who are spending a summer vacation on an island. They are a little out of control, stealing beer, experimenting with the life they are headed for, running naked through the woods. Their tightness as a group, a nearly perfect thing with Sandy taking the lead in almost everything, is tested when a new girl comes on the scene. It is their last summer of innocence and Rhoda, with her neediness and nerdiness, brings out the worst in them. Sandy uses Rhoda to test her mastery of the boys. An interesting novel that made an interesting movie.

Of course the books set in the 87th Precinct made McBain an eagerly awaited author for me. I think I read almost every book in the series. I was never as attached to Matthew Hope as I was to Steve Carella. IMDB lists all of the films McBain had a hand in. His website gives a complete list of his books and it's astounding.

 EPITAPHS by Bill Pronzini 

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad series of books along with countless other mysteries, westerns, anthologies, short stores and horror novels. You can find him here. 

Epitaphs is one of my favorite Nameless novels for a number of reasons.

For one thing this is one of Pronzini's finest depictions of  Nameless' painfully complex relationship with his old partner Eberhardt. The anger, the distrust makes you feel sorry for both of them.

Then there's the even more serious problem of his friend and lover Kerry not wanting to marry him.

The novel is also a fine depiction of how Nameless' North Beach is changing and is being refurbished not only commercially but also sociologically. Proninzi writes with real power about how the Italian heritage he obviously reveres is also suffering because of the changes.

Then there's the story and it's one of Pronzini's most skillfully conceived and maneuvered. Gianna Fornessi is the name of the beautiful granddaughter who is missing. A mutual friend of Namless' asks him to help the grandfather who fears for her.

When he finds where she lives Nameless also realizes that something is wrong. She came from a humble area of North Beach but lives in a style fitting a much more moneyed life.

From this hook Pronzini takes us through enough ruses, masques, dead ends and mysterious but enigmatic clues to fill three or four average novels. And he does so with prose so evocative of both place and passion that you race to the end.

One of Bill Pronzini's finest novels and I don't have to say much more than that, do I?

Sergio Angelini, BLOOD RELATIVES, Ed McBain
and http://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/hail-to-the-chief-1973-by-ed-mcbain/
https://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/2014/03/19/bread-1974-by-ed-mcbain/ Brian Busby, CATTLE, Winifred Eaton
Bill Crider, THE BEST FROM FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, Third series, ed Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas
Martin Edwards, DOVER AND THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL, Joyce Porter
Curt Evans, PARTNERS IN CRIME, Agatha Christie
Rich Horton, THE ADVENTURER, Mika Waltari
Jerry House, THE COUNTY OF GASTON, Robert S Cope and Manly Wade Wellman
Nick Jones, Twenty Books to Remember
George Kelley, DANGER: DINOSAURS, Richard Marsten (Ed McBain)
Margot Kinberg, THE BURNING, Jane Casey
Rob Kitchin, CORRIDORS OF DEATH, Ruth Dudley Edwards; DISAPPEARED, Anthony Quinn
B.V. Lawson, NOCTURNE, Ed McBain
Evan Lewis, DANGER CIRCUS, Raoul Whitfled
Steve Lewis/William F. Deeck, SOMETHING TO HIDE, Philip MacDonald
Todd Mason, Assorted Publications
Neer, DOWNTOWN, Ed McBain
J.F. Norris, CHILL AND THE KILL, Joan Fleiming
James Reasoner, WEIRD TALES, HERBERT WEST: RE:ANIMATOR, H.P. Lovecraft
Richard Robinson, DEAD SKIP, Joe Gores
Gerard Saylor, LET HIM GO, Larry Watson
Ron Scheer, FLINT'S GIFT, Richard S. Wheeler
Michael Slind
Kevin Tipple, THE PERFECT DETECTIVE, CLark Casey
TomCat, THE BISHOP'S GAME, H.C. Bailey
Prashant Trikkanad, The Science Fiction of Evan Hunter (Ed McBain)

Last Scenes: NYPD

Opening Credits: Bonnie and Clyde

The Most Confusing Movie Ever

Most of the movies that confuse me concern either 1) money 2) spy stuff 3) high tech.

But the movie TREE OF LIFE (Terrence Malick) is an exception. It seems like a plot easily understood, but I didn't get it at all. And I have heard Sean Penn admit as much.

What movie confused you?

Tuesday Night Music; Gloria Gaynor

Forgotten TV: MEDICAL CENTER

)

Not sure why I liked this show as much as I did. 

Medical Center

September 24, 1969 - September 6, 1976 

CAST

James Daly --- Dr. Paul Lochner 
Chad Everett --- Dr. Joe Gannon 
Audrey Totter --- Nurse Wilcox 
Chris Hutson --- Nurse Courtland 
Virginia Hawkins --- Nurse Evvie Canford 
Barbara Baldavin --- Nurse Holmby 


Dr. Paul Lochner (James Daly) and Dr. Joe Gannon (Chad Everett) are surgeons at a university hospital in the Los Angeles area. Medical Center focused on their lives, and the lives of their patients whom they would treat each week. The patients were new each week leaving lots of openings for guest spots. 

Dr. Gannon was more in the Ben Casey mode than the Dr. Welby mold as far as I can remember. He was also hunkier than either of them. This was the longest running doctor show (with Welby) until  ER came along. I haven't kept up with doctor shows since the first years of ER. My very favorite was ST. ELSEWHERE though. 

Movie Themes: Schindlers List

Why Do You Stop Reading a Writer?

My grandmother with her father and two brothers at Wildwood, NJ in 1921.

Sandra Seamans spoke of this on her blog not long ago. In her case, the writer had written a story that repulsed her. And yes, this happens to me often. A writer I enjoy will turn a little too dark for me. But often, I see the books from a writer have become too predictable. Or it's that too many new writers come along and grab the spotlight. I used to read every book by Ruth Rendell, for instance, but I haven't read one now in years. I am not sure why. Sometimes it's for no good reason at all. Belonging to a book group has taken time away from personal reading for sure. And writing myself means that if a voice is too strong in a novel, I might put it aside, afraid it will affect mine.


Why so you stop reading on a once-favorite writer?

THE WRITING LIFE: Kurt Vonnegut

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Um Peixe Grande

Proud to have a story in PLAN B, Volume III along with my pal, Bonnie Lawson and some other great writers. Thanks to Darusha Wehm for her work on this zine.

Plan B Volume III

Get the third Plan B anthology for only $2.99 (USD) directly from Plan B (credit card only):
epub | mobi | pdf
If you prefer to pay with PayPal, try smashwords.
Also available on Amazon.

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Desperation is the same in any language. Madness respects no borders. Greed and revenge transcend cultural differences.
In this third collection of stories from Plan B Magazine, we find tales from all the corners of the crime world. From Cold War espionage to small town stick-ups, high-powered diplomacy to the opportunism of poverty, these are stories of the darkness of the human heart. And once in a while, how the light of our common humanity can transcend that darkness.

Table of Contents
“Sirens” by Gary Cahill
“House Cleaning” by Ian Creasey
“Murderous Lies” by Peter DiChellis
“Doing God’s Work” by Wayne Scheer
“Um Peixe Grande” by Patti Abbott
“Loveable Alan Atcliffe” by S.R. Mastrantone
“Slice” by Tom Barlow
“How Green Was My Valet” by John H. Dromey
“The Least Of These” by BV Lawson
“Miscellany”by Eryk Pruitt
“Stars & Stripes” by James Power
“Alten Kameraden” by Ed Ahern
“The Farm” by Kevin R. Doyle

Joni Mitchell; A CASE OF YOU

My review of NON-STOP is up at CRIMESPREE CINEMA
 

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, March 14, 2014

 From the archive: 

Patrick Downey is the author of Gangster City: The History of the New York Underworld 1900-1935 and Bad Seeds in the Big Apple: Bandits, Killers and Chaos in New York City 1920-1940. He is also published a book on the gangster Jack Legs Diamond. You can visit him at his blog http://deadgangster.blogspot.com

Varney, the Vampire, James Malcolm Ryner

I was a monster movie geek as a kid and I’ve always remembered an illustration from one of the books I had on the subject. It was from an old penny dreadful called Varney the Vampire or, The Feast of Blood and it showed a skeletal bloodsucker about to bite into a sleeping woman. For some reason the name always stuck with me and, if I remember correctly, the author of said monster movie book stated that the Varney story was long gone.

Fast forward about thirty years and there I am surfing around the internet and just for funnsies I type in Varney the Vampire and low and behold I’m taken to Amazon.com. Turns out Varney has been dusted off, semi-edited, and is available once again for consumption. I had to buy it.

Varney was the first popular vampire story preceding Bram Stoker’s Dracula by about fifty years. It is interesting to see what effects and doesn’t effect a vampire from 150 years ago as opposed to what Hollywood has taught us. If you can enjoy a good yarn for what it is and have fun with a melodramatic, occasionally boring, perhaps a bit clichéd (a sailor that actually says “Shiver me timbers”) story originally meant for the masses and not the literati then you may enjoy this book.

As a penny dreadful it was cranked out a few chapters every week and sold to, well, people like me. Varney’s author, James Malcolm Rymer was paid by the word when this was being published so sometimes what could be said in five words may take fifteen. Also there are times when the author pads the word count with detours. For example during a conversation one of the characters may say, “That reminds me of story.” And then he takes the next two pages to tell the story. The good news is if you aren’t interested in the side stories you can skip them as they have absolutely nothing to do with the plot.

When it was originally released as a serial Varney’s popularity was so great that it ran for about two years, hence the hefty page count. I enjoyed the book but also went in with an open mind. As I said it can be melodramatic and wordy but it is also fun. It’s a penny dreadful and I think that in itself pretty much tells you what to expect. You got your aristocratic vampire who, unlike Stoker’s vampire, is a sympathetic villain, a rich family on the skids, angry towns people and at the heart of it a mystery. I was struck by how human nature hasn’t really changed over the years. Characteristics such as greed, fear, mob mentality, lying, gossiping are all in there. I think that’s one of the reasons the story is readable, though it takes place in an English town in the early Nineteenth Century, the recognizable traits could easily place the story in a New England town in the early Twenty-first Century (that is if people in the New England town said things like, “Hilloa!”, “Ay” and “Indeed!” and maybe they do. I haven’t spent much time there.)

Part of the fun for me when reading was imagining the Londoners of 1845, when it was first printed, gathering around their lamps or candles getting their weekly dose. That’s a good way to read it. A few chapters every week like it was originally meant to be consumed. That way, if you need a break, you can take a few nights off then come back without losing anything.

The book is from Zittaw Press and is edited by Curt Herr, a professor of Gothic literature, who also wrote the introduction and notes. With Varney you really get a lot of book for your buck. In addition to The Feast of Blood, which runs about 750 pages (oversized book with small print) you also get back matter consisting of four appendixes:

1- Penny Bloods and Penny Dreadfuls, (four more short stories.)

2- Nineteenth Century Essays on the Perils of Penny Dreadfuls

3- Contemporary Scholarship on Penny Dreadfuls and Varney the Vampire

4- Woodcuts from the original printing of Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood.

A penny dreadful about a vampire, it’s pretty much worth the cover price just to say you own it.


Sergio Angelini, NOTHING IN HER WAY, Charles Williams
Bill Crider, THE ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGY, edited by John Campbell
Martin Edwards, TAKE MY LIFE, Winston Graham
Curt Evans, BEYOND THIS POINT ARE MONSTERS, Margaret Millar
Rich Horton, CAPTAIN DIEPPE, Anthony Hope
George Kelley, Three Works by Keith Roberts
Margot Kinberg, MURDER IN A COLD CLIMATE, Scott Young
B.V. Lawson, OLD SLEUTHS FREAKY FEMALE DETECTIVES
Evan Lewis, "Murder Extra" Raoul Whitfield
Steve Lewis/I J Roberts, THE MEMORY OF BLOOD, Christopher Fowler
Todd Mason, THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME, ed. Robert Silverberg
J.F. Norris, SHEET LIGHTNING, Joan Butler 
James Reasoner, PAL JOEY, John O'Hara
Ron Scheer, STONE ANGEL, Margaret Laurence
Michael Slind, CAT OF MANY TALES, Ellery Queen
Kevin Tipple/Patrick Ohl, IN THE BEST FAMILIES, Rex Stout
TomCat, TO CATCH A THIEF, Daphne Sanders
Prashant Trikannad, SORRY, WRONG DIMENSION, Ross Rocklynne
Zybahn, STONER, John Williams

Joni Mitchell-URGE FOR GOING

Jack Lemmon

Always one of my favorite actors, Lemmon sure made a lot of great films. Most were comic but he could turn out a dramatic performance like his role as the father in MISSING, or his part in THE CHINA SYNDROME too. My favorite is SOME LIKE IT HOT where he was certainly the more convincing woman as well as the deliverer of one of the greatest last lines of all time.

What is your favorite Lemmon role?

Joni Mitchell: BIG YELLOW TAXI

Joni MItchell-RIVER

First Kiss

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Neglected Movies: ANGELS' SHARE

I don't know how this 2012 Ken Loach film got by me, but I bet it got by you too. It is now streaming on Netflix though and it is terrific.. It won the Jury Prize at Cannes in fact,

A new father, with a feud wreaking havoc in his life, is assigned to a community service work detail where he meets a kind boss and some good friends. Finding a new talent, he is able to parlay that into a safe life for himself and his wife and son. It's a clever, charming little movie, set in Glasgow and Edinburgh. You will need the subtitles to get past the accent.

Joni Mitchell: BOTH SIDES NOW

Openinc Credits: Ben Casey

Montana Stories

For someone who has never lived outside a city, Montana stories have always captured my imagination. Some of my favorites include: the novels and stories of Ivan Doig,Jim Harrison, Richard Wheeler, and Larry Watson. But there are so many more. What is your favorite novel set in Montana?

Joni MItchell-HELP ME

The Writing Life: Paul Auster

Saturday Night Music: Ray LaMontagne

How About a Dance Scene: TAKE THE LEAD

My review of OMAR is up at CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE