How I Came to Write This Story: PONGO'S LUCKY DAY (PLAN-B MAGAZINE) Craig Faustus Buck

PLAN-MAGAZINE is currently pursuing funding for their zine through a indigogo kickstarter program, which you can find right here. The $3000 they are attempting to raise would allow them to broaden their publications in some important ways.To that end some of PLAN-B's writers have written about a story that appeared in Plan-B Magazine.

How I Came to Write Pongo's Lucky Day

This is a cautionary tale for writers about why it's never a good idea to get your news from online sources. Due to geographic happenstance, the L.A. Times is my daily newspaper.  I stress the "paper" part of the word over the "news" part because if I were to read the online version, I never would have stumbled on the two-inch item, buried deep in the back of the metro section, that would become Pongo's Lucky Day. These tiny bits of newspaper filler don't make it into online newspaper editions because online papers have no need to fill up a physical page.  And that is the cautionary part of this tale: consume your news from paper media or you'll miss juicy story ideas.

This particular item was about a man who'd gone to an ATM that spewed out more than $30,000 in cash. By the time the police caught up with him, he'd visited three casinos and gambled it all away.

I took the ATM-gone-wild part of the item and paired it with a not-too-bright 24-year-old ski bum named  Pongo Smith, who'd come to an Indian casino/ski resort for a snowboard competition. I'm not the outlining type, so I put Pongo in front of the ATM and let him run with it.

For a noir writer like me this is a pretty lighthearted tale, despite some sex and bloodshed, and luckily it hit just right tone for Darusha Wehm at Plan-B Magazine, one of the few outlets out there that actually pays its writers. She published it last September.

I'm was very pleased because it was one of my first published short stories. I'm currently up for an Anthony Award for another story called Dead End, winners to be announced at the Bouchercon annual world mystery convention on November 15, and I have another story called Honeymoon Sweet in the Bouchercon Anthology to be released at the convention. Both of these stories are based on tiny back-page items.

Anthony Award Nominated short story "Dead End"the prequel to Psycho Logic, a novella 

   

     

Go Down Hard (Brash Books, May 2015)

A dark romp through the worlds of aging rock-and-rollers, live Internet sex shows, abusive psychiatrists, Slavic mobsters, child molesters, emotional betrayal, deceit, arson, murder and estate planning. 

BIO:

Craig Faustus Buck is an L.A.-based writer.  Among his six nonfiction books, two were #1 NYT bestsellers.  He wrote an Oscar-nominated short film.  He was one of the writers on the seminal miniseries V: The Final Battle.  His first noir mystery novel, Go Down Hard, will be published by Brash Books on May 5, 2015 and was First Runner Up for Killer Nashville's Claymore Award.  His  indie feature film, Smuggling for Gandhi, is in preproduction.  

Linda Ronstadt Week

Hazel Boswell's illustrations

I am going to link first here to Brian Busby's blog where you can find out more about Hazel Boswell, the Canadian woman who wrote and illustrated TOWN HOUSE, COUNTRY HOUSE and LEGENDS OF QUEBEC.

I had never heard of Ms. Boswell when I came across these pictures, signed and titled on on the matting, which you cannot see here. They were cut from her book.
There were 40 or 50 at them at a rather amazing estate sale we went to on Saturday. We were drawn to them immediately but it took us a while to realize they were from Quebec City where we just had been. It was only the picture of the Chateau Frontenac  that finally tipped us off.

We went home with 3 of them at $3 each. And then began to look into Boswell and came up with Brian Busby's piece on her on his blog from four years ago. We headed back to the sale after reading about her, determined to grab a few more.

A man was standing at the table with the remaining prints in his hands.Would he buy the 15? After losing his bid to get a good price for the 15, he took ten and we grabbed the last five.

My attic is filled with artwork. None of it valuable but all things that spoke to me. And these charming pictures spoke to me. Framing eight of them will cost a small fortune and since they are valueless, it probably isn't worth it. But I love them and am glad to have spend only $24 on something I like so much. Hazel Boswell wrote and illustrated two books--one of growing up in Montreal, the other on Montreal folk tales.

Other than books, what do you spend money on? What do you collect--or your spouse?

Linda Ronstadt Week

Forgotten Movies: THE SNOW GOOSE

Watching CALL THE MIDWIVES for the first tine, it took me a few minute to remember Jenny Agutter, who plays a nun, in her youth. She is incandescent in the series and so she was forty years ago.

• A 1971 BBC TV film version of "The Snow Goose" directed by Patrick Garland, from a screenplay by Gallico, featured Richard Harris and Jenny Agutter. It won a Golden Globe for Best Movie made for TV and was nominated for both a BAFTA and an Emmy, with Jenny Agutter winning for Outstanding Supporting Actress,^[3] and was shown in the US as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

It was, of course, on HALLMARK that I saw it. When you look at the list of movies or series they put out in the past, it is remarkable. Nowadays they seem to rely on romances. 

THE SNOW GOOSE was a story, based on a folk tale, written by Paul Gallico and published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1940. It won the O'Henry Award that year. 

Linda Ronstadt Week

Books About...

I love nonfiction books that talk about my favorite subjects: books, movies, tv. The three here are three of my favorites. What books have you enjoyed about your favorite subjects.

Linda Ronstadt Week

MUSIC FROM 1964-MY GUY

1964: THE KINKS

MUSIC FROM 1964: DANCING IN THE STREETS

Check out my review of THE TRIP TO ITALY on CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE. 

Friday's Forgotten Books, September 19, 2014

Boston Noir. edited by Dennis Lehane, 2009

Rather than trying to talk about the entire collection, let me mentiont three of the stories I liked most.

Animal Shelter by Lehane, is the original source fot the current movie THE DROP. In this story, a bartender at a drop bar in Dorchester comes across an abused dog left in a trash can. This leads him to Nadia, who lives close by. They form an attachment brought about by caring for the dog. Also in the action is Marv, Bob's boss at the bar, a man yearning to move up in the organization now run by Chechens, and Nadia's former boyfriend, a crazed sociopath. This is a terrific story and I think I prefer it to the script Lehane produced for the movie. It is lean and beautifully told. A gem

Oddly enough The Reward, by Stewart O'Nan also concerns an abandoned dog. In this case, a young woman, barely surviving on her salary as a taxi driver, hopes her rescue of the dog will reap her a reward. She is also in care of and bullied by her father. O'Nan is not a crime writer and in this one noir is more implied that explained. A very fine story though.

Lastly Femme Sole by Dana Cameron concerns the attempts of a woman to hold onto the bar in Boston's north end that her father has willed her. She runs up against a bunch of tough men, not least of them her abusive husband. She outfoxes them. Until...

I have read at or read entirely a lot of this series. Because they attempt to include local writers, some of the stories are by people who really don't have much experience writing short stories. Or local celebrities that may help sell copies. This means their quality varies considerably. This seemed like one of the better collections.  Patti Abbott

Sergio Angelini, SHOOTING STAR, Robert Bloch
Joe Barone, SHELTER, Harlan Coben
Brian Busby, A Look at FFB from our Canadian contributor
Casual Debris, THE UNDERPAINTER, Jane Urquhart
Bill Crider, NIGHTMARES AND GEEZENSTACKS, Fredric Brown
Martin Edwards, MURDER IN KENSINGTON COURT, Phillip MacDonald
Curt Evans, DOUBLE, DOUBLE,TOIL AND TROUBLE, Emma Lathen
Ed Gorman, SUSPENSE PATROL, Philip Macdonald
Rich Horton, TIME AND THE GODS, Lord Dunsany
Jerry House, THREE PHANTOM BOOKS
Randy Johnson, FEATURING THE SAINT, Leslie Charteris
Nick Jones, THE BLUNDERER, Patricia Highsmith
George Kelley, SMOKE AND MIRRORS, Neil Gaiman
Margot Kinberg, A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE, Malla Nunn
B.V. Lawson, THE OXFORD BOOK OF AMERICAN DETECTIVE STORIES, ed. Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert
Evan Lewis, THE PROUD RIDERS, Brian Wynne (Garfield)
Steve Lewis, DARK PLANET, John Rackam
Heath Lowrance, Four Elmore Leonard Westerns
Todd Mason, Some Suspense-Fiction Anthologies and Fantasy Fiction: Beyond and Alongside Tolkien: Among His PeerNeer, THE HAND IN THE DARK, Arthur J. Rees
J.F. Norris, ACT OF FEAR, Michael Collins
James Reasoner, THE CRIMES OF JORDAN WISE, Bill Pronzini
Richard Robinson, STAKEOUT ON PAGE STREET, Joe Gores
Gerard Saylor, I, SNIPER Stephen Hunter, CRASHED, Timothy Hallinan
Ron Scheer, BRONCO BILLY AND THE SCHOOL MISTRESS, G.M Anderson; THE PORTABLE WESTERN READER, William Kittredge
Kevin Tipple, A VAMPIRE NAMED FRED, Bill Crider
TracyK, THE WINE OF ANGELS, Phil Rickman

MUSIC FROM 1964: WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO

1964 TV

1964 was far from a golden age in television. In fact, many of the shows premiering that year seemed sillier than what came before or after with GOMER PYLE, THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, THE MUNSTERS, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, MR. MAGOO, FLIPPER, and GILLIGAN'S ISLAND.These sound like kid's shows, but were not.We who lived through this era may have some fondness for these shows, but I doubt any else would.

But there were a few shows that bore watching for me: THE AVENGERS, THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, THE M,A.N FROM U.N.C.L.E, THE SAINT, THE FUGITIVE, and perhaps PEYTON PLACE as the first try at a multi-night soap.

Middling show for me included MY THREE SONS and BEN CASEY. And a couple good westerns still saddled up: BONANZA and GUNSMOKE.

Was it the death of a President that made us so sensitive to anything more demanding? Did we need foolishness to get past it?

U.S. TV attempted to produce a version of the satirical British show THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS in 1964, but Americans were in no mood to watch political satire. In a few years, the war in Vietnam probably changed that.

The Top Ten for the year were: BONANZA, BEWITCHED, GOMER PYLE, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, THE FUGITIVE,  THE RED SKELTON SHOW, THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, THE LUCY SHOW, PEYTON PLACE, COMBAT.

Any of these resonate for you guys?
 

Music from 1964: EVERYBODY LOVES SOMEBODY

CONCRETE ANGEL

        

Here it is. Thanks to Jason Pinter at Polis Books for making this happen and for working with me on such a gorgeous book jacket. Hope my words can live up to this cover. And thanks to those who weighed in on my choice. 

Music from 1964-Oh, Pretty Woman

1964: Movies: THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY

It's easy to see why the sixties is not regarded as a great era for U.S. films if you look at this list.
Some of the more notable US films that year were DR. STRANGELOVE, BECKETT, THE KILLERS, A SHOT IN THE DARK, A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, THE PINK PANTHER, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, MARNIE, MY FAIR LADY, THE PAWN BROKER and SEND ME NO FLOWERS.

One of my favorites, and I saw it again a few weeks ago and perhaps mentioned it, was THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY with James Garner, Julie Andrews , James Coburn and and an amazing Melvyn Douglas, Billed as a comedy, it's actually a very dark film. Garner is having an easy time of it caring for the needs of top brass in Europe just before the landing at Normandy. A pretty cushy assignment until a few things change the game. Highly recommended.

What is your favorite movie from 1964? Click the link above if you don't remember the year's films.

Music from 1964: I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND

1964: Books

It is 1964 here this week to celebrate my trip next week to DC to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the class that graduated the year before me. (It is more a reunion of the cheerleaders for me). I attended a very small school in Wyncote, PA and my graduating class was 21. The class of 1964 was 14.

So I have been thinking of that year and what was going on. I am starting with the books that graced the NYT Bestseller list of that week. Only one way to gauge what people were reading, I know, but a handy one.

Four books especially the first, dominated the best seller list in 1964. THE SPY was the biggest seller of the year.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, John LeCarre
THE GROUP, Mary McCarthy
HERZOG, Saul Bellow
THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN, Louis Auchinclos

I was a big fan of all four of these writers but may have not read these books until later.
Some of the other dominant books that year were: THIS ROUGH MAGIC (Mary Stewart), THE HAT ON THE BED (John O'Hara), CANDY (Terry Southern) ARMAGEDDON, Leon Uris, several books by Ian Flemming, THE MAN, Irving Wallace, JULIAN, Gore Vidal.

John Updike won the National Book Award for THE CENTAUR. 

Many of the non-fiction books dealt with the recent Kennedy assassination.

Some of the crime fiction that debuted that year included: A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY, Agatha Christie, THE DEEP BLUE GOODBYE, John D. MacDonald, POP 1280, Jim Thompson, FROM DOON WITH DEATH, Ruth Rendell, THE PERFECT MURDER, H.R. Keating

The Edgar went to  Eric Ambler for THE LIGHT OF DAY. 

Did you read any of these before or later?

My Special History with Rock and Roll -25 song meme

 

New Hope, PA 1966

My list is limited to songs in the sixties. Before that I only listened to my parents' sort of music.
In 1970, I had a child and my relationship with music became much more distant. I felt like I needed to leave rock behind and go forth to classical and jazz.

In the sixties, music was very important to me. As I looked through the list of songs from the years that I was 12 to 22, I realized I could sing many of them--maybe even half. I also realized that the songs I liked most often had a memory attached to it. So here they are and with some I have added a memory. I see they are mostly the music a young girl would choose. Not songs I might choose today.

If I misidentify a year, it doesn't really matter.

1) Gigi, Lerner and Lowe, well this is a year or two earlier than 1960, but my grandfather gave me my first turntable and this is the album he gave me to go with it. I definitely can sing every song on this album as well as songs all of the fantastic musicals from this era.

2) The Twist, Chubby Checker-This was the first dance that came along that I worked hard to master. We had dancing in our middle school at lunchtime and I really wanted to do it well. I practiced every day after school at my friend, Karen's house. We put on American Bandstand and danced the afternoon away.


3) The Theme from the Apartment, Ferrante and Teicher-The movie was important to me--giving me an insight into adult life before I was ready for it but yearned to know.. And with horrible misperceptions because I really never understood what was going on it that apartment. And the music was gorgeous.

4) Runaway, Dell Shannon.

5) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, Shirelles. I literally could put all of their songs on here. I think they spoke to young teenage girls better than anyone in the early sixties.

6) Runaround Sue, Dion. At our church on Sunday nights, we had an activity called Luther League where for some reason they allowed us to dance and flirt with each other.  I remember this song playing often.

7) Sheila, Tommy Roe, In the summer of 1962, I walked up on the boardwalk at Ocean City, alone for the first time, (visiting a friend whose father owned a bakery in OC, NJ. ) and this song was blasting from a pizza joint named Bob's.

8) Sherry Baby, Four Seasons-same as above. It takes me back to that summer when I poured a bottle of bleach on my hair, sat on the beach, and became a blonde until I went home and my mother had it dyed black within hours.

9) Where Have All the Flowers Gone-Kingston Trio-same summer (maybe Megan is right about being 14 your whole life) We went down to the beach one night and a group of strange people are strumming guitars and singing this song. I decide immediately to become a beatnik.

10) Be My Baby-Ronettes- I fell in love with a boy named Jerry the next year. This was "our" song. Or at least I thought so. We had a tumultuous romance because he found it very hard not to spend all of his spare time drinking and stealing cars with his male friends. It ended when my parents enrolled me in a private Christian school.

11) One Fine Day, Chiffons, (see above)

12) I Want to Hold Your Hand/She Loves You (or any Beatles' song) We are out in our new gold Chevy when my brother and I hear this. Lightening Strikes.

13) Where Did Our Love Go, Supremes. I have a summer job in New Hope, waitressing. This song wafted down the street every day of that summer. I am an adult. HA!

14) The House of the Rising Sun, Animals. Not sure I knew what the House was!

15) Louie, Louie, The Kingsmen

15) I Can't Get No Satisfaction-Rolling Stones. I meet Phil. This song and My Man by Barbra Streisand remind me of the summer of 1965.

16) Positively Fourth Street, Bob Dylan. It could have been many early Dylan songs but I remember howling this one with four friends, driving home from college in Massachusetts.

17) California Dreaming, The Mamas and the Papas. Love the harmony. Love Mama Cass.

18) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, Dusty Springfield. another song to fall in love to

19) Light My Fire, The Doors. The sixties are now in full bloom

20) Different Drum, Linda Ronstadt, (The Stone Ponies) what a powerful voice

21) Respect, Aretha Franklin. What a powerful statement

22) White Rabbit-Jefferson Airplane but really Grace Slick. So surreal

23) Hey Jude, Beatles. I remember them singing this on THE SMOTHER BROTHERS. It seems like they sang it for fifteen minutes.

24) Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, The Fifth Dimension- HAIR-finally a musical for young people.

25) Bad Moon Rising, Credence Clearwater-Love that pulsating beat.

So this is my list.

Lucy Wainwright Roche

Calvary on Crimespree Magazine

My review of CALVARY, which I enjoyed immensely.

Loudon and Martha

Friday's Forgotten Books, September 12, 2014

 Be back after two today to add any new links in.


Timothy Hallinan is the Edgar- and Macavity-nominated author of the Poke Rafferty Bangkok Thrillers and the Junior Bender Mysteries. 

Gitana, Dominic Martell

Gitana is the third and final book in an unhappily short series (the others are Lying Crying Dying and The Republic of Night) by Dominic Martell. The hero, Pasqual Rose, lives a life on the margins in Barcelona, working at a small bar in a dicey neighborhood. This isn't the Barcelona of Gaudi or even Woody Allen, it's a much tougher town, populated by Gypsies, skinheads, and the occasional slumming tourist, a maze of ancient alleyways, dark enough to cloak the worst of misdeeds.

Pascual is shielding an enormous secret: a more than a decade ago, as a young, impressionable man, he fell in with the Palestinian cause and committed acts of terror in its name before he recoiled from what he'd become and fled into hiding. He's ridden with guilt and hopelessly seeking some kind of absolution—but he's still got the reflexes and instincts developed by years spent looking over his shoulder. When an American man comes into the bar and calls him by name, alarms go off in Pascual's head; and when the American is murdered shortly afterward, Pascual knows that someone or something is sniffing him out.

And then there's Sara, who sings in the bar where Pasqual works, and whom he's fallen in love with, and there's Serrano, the cop who knows part of Pasqual's story, and there's Campos, the journalist who may know nearly all of it and wants to write a book. And back behind all of it, cranking on clockwork Pascual can only guess at, is someone who wants him dead and who doesn't care about collateral damage. And there's also the secret in Sara's past, that Pascual can't even guess at.

Gitana is beautifully plotted and written. Martell obviously knows Barcelona inside out, because I've rarely read a book with a stronger and more persuasive sense of place. The triumph of the book for me, though, is characterization—there isn't a character in the book, who doesn't leap off the page, who doesn't seem to possess a genuine subconscious. I read the book for the skill with which it's written and the spell of the setting, but I loved it because of the people in its pages, Dominic Martell, who also writes crackerjack Chicago thrillers as Sam Reaves, is (I think) a criminally underrated writer, and I'm delighted to see the Pascual trilogy gradually becoming available in ebook form.

Sergio Angelini, SLEEP WITH SLANDER, Dolores Hitchens
Joe Barone, CURSED TO DEATH, Bill Crider
Brian Busby, FASTING FRIAR, Edward McCourt
Bill Crider, AUSTRALIAN VINTAGE PAPERBACK GUIDE. Graeme Flanagan
Martin Edwards, THE SHORTEST WAY TO HADES, Sarah Caudwell
Curt Evans, DON'T LOOK NOW, Daphne DuMaurier
Rich Horton, THE MAN FROM SCOTLAND YARD, David Frome
Randy Johnson, THE TINSELTOWN MURDERS, John Blumenthal
Nick Jones, A SPACE ODYSSEY, Arthur C. Clarke
George Kelley, TARZAN: THE LOST ADVENTURE, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Joe E. Lansdale
Margot Kinberg, DEAD SIMPLE, Peter James
Rob Kitchin, SALTY, Mark Haskell Smith
B.V. Lawson, THE NIGHT THE GODS SMILED, Eric Wright
Evan Lewis, RIDDLE IN THE RAIN, Robert Leslie Bellem
Steve Lewis/Marvin Lachman, THE ROAD TO GANDOLFO, Robert Ludlum
J.F. Norris, THE DEADLY CLIMATE, Ursula Curtiss
James Reasoner, BLACK HORIZON, Robert Masello
Kevin Tipple.Patrick Ohl, THE TOLL HOUSE MURDER, Anthony Wynne
TomCat, THE BALCONY, Dorothy Cameron Disney
TracyK, SEASON OF DARKNESS, Maureen Jennings; THE MOVING TARGET, Ross Macdonald
Zybahn, INSOMNIA, Stephen King

Kate, Anna and Rufus

Rufus

THE ENORMOUS RADIO

Yesterday I was listening to the THE NEW YORKER podcast where this story was recently read by Nathan Englander, which brought home several things I have been thinking about. My history with radio--which I think Kent brought up a few weeks ago. What is my (your) history with radio?

First of all, I would never sit down as the woman in this story does and just listen to a Mozart piece on the radio. If music is playing, I am reading. Always. In fact, I could enjoy live concerts more if I could read while watching them.

What I listen to most on the radio now is NPR. Or some sort of informational show. Even back in the day, when we first moved to Detroit in 1970, I listened to the talk shows on at that time. I carried the radio with me from room to room as I cleaned my house in the morning. There were not usually political shows but more focused on what was going in in many areas. WJR was a great radio station then-with the Tiger games, Karl Haas, and a  lot of other guys whose names I barely remember now. When WJR turned to broadcasters like Dr. Laura, and those even more crazy, I turned WJR off for good. Have never gone back to it either.

There are a couple classical/jazz stations we sometimes listen to in the car, but generally we don't listen to music on the radio. We are more likely to find something on the computer. Or play CDs.

As a kid in Philly, I listened to music on the radio all the time. They played the music I wanted to hear then. Maybe it was WFIL, I can no longer remember. I am pretty sure it was an AM station though. I don't know if I knew about FM or if it was around for pop music.

I don't remember the era when the radio played dramas and comedies but I bet I would have loved it.

What about you? What is your history with radio?

Anna and Kate

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Ernest Lubitsch made TROUBLE IN PARADISE in 1932 and it's nearly impossible to over-emphasize what a great movie this is. There is not a hair nor a line of out place. Marcel waves-- that's the word for the thirties hair styles, I think. I saw this on a big screen a couple of years ago.
What a treat.

Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins play two jewel thieves who chance on each other in Venice and are delighted at their shared profession. They are proud of it and their pride in being the best at their craft elevates everything that comes along.

Down the road they come upon Kay Francis, the heiress to a purse company. The two join forces to swindle her but trouble in paradise ensues.

This is so witty, charming, clever, and fun, I can't think where Hollywood has gone so wrong in 80 years. Lubitsch was able to take the tricks he learned in advancing a story in the silent days with the ability to now include banter, wit and sophistication. This is a pre-code film and that makes it even better.

I know we have actors good enough to bring this off today because none of these actors are anything special. I know we have writers who could do justice to a film like this. So I have to say that it's Hollywood itself that settles too easily now for teen romances that don't have a witty line or a clever plot to offer. Such a shame.

See this if you can. Lovely. And on a big screen it holds my interest so much more than on the small one.

Todd Mason will have more links later this morning.

Loudon Wainwright

Travel through Cinema

Saw the new movie from the people who made THE TRIP  (THE TRIP TO ITALY)yesterday and Italy never looks lovelier except perhaps in ROOM WITH A VIEW where Florence blew us away. What is your favorite movie about travel?

How About Some Wainwright/McGarrigle Music?

Here is Martha singing her mother's gorgeous song.

Should you worry when your daughter becomes a gin connoisseur?

 http://online.wsj.com/articles/novelist-megan-abbott-on-langleys-no-8-gin-1409934811

Friday's Forgotten Books, September 5, 2014

I will be gone after 9:30 until 4. Will add latecomers then. 

IN COUNTRY (1985) followed Bobbie Ann Mason's amazing story collection SHILOH AND OTHER STORIES. It is one of the novels I still can remember today, practically in its entirety. That is rare for me. Sam Hughes is a young girl living in western Kentucky. Her father never came home from Vietnam and that loss has haunted her family ever since. Those left behind feel both guilty and punished. Sam thinks of all the events her father has missed: the walk on the moon, Watergate...
The book looks at their small town life in great detail and it also details their pilgrimage to DC to visit the War Memorial. Mason is so adept at capturing every nuance of a place and her characters. When I visited the War Memorial, it was with this novel under my belt. I felt like I was looking for Sam's father's name as well of ones of my own.
One of the great novels about war. Those left behind have their own hard stories to tell.


Sergio Angelini, EDWIN OF THE IRON SHOES, Marcia Muller
Yvette Banek, Doctors and Nurses in fiction of the past
Joe Barone, NIBBLED TO DEATH BY DUCKS, Robert Campbell
Brian Busby, IRON GATES, Margaret Millar
Bill Crider, THE JDM REVIEW
Martin Edwards, THUS WAS ADONIS MURDERED, Sarah Caudwell
Curt Evans, THE MAN FROM THE RIVER, GDH and Margaret Cole
Rich Horton, YOU KNOW ME, AL, Ring Lardner
Jerry House, SCIENCE FICTION THROUGH THE AGES, I O. Evans
Randy Johnson, FAT OLLIE'S BOOK, Ed McBain
George Kelley, THE VERY BEST OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, VOl 2: Gordon Van Gelder
Margot Kinberg, A HANK OF HAIR, Charlotte Jay
Rob Kitchin, BAD PENNY BLUES, Cathi Unsworth
B.V. Lawson, TROUBLEMAKER, Joseph Hansen
Evan Lewis, DEATH AT SEA, Richard Sale
Steve Lewis/Marvin Lachman, THE DAVIDSON CASE, John Rhode
Todd Mason, The Anthologies of Kirby McCauley
James Reasoner, BOOMER, Clay Randall
Richard Robinson, ROCKET TO THE MORGUE, Anthony Boucher
Gerard Saylor, SO LONG AS YOU BOTH SHALL LIVE. Ed. McBain; DRAMA CITY, George Pelecanos
Ron Scheer, OTHER MEN'S HORSES, Elmer Kelton
Kevin Tipple/Patrick Ohl, THE RELIGIOUS BODY, Catherine Aird
TomCat, EDWIN OF THE IRON SHOES, Marcia Muller
TracyK, THE DAVIDIAN REPORT, Dorothy B. Hughes; EPITAPH FOR A SPY, Eric Ambler
Prashant Trikannad, THE DARK SIDE OF THE ISLAND, Jack Higgins

Movies About the Music Business

And there are so many. I saw FRANK yesterday, which didn't work for me. But early this summer a couple did. Perhaps one of my favorite movies about the music industry is ALMOST FAMOUS.  What are some other good ones?

First Wednesday Book Review Club

BIG LITTLE LIES is set in an Australian suburb and focuses on three women, all of whom have children at the same preschool and secrets of their own. Throughout the course of the novel each one's strengths and weaknesses impact the others. One's married to a businessman so wealthy she can write checks without concern--they have a handsome set of twins but perhaps there is a chink in their marriage. Another is a super mom who can’t prevent her teenage daughter from wanting to live with the Dad who deserted them and remarried a younger woman. How irksome this must be. The third is a single mother with challenges of her own.Her child has reached the age when questions will be asked.

It is the possible actions of her young son that sparks the narrative.

It is hard to convey why Moriarty's book keep you reading because in many ways they are middlebrow domestic novels and she deals in the same types from book to book. But she is able to infuse each of her novels with secrets, lies, and a page-turning style. The book grows dark so don't confuse it with some of the lighter fare written for women.There are several gut-wrenching story lines in here.

If I were to be critical, I think Morarty's books are too long and she is too comfortable with writing endlessly about comfortable upper middle-class women. Paring down some of the repetitive banter and coincidences would strengthen it for me. But a lot of people love a book you can sink in to and she understands this very well. I put down a lot of books for various reasons, but I finish hers.

For more book reviews, go to Barrie Summy's place. 

THE SAVAGES and Philip Seymour Hoffman

During my terrible, horrible cold last week, I watched seven or eight movies, on Netflix mostly. I watched MANHATTAN, great first montage and great last scene. HANNAH, geez Michael Caine stole the movie, the three Linklater movies with Hawke and Delphy--I liked the last one least, THE WORLD'S GREATEST DAD,  really spooky on so many levels, and ThE SAVAGES, one of my favorite PSH performances.

THE SAVAGES is the story of how a brother and sister cope with their father's final days in a nursing home.

The amazing thing about his performance in this film is how generous it is. In so many scenes, he does nothing to divert you from listening to Laura Linney, who has the splashier, needier role. (And Philip Bosco is also great).

In one scene where she storms into her father's nursing care room and blathers on about this and that, PSH just sits by the bed, paging through a newspaper and occasionally nodding.  He creates the role of the more passive brother and never breaks with that.

But he was great in every performance I ever saw him in including two plays TRUE WEST and DEATH OF A SALESMAN.

I think THE SAVAGES is my favorite performance.

But looking at the list on IMDB, there never was a bad one. What's your pick?