FFB, DEATH OF A CITIZEN, Donald Hamilton

Stephen D. Rodgers (from the archives)

Donald Hamilton's DEATH OF A CITIZEN changed my life.

I was brought up to be polite and courteous, to put others first, and -- if I had nothing good to say -- to say nothing at all.

Then, as a young teen, I opened DEATH OF A CITIZEN. Read it, flipped it over, and read it again.  And again.

Matt Helm was a no-nonsense protagonist who thought for himself and did what needed to be done. If he was polite and courteous, he was polite and courteous because he'd decided to be, not because someone else how told him how to behave.

Some may say I'm splitting hairs here, but DEATH OF A CITIZEN taught me not only self-awareness but self-determination.

Sure, Helm killed people, but nobody's perfect.

No book is perfect.    DEATH OF A CITIZEN comes very close.

Take the following exchange.     Helm and his ex-lover Tina are traveling together. Teasing has lead to a game of tag, and the longer-legged Helm eventually brings her down.

"'Old,' she jeered, still lying there. 'Old and fat and slow. Helm the human vegetable. Help me up, turnip.'"

It's funny and it's fitting and it's a damn fine piece of writing. I've read the book dozens of times and still continue to be blow away by that paragraph.

As a bit of background, Tina and Helm (or Eric, as he was known at the time) worked together during the war as government assassins. He gets out once Germany is defeated, marries, and leads a normal life until Tina reappears.

Donald Hamilton delivers on multiple levels. Not only does he create entertaining plots, and write them well, he provides a rich array of three-dimensional characters.

Take, for example, what happens when Helm borrows a car, rushing home to save his daughter who's been kidnapped by Tina and her partner Frank.

"It was the ugliest damn hunk of automotive machine I'd ever had the misfortune to be associated with...

"[The gas attendant thinks differently.] 'That's quite a car you've got there. I tell you ... when they can get something real sharp made right here in America.'

"Well, it's all a matter of taste, I guess."

Helm might be his own person, but he understands and accepts that his way is not the only way. That's as rare in books as it is in real life.

One finds murder, kidnapping, and torture within DEATH OF A CITIZEN. The disembowelment of a pet cat. And yet, one finds the following passage while Helm waits for a female guest to leave Frank's hotel room.

"...the tartier the girl, strangely enough, the longer the skirt. You'd think it would be the other way around.

"This one was pretty well hobbled."

And after the woman leaves, and Helm follows Frank out of the hotel and under a nearby bridge:

"There were a couple of cars going past overhead. It was a good a time as any. I took out the gun and shot him five times in the chest."

Only later does Helm explain that Frank was too big and unimaginative to be made to talk. Killing Frank at least took him out of the equation, freeing Helm to concentrate on Tina.

"She licked her lips. 'Better men than you have tried to make me talk, Eric.'

"I said, 'This doesn't take better men, sweetheart. This takes worse men. And at the moment, with my kid in danger, I'm just about as bad as they come."

Between 1960 (DEATH OF A CITIZEN) and 1993 (THE DAMAGERS), Matt Helm appeared in 27 books. Donald Hamilton died in late 2006. He was just about as good as they came.

 

Short Story Wednesday "Leslie in Caifornia" Andre Dubus II

 

I was listening to a long interview with Andre Dubus III on Fresh Air about his new book, SUCH KINDNESS, and much of their talk was about male violence. He relayed a story about how his Dad wrote "Leslie in Califonia" after the two of them discovered his sister was being beaten by her husband. Dubus II went home and wrote this very short story and his son Dubus III was very upset with his father using that incident to create art. "How does this help?" he asked. But of course, it does because it reminds us that this is going on right down the street, right next door sometimes. When I was a kid I watched the man I babysat for throw his wife out the front door. At night, I could often hear the man in the row house next to ours repeatedly push his wife against the wall. The walls are thicker in the places I live now but this still goes on.

So of course I had to read the story or rather reread it because it is in a collection I own. In the story, a woman wakes up with her eye hurting and we learn her husband has beaten her. And like all men in this situation he promises he will never do it again, but of course, he will. And the story ends with the woman indicating she is about to leave. There is nothing new about this story but it gets right to it without telling us a word more than we need to know.

So last night I tried a new series on Prime called THE LOST FLOWERS OF ALICE HART, an Australian series starring Sigourney Weaver and guess what it's about. And this time the man beats his child and wife. Some days you can't get away from it. 

George Kelley

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House 

Tracy K 

Neer

Monday, Monday

 

I saw THEATER CAMP, which probably few of you have heard of based on the audience of six.

It was along the lines of a Christoper Guest mockumentary but less bite and more sugar. I didn't mind it, but I doubt I will remember it down the road. 

Watching JUSTIFIED: CITY PRIMEVAL, which probably will rank as one of the lesser seasons. Debating whether to watch HI-JACKED. Finished up GRANTCHESTER and is it me or was that one of the worst seasons too. They really didn't seem to know what to do with half the characters on the show. Maybe it is me. Trying SLOW HORSES again after hearing an interview with Mick Herron on the BBC.

Been rereading some of the Andre Dubus II short stories. A great writer indeed.

Trying to shake of the politics of this country and having little luck. 

What about you?

FFB: THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR, JOSEPHINE TEY

(Friday's Forgotten Books, February 25, 2011)

THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR

Although I love Tey's DAUGHTER OF TIME, in many ways, I consider this a more compelling read.

There is no murder in Tey's THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR (1948). A young girl (15) accuses two women, Marion Sharpe and her mother, Mrs. Sharpe, of kidnapping her, beating her, and holding her prisoner at their house, the Franchise. The girl gives a spot-on description of the attic in which she was supposedly imprisoned.

A lawyer, named Robert Blair, investigates the charges. He' s convinced that the girl is lying. But how to prove it given her knowledge of the house and women.

The story is based on the real life story of Elizabeth Canning, an eighteenth century girl who made a similar charge.

THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR a wonderful novel. The characters are well-developed, the story is engaging, the writing is lovely. We learn a lot about English country life in the mid- twentieth century. It was made into a movie, and twice televised for TV.

 

Short Story Wednesday-BLOOD LINES by Ruth Rendell

(from the archives: B.V. Lawson)

Rendell is an author who needs very little introduction, having created the popular Chief Inspector Reginald "Reg" Wexford series under her own name and many other books under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, as well as having been nominated numerous times for Dagger and Edgar Awards. But the very first Edgar she ever won was in 1975 for a short story, "The Fallen Curtain" from a book by the same name (she won another short-story Edgar in 1984). Since that time, she's had nine short story collections published, the latest a compilation in 2008.

One of her anthologies, Blood Lines, dates from 1995 and includes 10 shorter stories and one novella. Most of the stories are familiar Rendell territory including the villages of Kingsmarkham and Stowerton, which are the stomping grounds of Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant Mike Burden, featured in the intial story. "Blood Lines" finds Wexford and Burden solving a bludgeoning death that Wexford doggedly pursues despite the fact everyone else thinks it's a mere robbery gone bad, in the end piecing together a picture of infidelity, spousal abuse and betrayal.

"Lizzie's Lover" takes a new and literal twist on a Browning poem that comes to life; "Burning End" explores the difficult relationships between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law and what it takes to push someone over the edge; the accidental discovery of a poisonous mushroom in a garden leads to a game of culinary Russian Roulette by a mad man in a supermarket, in "Shreds and Shivers"; "Clothes" is the only story not to deal with death but rather peers inside an unusual obsession that drives a woman to emotional collapse.

The longest story, the novella "The Strawberry Tree" was one of seventeen televised feature-length adaptations of Rendell's work which aired on ITV in the UK and on some PBS stations between 1987 and 2000, under the title Ruth Rendell Mysteries, which Acorn Media just released in a DVD boxed set in March. It was apparently intended as a sketch for a Barbara Vine novel, a foreboding and atmospheric tale of lost innocence embedded in a lonely young woman's deep desire for love and friendship on the island of Majorca.

Rendell (and alter ego Vine) is known for her exploration of the darker human impulses forged out of society’s moral codes: passion, jealousy, anxiety, guilt, shame, rage are the colors she uses to paint psychological portraits as she allows the reader to delve into the minds of her characters. If you haven't read a Rendell novel, stories such as these make for a fine introduction.

 Casualdebris

George Kelley 

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House 

Todd Mason 

Steve Lewis

Monday, Monday

 

Enjoying THE MOTHER-IN-LAW although she does what so many writers of domestic novels do--she makes the young children too cute, too clever, too wordy. A small sin but it weighs on the book over a few hundred pages. Also have the first Anne Hillerman novel on tap. My book club book for September is STILL LIFE by Sarah Winman. It is long. 

I tried to rewatch THE X-FILES, but the episodes are so driven by an single idea (e.g.  a guy that can ooze through grates) that there is not much else going on except them chasing after him. Tried a British show called THE BOOK GROUP but like a lot of book groups (not mine) the idea of a book quickly gets lost. Wow, that sequel to SEX AND THE CITY is an embarrassment, especially to the actress who plays Charlotte. Was she that ditsy in the original?

PT is tiring and I keep getting caught in torrential rain going home. My knee seems much the same after four sessions. No strength for going down the stairs. And since I have none, I can't practice. I may never be able to go to New York (or any big city) again if it doesn't improve. 

My brother is off to Norway and Iceland via cruise ship. More and more a cruise makes sense especially for a non-driver. But on the other hand, I always get seasick on the water. My I am full of problems.

No new movies although I saw BARBIE twice. 

How about you?

BEACH

 "What if there's beach?!" — Ken.

FFB: BOOK GROUPS

 From 2006

Book groups-- 2006

I have belonged to a book group for about five years. We have seldom read a book without  merit. We read more fiction than non, but not exclusively. We have read poetry (1) and plays (2). We have read polemics (What Happened to Kansas) and memoirs (Personal History and Made in Detroit). My favorite book was Bel Canto (Patchett).
About 25% have been classics like Pride and Prejudice, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Madame Bovary, East of Eden.
I stay in the group most of all because I like the women. They are thoughtful, caring people. That seems like a pretty good reason.
They read Megan Abbott's book Die a Little and came to her reading.

July 2023

I have belonged to this book group for another 17 years. About 23 years in all. We read far fewer classics and far less non-fiction nowadays. It is almost the same people but two of them have Alzheimer's, one Parkinson's, and two husbands have died, one moved and does it over zoom. We all did it on zoom for more than two years but we didn't miss many meetings. Almost all of us have had a tragedy of some sort over the period. The average age is about 78. Half of us caught Covid despite all having all the vaccines. One had it twice. We have trouble choosing books often and I pick too many. We rarely read mysteries because they don't usually have enough to discuss. We borrow a lot of ideas from an adjacent group. Although we have always been troubled by the state of the world, we are more troubled now. One or two came to Megan's latest reading (Beware the Woman), ten books later. We are hanging in there but it grows harder. My favorite book in all those years are books by Ann Patchett, Sigrid Nunez, Larry Watson, William Kent Kruger, Elizabeth Strout.

NIGHT CALL AND OTHER STORIES OF SUSPENSE, Charlotte Armstrong (reviewed by Ed Gorman)

New from Crippen & Landru
 

 I first read Charlotte Armstrong after seeing a 1952 movie called "Don't Bother To Knock." The stars were Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe plays a seriously disturbed young woman asked to babysit the child of Widmark and his wife. Monroe is terrific--terrifying. Will she kill the kid?

   I'd seen the name Charlotte Armstrong on the metal paperback racks. She always seemed to have a new paperback out. And she was in Ellery Queen a lot. I tracked down Mischief which the Monroe movie was based on and became an Armstrong fan for life.

   If she was not as phantasmagoric as Dorothy B. Hughes sometimes was or as Elizabeth Sanxay Holding almost always was, Armstrong, as a critic recently noted, updated the gothic tropes of the previous generation and made of them tart and contemporary popular art.

  No critic of the time was a bigger promoter of Armstrong's work than Anthony Boucher. He noted that she was the creator of "suburban noir" and he was right.
  Though she used the tropes of what was dismissively called "women's fiction" she took them into a nether realm that was riveting and terrifying.
  Editors Rick Cypert and the late Kirby McCauley have collected here a collection of short and long stories that are a tribute to the Armstrong finesse and darkness.
  None of the pieces here have ever been collected before and there is also unpublished material.
  Everything in the book is packed with excellent storytelling but my favorite has to be the long novelette "Man in The Road") about a "career woman" (yes that was how they were divided from "real women" :) ) who returns home to a small bleak desert town only to find herself accused of a sinister mysterious hit-and-run. I'll pay this the highest compliment I can--this is the kind of twisty crime story Richard Matheson excelled at. It would have been perfect for the long form "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."
  My favorite of the shorter pieces is "The Cool Ones" which concerns the kidnapping of a grandmother and makes as contemporary a statement  as the Flower Power era she wrote it in.
  This is not only a major collection of a major writer  (thanks to Sarah Weinman for bringing so many overlooked women writers back to our attention) but is also the most beautifully jacketed and produced book Crippen & Landru has ever published.   

 George Kelley

TracyK 

Todd Mason

Monday, Monday

 

OPPENHEIMER was very good although two things distracted me. First, trying to place the myriad of actors slightly altered to look their part. Of course, I recognized Matt Damon, Robert Downey, Jr and others, but I highly recommend if you intend on seeing it to look over the cast before going. Secondly, music played behind a lot of the dialog, and it was hard to hear. Or perhaps I am just overly used to using closed captions. But its greatness still shone through--even without seeing it on an IMAX screen. 

BARBIE today.

Watching a strange but likable show called PURE on Prime. Other than that, I drift. As I also have been doing with books. I got the book mentioned on THE BEAR, which is called THE REMARKABLE POWER OF GIVING PEOPLE MORE THAN THEY EXPECT (Will Guidara) This is advice on how to create a great restaurant, which Richie on The Bear has taken to heart. This could apply to any business though-making a customer feel valued, seen appreciated. At dinner last night, I felt like giving a copy to our waitress who kept trying to clear plates off the table before we were done. And there were plenty of empty tables at 5 pm.

Also reading TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, Graham Greene. Maybe. So far I read a page and fall asleep. I bought the copy at Toadvine Books, a lovely little bookstore in Berkley, MI. They have a great collection of mysteries there. I hope people know about it.  Also great art books and children's books.

Wednesday night I went to the park concert where they played surf instrumental music for two hours. Perhaps a bit too much, but they were good.

My book group struggled with DAUGHTER OF TIME. Although strangely enough when I got my report from 23 and Me, an ancestry site, my oldest known ancestor was Richard III. Me along with millions of other people. I do know now that my birth father was a man named Jack Yarnall. Ralph Nase was a wonderful father and I am glad he never knew this. I wish I had never learned of it too.

What about you?

FFB:THE DROWNING POOL-Ross Macdonald (reviewed by Bill Crider in 2010)

Forgotten Books: THE DROWNING POOL -- Ross Macdonald

The Drowning Pool (1950) is the second novel to feature private-eye Lew Archer. I have several copies of it, but when I saw one for a buck the other day, I couldn't resist picking it up. And then I figured it might be fun to read it again. It was.

Ross Macdonald was still feeling his way with this one, so the style isn't what it would be come, but The Drowning Pool has the themes that would occupy him for the rest of his career: dysfunctional families, the sins of the fathers setting their children's teeth on edge, the changing face of California (Ross Mac saw the same sorts of things happening there that John D. Mac saw happening in Florida), the conflict of the generations, and the widening gap between the rich and poor.

Lew Archer's client is a woman who's received a blackmail letter. She doesn't want to tell Archer anything about herself or her family, but he takes the job. Working pretty much in the dark, he begins to turn up plenty of secrets that everybody would like to keep covered, secrets that lead to murder. Typically, even when Archer is supposed to be off the case, he keeps on digging. He can never let go until he finds all the answers.

Macdonald isn't as popular now as his progenitors, Hammett and Chandler. Some readers complain that the plots develop too slowly, and The Drowning Pool doesn't have a murder until more than 60 pages have gone by. Macdonald is more interested in setting up the characters than in presenting a murder on the first page. Other readers might find the book a bit dated. It's not, certainly, in its environmental concerns, though the treatment of homosexuality is a bit off-putting to modern eyes. Still, the narrative works just fine for me, pulling me a long as easily as it did the first time I read the book, nearly 50 years ago. There's even some snappy patter that Spenser would envy.

While this book isn't Macdonald's best, it's still quite good. Macdonald could plot, and he could write.

 

Short Story Wednesday-Self-Help, LORRIE MOORE

 

This was Lorrie Moore's first collection of short stories and they are terrific. The two I read were both written in the second person and read like a set of directions. "How to Become a Writer" is, I imagine, fairly autobiographical. Although the narrator is interested in writing, she is dissuaded by teachers, parents, other students who all agree she doesn't understand plot. She instead pursues child psychology. But eventually she begins to write and does what she has to do to begin her writing career. I am not sure this would appeal to readers who haven't at least tried to be a writer. But a lot felt familiar to me, especially the question, what do you write? 

The second story was told similarly (second person) but this is about a first romance. She is growing tired of her boyfriend when he develops a kidney problem that is difficult to diagnose. How long are you required to stay with someone you don't love because of an illness? Especially at age 20 or so.  

Literary stories used to be like these: easy to understand, beautifully written, about the kind of issues we faced. Or least I thought like that. 

Now many of the stories I see in THE NEW YORKER are abstract, foreign, odd stylistically. Perhaps I have just outlived stories that feel familiar. First-world stories perhaps.  

Todd Mason

Jerry House 

George Kelley 

Casual Debris

Monday, Monday

 

Enjoying DROPS OF GOD (APPLE) and JURY DUTY(PRIME). Also watching GRANTCHESTER.

 Still reading MISS ALUMINUM, (Susanna Moore) and finishing up DAUGHTER OF TIME.

Lots of rain in Michigan. Today I saw UNREST, a Swiss film set at the end of the nineteenth century. Can't say I liked it-too tedious, but it had some interesting ideas about the 20th century's dawn in terms of anarchy, communism, capitalism, feminism. All contrasted to life of the workers in a watch factory. 

I start some PT tomorrow to try and strengthen my knee. Hope it doesn't make it worse.

What about you guys? Maybe you are up to more than me. 

FFB: DAUGHTER OF TIME, Josephine Tey

 

I chose this book for my book group to read this month. I haven't read it in thirty years or more and I'd forgotten how it's slow to get going and also assumes more knowledge of British  history than I have. 

Whenever a list of the most popular mysteries is drawn up though, this finishes near the top. Megan also reminded me that Phil and I insisted she read it and she found it fairly boring. It does not have the strength of a lot of mysteries or novels that use the show don't tell device. Most of this book is Tey's detective Alan Grant solving this mystery from his sick bed. It is almost all tell. But Richard III innocence or guilt in murdering his two child nephews to win him the throne is a fascinating story. And a novel and original mystery for me. 

So did Shakespeare get it right or not. What do you think? Here's a nice piece from 2015 (after his bones were discovered in a parking lot) in the New Yorker.  They have made a movie of that called THE LOST KING.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-detective-novel-that-convinced-a-generation-richard-iii-wasnt-evil

Short Story Wednesday: My Ten Favorite Collections in 2010

Reading this 13 years later, I am surprised there is no Alice Munro collection on here and I would probably replace one of these with her work. But other than that, I stand by it.

 My Ten Favorite Collections (at least for today) Patti Abbott

Simply the Best Mysteries, edited by Janet Hutchings. This volume, put together in 1998, collected some of the best stories to win Edgar Awards that first appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. It included stories such as Patricia Highsmith’s “The Terrapin,” Stanley Ellington’s “The Blessington Method” and Philip MacDonald’s “Dream No More.” A very impressive lineup, one that makes the case for the enduring contribution EQMM made to the mystery short story.

Hard-Boiled, edited by Bill Pronzini and Jack Adrian. This collection from 1995 includes stories from the 1930s through the 1990s, giving the reader a good overview of the genre as well as introducing him/her to writers that mostly wrote novels like Chandler, Hammett and Himes. Also here are James Reasoner, Ed Gorman, James Ellroy and Lawrence Block.

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990). This is one of the finest collections of stories centering on the war in Vietnam, or any war, that I’m familiar with. The title story, which lists the items found in a soldier’s backpack is a complete knockout. I have been trying to get my book group to read this for years. Maybe someone out there will.

Too Far To Go, John Updike (1979) This is a collection of stories that Updike wrote about the Maple family, closely mirroring his own, early in his career. It traces a marriage in freefall and finally dissolved. “Giving Blood” in my very favorite, but all of them are sad, cogent, true.

Shiloh and Other Stories, Bobbie Ann Mason (1982). These are the kind of stories you sink into. She along with Carver were known for creating the Kmart school, where brand names and contemporary names are important to her sense of place and time. This either dates or makes her stories more personal, depending on your view. Most of them take place in southwestern Kentucky. She can create beauty from the speech of ordinary people.

Airships, Barry Hannah. Back in 1978 "Airships" knocked everyone out. These stories are about as noir as it gets. You never can predict where a story is going. Just try “Coming Close to Donna” some night. The people and stories in Treme came from writers like Hannah, only a state away.

Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones. This collection of stories, published in 1992, introduced Edward P. Jones to the world, and then he went away and did something more practical to support his family until he got a large award and wrote THE KNOWN WORLD. These stories are about ordinary African-Americans living in Washington D.C. Each one is a gem.

Damn Near Dead, edited by Duane Swierscynski (2006) This is one of the strongest collections of stories on a single theme I’ve ever read. I’m sure most of you have read this collection, but several stories won awards, one at least went on to become a novel which won an Edgar. And Bill Crider's story was nominated for one, too. Stuart MacBride’s humorous tale will split your sides. I swear there is not a dud in the bunch.

Self-Help, Lorrie Moore (1985). I could have chosen her other collections just as easily. Every story of Lorrie Moore’s crackles with humor, sharp observations. I chose this collection because it contains, “How to Become a Writer,” which begins with the advice: “First, try to do something, anything else….It is best if you fail at an early age. Say fourteen….Show it to your Mom…She’ll say, “How about emptying the dishwasher.” Many of her stories are written in the second person and she pulls it off. Brilliant.

The Summer Before the Summer of Love, Marly Swick (1995). Bet you never heard of this one. Swick does not shy away from sorrow, sex, strife. Simply another great female short story writer whom no one outside the rarefied air of literary journals, now disappearing, has heard of. I have shelves full of books by Antonya Nelson, Jean Thompson, Joy Williams and on and on. All good.

Todd Mason

George Kelley

TracyK 

A Hot Cup of Pleasure 

Steve Lewis 

Monday, Monday

Really enjoying THE BEAR. Episode 6 and 7 were terrific. Put a book mentioned in 7 on hold at the library-UNREASONABLE HOSPITALITY. I have seen this sort of service play out at two restaurants recently.

Also loved VORTEX (thanks, Jeff) although it looks like Netflix is going to leave it hanging. 

Saw the movie THE LESSON, which I very much liked. Richard Grant should have had better parts than he's had.

I am getting so much out of my new writing group. I was so lucky to stumble on them. An English fellow's memoir about being farmed out as a kid during the blitz brought us all to tears. I so hope he has time to finish it. He is probably 92.

Have also met a retired English Professor whose specialty is Emily Dickinson. I have always meant to read her poetry all the way though because I find her very difficult. Maybe now's the time.

Been watching movies with method acting on Criterion. I don't think I have ever seen IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT all the way though before. Really a gem. As to RACHEL, RACHEL, based on the Margaret Laurence novel A JEST OF GOD. One of my favorite writers. 

How about you guys?

FFB TICKET TO RIDE, Ed Gorman

This was the first Sam McCain book I read back in 2009 and what a pleasure it was. All of Ed Gorman's novels are a treat to read. You enter a world that is mostly filled with benevolent, well-drawn non-stereotypical characters.

And then Ed throws in the monkey wrenches that set that peaceful Iowa world on its ear. There is murder and mayhem but you are never offended. We have a gentleman here.
And then he sets things right in a humane and compelling way.

Especially fun for me were the sixties touchstones-and I really admired the way he caught it on the cusp of a new era-and captured it without overplaying its markers. Sam McCain feels young, vibrant, and on the edge of adulthood himself.

What I liked most about Ed's books is his obvious admiration and enjoyment of women. This is unusual in the books I read. His women are rarely shrews or nags or harpies. All of them seem like a romance or an adventure is just within their grasp--young and old.

My very favorite Gorman book is SLEEPING DOGS, but this is right up there. They all are.

 

Short Story Wednesday: "Girl" Jamaica Kincaid

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color
clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk bare-head in the hot
sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take
them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum
in it, because that way it won’t hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you
cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way
that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the
slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn’t speak to
wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions; don’t eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you;
but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button;
this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a
dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the
slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that
it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have
a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants;
when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat
itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole
house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too
much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to
someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for
dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a
table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence
of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut
I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own
spit; don’t squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s
flowers—you might catch something; don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not
be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this
is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to
make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to
catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t
fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a
man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad
about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move
quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to
make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all-are you really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?
!
 Seemed like a better idea to post the story than review it. What makes it interesting to me is the cultural differences. And the idea itself. What did you parents teach you to do? What did they not? We should all write a story like this.

George Kelley

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House 

Todd Mason

Monday, Monday

 Lots of clouds and rain in Michigan. I am losing the sense that it's summer. Some of it is, no doubt, due to the fires. Although I remember a cloudy summer in 1972. I had two babies and couldn't seem to get a nice day to push them in their stroller. 

Saw NO HARD FEELINGS, which I liked more than expected. Jennifer Lawrence brings a lot of charm to her role and the actor who plays the teenager was great too. Dragged three women to see SPIDERMAN and I might be shot. Although the animation and art was good, the moral was good, the wit was good, it was still a kids' movie and waaay too long. And I forgot to warn them there was a "to be continued" at the end. 

Went to Megan's book signing in Northville, which seemed successful. She is good at it by now and the crowd was enthusiastic even if the B & N didn't seem very experienced at such an event. Too bad the Agnews could not have run things. (The Agnews ran Aunt Agatha's for years)

Watching THE BEAR (A+), SILO, HIJACK, ENDEAVOR. Finished JOE PICKETT, which I liked best as a family drama. Half the scenes were filmed so darkly, I couldn't make them out though. Is that intentional or do I need to adjust. I think I have raised this issue before,

Reading THE SOUVENIR (Patricia Carlon) and DAUGHTER OF TIME (Tey).

What about you?

FFB: VANISHED, Mary McGarry Morris

VANISHED, Mary McGarry Morris

I don't know if anyone saw this book as crime fiction 25 years ago. It's certainly noir and straight out of the Woodrell/Jim Thompson universe. It was nominated for the National Book Award.
 

A laborer is lured into helping an attractive woman he sees on the road. He deserts his family and embarks on an odyssey with Dotty, who is a femme fatale of the highest order. She has kidnapped a baby and the three cobble out a life on the road over the course of the next five years. 

Their fate is further complicated when they run into an ex-con and his family, who come up with the idea of demanding ransom. This is one dark, often heart-breaking tale, and amazingly Morris' first novel. Highly recommended. Her other novels aren't bad either

BARNES AND NOBLE-Northville

 Megan had a great event and sold out the books ordered for it. Great questions from the audience too.Thanks to all who attended.

Short Story Wednesday: PLAYING GAMES, edited by Lawrence Block"THE PUZZLE MASTER, David Morrell

 I have read two stories from this collection. The first by S.A Cosby made use of the game of checkers. It was a fine story, well written, but pretty predictable. "The Puzzle Master" was not really a crime story but was clever. A couple were doing a jigsaw puzzle given to them by a neighbor and found clues in the puzzles left by the puzzle creator. I learned a lot about jigsaw puzzles and was treated to a clever story.  Any more information would ruin it. 

George Kelley

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Todd Mason

Monday, Monday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThY-n1IxOww 

Every June the Detroit area hosts the Great Lake Chamber Music Festival where for two-three weeks, concert halls, churches, synagogues the DIA and other venues have gorgeous music. We saw the Emerson Quartet perform pieces by Brahms and Mendelsohn and the final piece above. This is their final tour after 40 years of performing. They played at Kirk of the Hills the night we saw them. 

Another friend and I saw ASTEROID CITY by Wes Anderson, which we both pretty much hated. Such warm colors for such a cold story-if you can even call it a story. It's more a concept than a plot. I have seen every Anderson movie and liked none of them. Yet I always expect to. 

Reading this and that. About to dig into DAUGHTER OF TIME for my book group. It was my suggestion. I hope they like it. 

Watching JOE PICKETT (Boy, I like his family and their story is the better part of it), THE BEAR, looks to be great again,  ENDEAVOR, love the characters and tolerate the plots. Tried SEX AND THE CITY, but boy, just a large group of people running around in their underwear. Wasn't it better than this thirty years ago.  

Why am I paying $15 a month for Netflix and finding nothing to watch on it. 

Waiting for Megan to arrive for a one-day visit on Wednesday to do a book talk in the Detroit area and then in Petoskey. 

How about you guys?

FFB: DECOY, Cleve F. Adams

DECOY by Cleve F. Adams (reviewed by Evan Lewis in 2010)

Decoy, published in 1941, is the third book in the Rex McBride series, and also Cleve F. Adams’ third novel. I reviewed the first two, Sabotage and And Sudden Death in earlier Forgotten Books posts, and invite you to take a look.

Decoy picks up shortly after the events in And Sudden Death, in which McBride foiled a pre-war plot by Japanese agents. Rex is throwing an extravagant party at a fancy hotel to spend some of dough he made on the previous job. That’s when his usual employers, the execs of an insurance company, come begging him to take on a new case.

Three commercial airliners have crashed (one burning with all passengers) and the insurance companies are taking it in the shorts. When a fourth plane vanishes completely, they come begging McBride to save them. McBride tells them to go to hell until he learns that another insurance investigator - a man he likes - has also gone missing. His takes the case to find out what happened to his friend.

Rex McBride is never quite comfortable in his skin. He wear expensive clothes and drinks good liquor (or any other kind), but never forgets his roots. He came from the gutter, and is more at home with cab drivers, bellhops, barflies and petty grifters than with folks in his own income bracket. He has nothing but contempt for the insurance execs and captains of industry who employ him. They're phonies who pretend to have clean hands, but hire McBride to do their dirty work for them.

A stock element of Adams’ books is a temporary sidekick/drinking partner for the hero. In this one, that role goes to a down-on-his-luck pilot who’s lost his license to fly. He helps McBride in some tasks, but more often just helps him get into trouble. Every Adams novel also features at least one deadly dame who tries to cozy up to the detective, usually for nefarious purposes. Somehow, the hero’s inamorata (in McBride’s case that’s Miss Kay Ford, secretary to an insurance exec) always manages to walk in on one of the cozier moments and get her nose out of joint.

This evil babe factor was all the excuse a British publisher needed to issue a 1956 reprint under the title Decoy Doll. In the U.S., the 1944 Books Inc hardcover reprint isn't too hard to come by, but as far as I know the only paperback edition was an early Handi-books abridgment. Too bad. This is a good read. Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe a youngster named James M. Reasoner, from a 1982 issue of The Not So Private Eye:

 

Adams' distinct prose style is tough to describe, but I find it infectious. It's what keeps me coming back for more. If you haven't tried him, click HERE for a complete 1938 novelette from Detective Fiction Weekly called "Jigsaw."

 

Short Story Wednesday: KISS ME IN THE CORAL LOUNGE, Helen Ellis

 

Although this is billed at a collection of essays, I thought it read equally well as a very humorous collection of stories about Helen Ellis and her husband. This is Ellis's fourth collection. Lex and Helen seem ideally suited to each other and, in fact, one chapter spells out the things they enjoy sharing (making paper valentines) and the things they don't. WE ARE NOT THE KIND OF COUPLE THAT....goes hiking, for instance. 

The coral lounge refers to the second bedroom in their apartment, which they have painted coral (they are child-free) and use it as a place they can privately relax together. These stories take the couple through the Covid years, which they seemed to have survived mentally better than most. Helen can toss out one joke and riff on it endlessly, like in the chapter on snoring or the ones on their cats. Highly recommended for those needing a laugh.

Kevin Tipple

Jerry House 

George Kelley 

Todd Mason

Monday, Monday

 

Well we did NOT go to the thousand dollar a plate dinner at the DSO but we did hear Michael Feinstein and Jean Yves Thibaudet play with the DSO orchestra. Quite a thrilling concert of mostly Gershwin. We walked the red carpet, but were dressed normally unlike the many dressed to the nines people we mingled with. We did not realize the evening was about more than Gershwin so we got to sit through a lot of tributes to donors.

I also went to the Flag Day concert at the local park. I am not much of a fan of patriotic music played by amateur musicians but hey, it's free and I will do almost anything to get out of my apartment. Some of my friends find this puzzling. But they are people with a husband or wife, who have lived in the same house for 50 years, and have a yard to get out  to. What is there to do in a apartment for 18 hours a day? You have to love to clean or watch TV or read. I can do any of those activities for two hours a piece a day but that leaves me with 12 hours.

The Indy 500 that runs beneath my window grows more and more onerous as many cars now have both noise and lighting effects that strobe my walls and shake my glassware. Thousands of my neighbors take lawn chairs and coolers down below on Woodward Avenue to watch these cars drive back and forth from 7pm-11pm on weekend nights. And I count TH through SUN as the weekend. It is still two months to the official Dream Cruise. Will I survive?

Reading the delightful book of essays by Helen Ellis KISS ME IN THE CORAL LOUNGE. Will talk about it more on Wednesday. 

Watching Joe Pickett, which I like mostly although I don't find his case riveting. It is he and his family that steal the show. And I am very worried about his daughters. PLATONIC on Apple -which is so-so at best. Started Endeavour on PBS.

Hope you all had Happy Father's Days.

How about you? Is your 'hood driving you crazy?

FFB: THE WHISPERING WALL, Patricia Carlon

                                       THE WHISPERING WALL, Patricia Carlon

Patricia Carlon's THE WHISPERING WALL tells the story of a wealthy, paralyzed, bed-ridden woman who, thanks to a vent in the wall, overhears murderous conversations. The Phippses plan to murder singer, Roderick Palmer.  A niece discovers  Sarah can blink in response to questions.  But the Phippses realize Sarah has overheard their plot and determine to kill her, too. With enormous effort, using letter games and Scrabble, Sarah attempts to warn Roderick in the only way she can.

Carlon proved herself to be a first class suspense writer with this novel. Carlon is Australian and wrote most of her books in the sixties. Occasionally I run across one, although less and less over time.Carlon was deaf from age 11 onward and kept out of the public eye her whole life. This may also explain why so many of her books used disabilities of some type as a feature.

Here is an interesting article about her. 

 

Short Story Wednesday

 

George Kelley

Kevin Tipple 

Jerry House 

TracyK

Todd Mason

Monday, Monday

Hopefully it will rain today. It's been a long time. There is so much campground terrain in Michigan to worry about with careless campers. And the fact that it is so much windier than it used to be here aggravates it. 

Just discovered JOE PICKETT (from the C.J. Box books) on Paramount. Only have watched one and it doesn't seem up to the caliber of LONGMIRE, but not bad. Also watching MUSTER DOGS on Netflix. It's about the training of these dogs in Australia. Don't ask. I have formed a late-life attachment to other people's dogs. A four- part true crime series called BURDEN OF PROOF on Max was good. I am done with PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR although there are two more seasons that ran in the UK I am hoping for. Also finished TOP CHEF, which was a disappointment. I only watched it because I am paying for Peacock.  The cooking is at such a haute cuisine level now and looks much the same from chef to chef.

Reading FLY GIRL by Ann Hood (memoir). Maybe. I don't finish about 2/3 of the books I start so I am not sure I will find the life of a (at the time) stewardess interesting even though I have enjoyed Hood's fiction. 

Nice to see Megan's book recommended on the TODAY SHOW. 

What are you guys up to?