THE SUMMING UP, Friday, April 9, 2010

For a list of all the books recommended here, go to Friday's Forgotten Books.




The Summing Up, Friday, April 9, 2010

Paul Bishop, The Man from the Diogenes Club, Kim Newman
Bill Crider, Death of a Citizen, Donald Hamilton
Mike Dennis, Shoot, Douglas Fairbairn
Martin Edwards, Verdict of 13, Julian Symons
Ed Gorman, The Fog, James Herbert
Randy Johnson, Two-Gun Rio Kid, Don Davis (Davis Dresser)
George Kelley, The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr)
Rob Kitchin, Motor City Blues, Loren Estleman
Evan Lewis, Killer's Caress, Cary Moran
Steve Lewis/William Deeck, Doors to Death, Lee Crosby
Todd Mason, The Book of Lists: Horror, Wallace, Howison and Bradley
Eric Peterson, Video Trash and Treasures, L.A. Morse
James Reasoner, One by One, Fan Nichols
Rick Robinson, Dead Folks' Blues, Steven Womack
Kerrie Smith, The Murders of Richard III, Elizabeth Peters
Hannah Stoneham, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, Barbara Comyns
Kevin Tipple, Dead Head, Dr. Allen Wyler

Friday's Forgotten Books, April 9, 2010

Happy Birthday, Josh. You are the greatest!









Hannah Stoneham is a book worm, aspirational writer and occassional cook. She lives in France and keeps a record of her reading at www.hannahstoneham.blogspot.com.

Forgotten Book Friday:

WHO WAS CHANGED AND WHO WAS DEAD, Barbara Comyns

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead is the story of a family, a household and a village in a time of flood, plague and savagery. The year is 1914 and the family is that of widower Ebin Willoweed. Ebin is the lethargic home tutor to his three motherless children – Emma, Dennis and Hattie. He is also the dependent and resentful son of the rich forbidding matriarch – Grandmother Willoweed. Grandmother Willoweed is an old tyrant with a forked tongue who refuses to step upon land that she does not own. The wider household includes their tender maids – the sisters Norah and Eunice – and their gardener – the frank speaking, keeper of traditions – Old Ives. Beyond the gates of their manorial home sits a community wider still; the doctor, the baker, the farmer, the miller, the rector, the idiot; their wives, their lovers, their children. As the novel opens the river has burst its banks and flooded the house and the village. Ducks swim through windows and Ebin rows his daughters around the garden in a small boat. Everything is displaced. But soon it will be worse – for plague follows flood and madness follows hard behind. Who will be changed by it, and who will be dead?

The tone of this tale is surreal and slightly magical – but it is not meaninglessly strange. Rather – bizarre happenings and peculiar interludes are used to illustrate themes that are close to us all. Barbara Comyns explores snobbery and insecurity alongside kindness and understanding. She explores the casual cruelties of family life, the odd traps of domesticity, the secrets and lies that lurk in every household. She shows how people can become displaced – by their own attitudes and the mentalities of others. The characters that she creates are powerful because they are candid. Although the moral compass is stronger in some than it is in others, everyone in this stricken village has more than one side – there are no pantomime villains or heroes beyond reproach. Barbara Comyns builds a topsy-turvy world and uses it to illustrate a landscape of great familiarity.

This is not a story without horror. Indeed, the grotesque descriptions of the damage caused by the flood led to the book being banned in Ireland when it was published in 1954. Barbara Comyns was not a user of the euphemism. She wrote frankly and unapologetically. But if a history of censorship suggests to you that this book might be gratuitously unpleasant – then her history of censorship has done Barbara Comyns wrong. In Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead there is an overwhelming feeling for the profound and confusing oddness of everyday life. The true horrors of the novel are the ease with which people will turn to violence – the speed with which they will lose compassion – the comfort which they will take from prejudice. Alongside this disturbing narrative – there are also the unexpected new beginnings that emerge from chaos – the happier, surer future beyond the disaster. This is a lyrical and humane book which ought not to be forgotten.

Simon at Stuck-in-a-book and Verity at Verity’s Virago Venture have also enjoyed Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. The book is available quite cheaply on Amazon.

Ed Gorman is the author of TICKET TO RIDE, THE MIDNIGHT ROOM and many other fine books. You can find him here

The Fog, James Herbert

Just after Stephen King created the horror industry back in the Seventies U.S. publishers began importing British writers who walked the same streets as the master. One of those was Brit superstar James Herbert. While he never quite found the audience he deserved over here, a number of his novels have stayed with me long after the more successful imports have faded completely from my memory.

My favorite Herbert is titled The Fog and it continues the long and heralded tradition of the British disaster novel. Sometimes the disaster is an alien invasion as with H.G. Wells and sometimes the disaster is unworldly seeming yet of our world as with the great John Wyndham.

In Herbert's novel a yellow fog begins moving across England causing much of the population to go insane and begin committing atrocities on family, friends and anyone else they can get their hands on. Even animals go insane; pets become killers. A group of scientists in a bunker race to learn why one of them is immune to the effects fog.

What raises this story to the level of a classic is not just the shock effects--Herbert can jolt the most jaded of readers--but the portraits he draws of his people. He cuts across all ages and all classes. Unlike most Big Bestsellers he makes us care about them and in so doing he gives the reader the race-against-the-clock story with the scientists and the anxiety of seeing real people face their fates.

Centipede Press has just issued a collector's edition of the novel complete with a beautiful cover homage to the U.S. paperback edition and a long, fine introduction by horror legend Ramsey Campbell.

Thought it's a lengthy novel, I read this new edition in two sittings. It's a thriller that truly belongs on the same shelf as H.G. Wells, the early catastrophe novels of J.G. Ballard and the classic work of the late John Wyndham.

Paul Bishop
Bill Crider
Mike Dennis
Martin Edwards
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Rob Kitchin
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/William F. Deeck
Todd Mason
Eric Peterson
James Reasoner
Rick Robinson
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple

NEEDLE-fresh off the press

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/needle---spring-2010-issue-1/10263719

Can't wait to read the first issue.

Embalmed TBR pile

TBR Pile





Tell me the truth. Is mine the only TBR pile growing mold? Do you ever whittle yours down? Mine seems to have taken on the veneer of an artifact. When I choose the next book, it is seldom from this pile. The new man in town always looks better.
Does your suffer the same fate? Is it part of your decor by now. How long have you had the oldest book in your pile?

Ten years minimum.

Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris

Check out more First Wednesday Books right here.

Some of the comments are not showing up. Sorry.


PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF A NEW HOLLYWOOD (Mark Harris) examined the five pictures nominated that year, the history of their production, the directors, actors and producers involved in the film, and the politics of the country and Hollywood at the time. Some of these movies were developed quickly and others, like Bonnie and Clyde took years to work their way onto the screen and the history of each is fascinating.

What made the five pictures especially interesting was how they harkened back to traditional Hollywood films from an earlier period with Doctor Doolittle and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (despite its interracial theme, it is in every way standard treatment of such, and stars two Hollywood stalwarts), looked forward to the seventies with The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, and marked time with In the Heat of the Night. Harris meticulously recounts each film’s history and how it reflected the ambivalence of Hollywood and America in the mid-sixties. The Vietnam War was in high gear and Americans are undecided on where their values and priorities lay. Having been there, I cannot describe how shocking the violence in Bonnie and Clyde was at the time. But also thrilling. And a romance between a twenty year old man and a forty year old woman was also a surprise in The Graduate. (Even if a mere five years or so separated the actors).

Especially interesting is the story of Sidney Portier, starring in two of the five films, Harris recounts his disgust over being repeatedly hired to play a black man that a white audience would not fell threatened by. He never was allowed to play a person of nuance—much less an out and out villain. Because of this, his performances seem more tepid than they might have had he been allowed to play a real person.

Of course, the film to triumph in 1967 was the one in the middle: In the Heat of the Night. I leave you to decide if that was the best choice.

This was a fascinating account I highly recommend for those who follow movie history.

(This first appeared on the website Crimespree Cinema).

Blogging is such a weird and wonderful thing.

Not my blog, yours.

I have become very involved in your life: the death of your mother, the illness of your aunt, the tornado that hit your house, the closing of the facility where your father (with Alzheimer's lived), the new kitten/dog you found on the road, your recipe for short ribs, the music you listen to, the movie you hated, the book you wrote, the award you won. The good, the bad, the prosaic. YOU.

And sometimes I talk about you to my husband--as if you really exist. Existed in the world I physically inhabit. He thinks I'm crazy some days. Have you added to the people in your life because of the Internet? Is this a good thing? Should I worry about your dog eating lilies, your bookstore closing down, your kid throwing tantrums, your ailing hip, the length of time it takes you to rise from a chair?

What do you think about this new community you live in. Is it real for you--or just me?

Re: How We Choose Which Crime/Westerns/Science Fiction to Read

I am always amazed at the number of books unfamiliar to me that get reviewed on Friday's Forgotten Books. Oh, yes that's the point of it, but still....

Where were these books when I began reading crime fiction? I started reading it at the end of the sixties as a teenager, and despite reading two or so crime fiction novels a week, I've never read most of the ones mentioned here.

What I read was entirely influenced by what my local libraries bought until fairly recently. I couldn't afford to buy books-first my husband was a student, then we had two children on his small salary. So I read what my librarians bought-which were not Gold Medal crime books-or anything released in paperback at all. They also steered clear of noirish books. Mainstream mysteries.

So while most of the FFB reviewers were reading writers who often show up on Fridays, I was reading another group entirely. What my local library bought formed my reading tastes. What formed yours? What drew you to the first books you read?

LA TIMES MAGAZINE NOIR ISSUE

Check out the LA TIME MAGAZINE noir issue. Right here.

You'll love the book covers, discussions, and femme fatales,

And Happy Easter and Happy Passover everyone!

THE LITTLE STRANGER

Some of my writing group reading THE LINEUP.









I first read THE LITTLE STRANGER (Sarah Waters) last year and was both enthralled but somewhat mystified by its ending. I wonder if anyone stopping by here has read it. I began following comments on it, right here. My guess is there are discussions in other places as well.

This is one of the gifts of the Internet. That you can find people who've read the same book you have and get their take on it. After some thought, I believe I understand the ending. But lots of the commenters on here saw it differently.

Most books are not as ambiguous as THE LITTLE STRANGER. Or are there ones you found enigmatic? What book's ending puzzled you?

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, April 2, 2010

Greer Garson reading Alice.

Check out THE ART OF THE STEAL at Crimespree Cinema. I would love to hear what you think.









THE SUMMING UP, FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2010

Patti Abbott, Nor Live So Long, Sara Woods
Elspeth Antonelli, Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
Paul Bishop, The Falcon Strikes, Mark Ramsay
David Cranmer, The Illustrations of Frederic Remmington
Bill Crider, The Wave Hangs Dark, Alan Dipper
Martin Edwards, Deadlier Than the Male, Jessica Mann
Ed Gorman, Sleep with Slander, Dolores Hitchens
Randy Johnson, The Dawn Riders, Frank Gruber
George Kelley, The Bowstring Murders, Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr)
Chris La Tray, Boxing Stories, Robert E. Howard
B.V. Lawson, The Long Shadow, Celia Fremlin
Evan Lewis, The Mouse in the Mountain, Norbert Davis
Steve Lewis/David Vineyard, Bride of the Killer Diller, Paul Savoy
Todd Mason, The Masses: Echoes of Revolt, 1911-1917, ed. William O'Neill; The Smart Set
A History and Anthology, edited Carl Dolmetsch
Eric Peterson, Texas Wind, James Reasoner
Richard Prosch, A Rider of the High Mesa, Ernest Haycox
James Reasoner, Mum's the Word for Murder, Brett Haliday
Rick Robinson, The Deryne Archives, Katherine Kurtz
Kerrie Smith, Gold Mine, Wilbur Smith
David Thayer, Train, Pete Dexter

Friday's Forgotten Books, April 2, 2010

Friday's Forgotten Books was nominated for a Special Service Award at Spinetingler's annual love fest. I am honored for all of us to be noticed because it is quite a list of contributors over two years.

If you care to vote for us, go here and do it. There are other wonderful websites honored too.

Congratulations to all of the worthy nominees.





Don't forget. Last Friday in April-Forgotten Story Collections. Also, May 14, 21, 28, George Kelley will be hosting this baby. His link is below.


Elspeth Antonelli is the author of 12 murder mystery games (available through www.host-party.com) and 2 mystery scripts that have been performed world-wide. She is currently finishing a "Claudio Rossi" mystery novel entitled "Spy My Shadow" which will be the first of several books taking place in England or Guernsey between 1935 and 1945.

THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, Josephine Tey

THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, Josephine Tey’s 1951 classic detective novel with a twist, was the first book I read that argued what I was learning in history classes wasn’t necessarily true.

Like most students, I only knew of Richard III as he was portrayed in Shakespeare’s play. He was the ultimate villain. Evil personified. Then, getting interested in Tudor history, I picked up this book and everything changed.

Alan Grant (Tey’s detective who also appears in five other novels) has been injured and is forced to stay in hospital for an extended time. To help pass the dragging hours, one of his friends brings him a collection of postcards of historical figures - each one a player in a historical mystery. Grant becomes fascinated with a portrait of Richard III and from his hospital bed (and with the help of a new American friend) finds a solution to the case of the Princes in the Tower.

Grant’s conclusion is Richard III was a victim of Tudor propaganda. The evidence for this ranges from no contemporary accusations of the crime were ever made, to Richard’s continuing friendship with the boys’ mother to the lack of political advantage. Grant believes the face behind the murder to be Henry VII.

This book is a fascinating study of two characters - one alive in the present and one in the past - and Tey’s gifted writing turns a history lesson into a whodunit.

This was the first time I had read a book that was a perfect example of the axiom “History is written by the winners’. If you have read it before, read it again. If you’ve never read it, pick it up. There’s a reason the Mystery Writers Association of America included it in their list of Top 100 Classic Mysteries.


Patti Abbott blogs about forgotten books every Friday


NOR LIVE SO LONG, Sara Woods

Anthony Maitland and his wife, Jenny, are on holiday in a Yorkshire village, Three young women have been strangled. Anthony comes to the rescue. His wife's nephew, Stephen, is the solicitor for a friend, Peter Dutton, the main suspect in the strangling. The locals think otherwise, having chosen their own suspect. Anthony comes to the rescue.



Having read this over twenty years ago, I have little memory of it. But I read most of Sara Wood;s output and always got what I expected.

Lana Hutton Bowen-Judd was a British mystery writer, better known under her pseudonym Sara Woods, but using also the pen names of Anne Burton, Mary Challis, and Margaret Leek.

During the Second World War, she worked in a bank and as a solicitor's clerk in London, where she gained much of the information later used in her novels. Lana married Anthony George Bowen-Judd on April 25, 1946, and they ran a pig breeding farm between 1948 and 1954. In 1957 they moved to Nova Scotia where she worked as a college registrar until 1964.

In 1961 she wrote her first novel, Bloody Instructions, introducing the hero of forty-nine of her mysteries, Anthony Maitland, an English barrister. (This is from Wikipedia.)

I chose this particular book because it was the last of hers I read, and I read it in 1986. Sara Woods' books were more or less courtroom dramas. Almost every book featured a trial. Anthony Maitland's wife and uncle figured heavily in the stories. I think I read most of them. It amazes me that a writer of this number of book could be so utterly forgotten today.

This according to reviewer Alan Paul Curtis on Whodunnit, , "Sara Woods had a rather rigid method used in her novels: There were always two parts – the first where the crime (or crimes) were committed and some research was accomplished, then the last section which always dealt with the trial itself. Ms. Woods may have been imitating the stories of Perry Mason here – or perhaps it was the other way around – but nonetheless, she achieves an interesting formula and a captivating tale. Perhaps one of the reasons Ms. Woods wasn't the recipient of any major awards that we're aware of is the fact that her books lack the intricate plots such authors usually employ. Whatever the reason, it's not enough to disregard her efforts, and all her books are entertaining, with the offer of a bracing, uncomplicated plot." Anyone else remember Sara Woods?


Ed Gorman is the author of Ticket to Ride and numerous other novels and collections You can find him here.

Sleep With Slander by Dolores Hitchens

For most of her long modestly successful career Dolores Hitchens wrote the kind of books that won her steady library and paperback reprint sales but never the kind of acclaim that made her notable to mainstream readers.

She wrote cozies as well as a variety of stand alone mystery novels that were always good and every once in awhile excellent. Then in 1960 she wrote one of her two private eye novels, Sleep with Slander and to me it was and remains a remarkable piece of work.

Not being a mystery historian, my impression of female written p.i. novels of the Thirties and Forties and Fifties was that many of them were pastiches. There was a lot of winking going on between writer and reader as “gals” walked the mean streets. There were a number of exceptions, Leigh Brackett’s work being one example, but I don’t think any woman before Hitchens demonstrated that the feminine sensibility could take the form in a different and exciting new direction.

Private Investigator Jim Sader is well into middle-age, divorced and coping with his confusion and loneliness not with a bottle or a broad but with the kind of quiet and considered life many middle-aged people, especially of that era (the novel was published in 1959) resigned themselves to.

The other character in the book is Long Beach. The place descriptions—and we travel from the upper class to underclass—become inextricably bound up with the people who live in a given place.

Sader specializes in finding missing persons and it is on such a journey that he finds himself involved in a crime that back then gave some librarians pause. That’s all I’ll say about the plot. But it’s the mood and the psychology that gives the story its brooding life. Every once in a while writers, good and bad alike, write above their usual level of talent and skill. If it happens only once or twice it’s probably luck; if it happens consistently it’s a kind of genius (or some damned GOOD luck).

Hitchens was never this good again but Sleep With Slander has obstinately kept her name known to a small cult of fans for more than five decades. This is a book you should read if you like mystery novels. Or even if you don’t like p.i. novels. Dolores Hitchens made the form all her own.

As Bill Pronzini said in 1001 Midnights, "the best hardboiled private eye novel written by a woman--and one of the best written by anybody."

Paul Bishop
David Cranmer
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Chris La Tray
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/David Vineyard
Todd Mason
Eric Peterson
Richard Prosch
James Reasoner
Rick Robinson
Kerrie Smith
David Thayer

Spring Flash Fiction Challenge: Sweet Dreams

Maybe I'm an April Fool and there have been too many of these challenges going around lately, but I feel like writing this story-or having you write it better than I can. It's been rolling around in my head for days.



It begins in a food/drink establishment of some sort. The radio/juke box/band is playing "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics. A red-headed woman in an electric blue dress comes through the door. And then what?

The story doesn't have to center on these elements. I'm just giving you the initial setting.

You can take it from there.

Stories under 1000 wrds. End date: May 1. If you don't have a blog, Mystery Dawg will post it on Powder Burn Flash. Please advise if you're in. It's only fun if we have at least ten writers. Let's see how much interest there is before we fire the gun.

Please notify me or Gerald So if you can make the time to play. Here's the tune for inspiration.

Friday's Forgotten Books

was nominated for a Special Service Award at Spinetingler's annual love fest.

If you care to vote for the people who participate in Friday's Forgotten Books-people like Bill Crider--who has written a review every Friday for two years, go here and do it. Regardless, I am honored for all of us to be noticed. Two years worth of books now. I hope a few of them have found new readers.

P.S. Last I checked, the voting mechanism was down, but you have a month to vote. There are lots of other categories to consider. Congratulations to all the nominees.

The entire two years worth of choices are here.

Music

Amy Tan reading.


This may sound sexist, and I guess it is, but I am going to make a blanket statement (and please tell me I am wrong) that men feel more passionately about music than women. At least adult men do. Adult women seem to find new passions--at least from what I see around me.

Looking at Scott Parker's Forgotten Music-or the pieces Jed Ayres is running. It's the men who write rhapsodically about music.

It's the men who seem to find a personal meaning in a song. Or in the music itself-the actual notes on the score. I have heard men in person, not just online, talk about concerts, CDs, and groups with as much passion as women speak of Jane Austen or The September Issue of Vogue. Do you think this is true? Or am I living in my own little vacuum?

Growing up when I did the most important things about music were the words-or whether you could dance to it. Somehow I missed loving guitar riffs and such.

Spring Issue of Mysterical-E is Up

with my story "Escapes." As well as ones from Mike Dennis, B.J. Bourg and a host of other writers. Stop by.

George's Meme: The Ten Books That Most Influenced Me

You can find George's choices here. The idea was not to think about it too much. And I didn't. Plus I wrote this list at four in the morning when I couldn't sleep-- so it may be spacey. And, as George said, it might be a different list next week.

The Bible-I've probably read most of the Bible. I spent most of my childhood in church, went to a Christian high school and college. It certainly has had a huge impact on my thinking. It's history, it's poetry, it's a plan for living.

The Diary of Anne Frank-I read this obsessively as a child. It led me to read every book about Nazis and the war and the Holocaust, I could find. I will never forget how finding out Anne's fate at the end of her diary made me feel at age 10. I will never forget how visiting their hidden rooms in Amsterdam made me feel at age 50.

Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis. This book stands in for all the books I read in my teen years and early twenties, books that were written by muckraking writers-Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Theodore Dreiser and so many more. I think they formed my world view as much as the first two on the list. A shame that no one reads them now.

The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald-I fell in love with Zelda and Scott as a teenager. Read all his books and stories, biographies about each of them, her stab at a novel. All of it. But this was his masterwork and arguably American's masterwork.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. I've read this book many times and am always charmed by both this book and her other five. I know many men don't get it. They think it's about tea parties and balls (Or at least my husband does). But it captures a strata of society as well as work by Dickens or any other writer.

The True Believer, Eric Hoffer-I don't know how or why I read this book, but it made a tremendous impression on me and explained many of the things I wondered about after reading a work like Anne Frank's diary. It deals with the nature and dangers of fanaticism.
I don't know how it's regarded today, but it immediately jumped to mind (at four o'clock).

The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan. A Bible of another kind. Also Our Bodies, Ourselves. Someone actually was talking about female frustrations, aspirations, bodies, orgasms, aging, disenfranchisement, roles.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath. Another obsession. Her poetry especially the poems in Ariel and this novel blew me away. Words could be scorching and beautiful at the same time.

Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead. I know she's not considered to be as brilliant as she once was, and that she manipulated her studies and her subjects possibly. But the idea of studying the way people live-finding the patterns in it, amazed me. Also books by Colin Turnbull such as The Forest People and The Mountain People.

Die A Little, Megan Abbott. This knocked me out for reasons you all understand.

What books have most influenced you?

Here's Fleur's list.
Rick's list.
Alan's list.
R.T's list.
James Reasoner's list.
Randy Johnson's list.
Evan Lewis' list.
Cap'n Bob Napier's list
Scott Parker's list.
K.A. Laity's list.

Phil Abbott's list
The Liberal Tradition in America, Louis Hartz
Rabbit Run, John Updike
Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good, Bertrand de Jouvenal
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche
The Mountain People, Colin Turnbull
The Nick Adams Stories, Ernest Hemingway
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John LeCarre
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
American Pastoral, Philip Roth

Jeff Meyerson's list

1. The Hardy Boys — Rick has already mentioned this, I believe, but it’s the first time I got interested in a series, in collecting, in reading books in order (not that it mattered).

2. Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo. Our library used to have “summer loans” so you could take out books for 2-3 months if you were going away. I picked this. “I am Edmond Dantes!” This got me interested for teh first time in injustice, and payback, and the bad guys getting what they deserve.

3. Douglass Wallop, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant. You may recognize it as its adaptation as Damn Yankees. My mother subscribed to Readers Digest Condensed Books and I picked this off the shelf to read. It also made me want to read unabridged versions.

4. (General) Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. First time I can remember reading a book after seeing a movie, a practice that continues to this day.

5. Osa Johnson, I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin & Osa Johnson. Another summer read, this exciting story of the Kansas-born husband & wife adventurers was pretty exciting to a kid in Brooklyn.

6. Richard Wright, Black Boy. One of the few books we had to read in school that has really stayed with me for over 40 years. Really vivid writing, a tale of incredible abuse and perseverance.

7. James Clavell, Shogun. I’d read and loved his earlier Tai-Pan but this one just blew me away.

8. Vincent Bugliosi, Helter Skelter. I can still remember reading this late at night in 1975 after my wife was asleep and it scaring the crap out of me.

9. Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song. This introduced me to a world I never knew. A brilliant job by Mailer.

10. Jack Finney, Time and Again. The first – and one of the best – of many time travel books I’ve read. Yes, if given the chance I’d do it.

Turn It Off for Earth Hour

Hat tip to Fleur for reminding us.

Turn your lights off at 8:30 tonight to celebrate Earth Hour. You can do it. Even the Eiffel Tower is doing it.

Think of all the story ideas that an hour of darkness might generate.

LET IT RIDE

I made a deal with myself not to review current crime fiction on this blog very often. It's hard not to become a publicist if you do because could I really say anything unfavorable about books by people I know online? People I admire, even love, from afar. And if it's only going to be good stuff, what's the point?

But it's damn hard for writers to get any attention now that print media is dying so from time to time, I like to mention a book.

Because I had a wee bit of involvement with LET IT RIDE (it features a Detroit resident and the story begins on the bridge to Windsor, Ontario) and saw it first in ms. I wanted to mention it. LET IT RIDE.

I think John McFetridge is a great writer, amazingly proficient in a number of tasks. And this is a book that lets him display his wide-ranging talents amply. I wish I could juggle POVs, sub-plots, settings, voices as he does so nimbly here. Toronto never seemed more real, or more scary, than it does in LET IT RIDE. That's John's gift as a writer, making every scene, every character, sparkle.

CRIMEFACTORY 2

My story is definitely an anomaly in here, but the big boys let me play anyway. Check out the amazingly big and beautiful second issue with stories and features by some of your favorite writers. And give Keith Rawson, Cam and Liam a hand for producing two of these babies in three months.

You can find it here.

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, March 26, 2010

Zadie Smith reading.

Hat tip to Rittster.

Died. John McPartland, 47, husky, bushy-haired chronicler of suburban sex foibles (No Down Payment), successful freelance journalist; of a heart attack; in Monterey, Calif. McPartland, who once wrote, "Sex is the great game itself." lived as harum-scarum a life as any of his characters, had a legal wife and son at Mill Valley, Calif., a mistress at Monterey who bore him five children and who, as Mrs. Eleanor McPartland, was named the city's 1956 "Mother of the Year." Later, McPartland's legal widow submitted the daughter of an unnamed third woman as one of the novelist's rightful heirs.

The Summing Up, Friday, March 26, 2010

Miachael Atkinson, The Great Zapruder Hoax, James Fetzel
Paul Bishop, Billingsgate Shoal, Rich Bayer
Bill Crider, The Venetian Blonde, A.S. Fleischman
Martin Edwards, The Lawyer's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Dan Fleming, The Texas Bank Robbing Company, Giles Tipette
Ed Gorman, The Last Night, John McPartland
Naomi Johnson, A Parade of Cock-eyed Creatures, George Baxt
Randy Johnson, Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, Fritz Leiber
George Kelley, The Crooked Hinge, John Dickson Carr
B.V. Lawson, A Private Inquiry, Jessica Mann
Evan Lewis, And Suddenly Death, Cleve F. Adams
Dennis McGough, Cold Comfort, Don Bredes; Before She Does, Steven F. Havill
Eric Peterson, Detroit P.D. series, Tom Logan
Bill Prozini/Steve Lewis, Trans-Siberian Express, Warren Adler
James Reasoner, Island of Kings, Blaine Stevens (Harry Whittington)
Rick Robinson, Death at Hallows End, Leo Bruce
Pete Rozovsky, The Papers of Tony Veitch, William McIlvanney
Kerrie Smith, Spy Story, Len Deighton
R.T. Foolish Undertaking, Mark De Castrique