Movie Themes: State Fair: It Might as Well Be Spring

New in the House This Week.

LOW WINTER SUN

LOW WINTER SUN, a new AMC show, filmed in the city and about Detroit cops, will be premiering in August on AMC.

AMC has released a trailer for the new original series Low Winter Sun, which stars Mark Strong (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Zero Dark Thirty) and co-stars Lennie James (The Walking Dead,Jericho, Snatch). A contemporary story of murder, deception, revenge and corruption in a world where the line between cops and criminals is blurred, Low Winter Sun begins with the murder of a cop by a fellow Detroit detective. Seemingly the perfect crime, in reality the murder activates forces that will forever alter the detective's life, and pull him into the heart of the Detroit underworld. Season one consists of ten, one-hour episodes and premieres Summer 2013 on AMC.

Detroit is profitting by this series with lots of locals providing various amenities and their talents to the show. The cast and crew are here. Hopefully this will do better than DETROIT 187, which was never given a chance to develop. 

Cay another cop show break through? 

Sunday Night Poetry: May Sarton

What true crime case has always fascinated you?

The death of Natalie Wood for me. I think most people need to find a connection to a case to be absorbed by it. And she was one of the Hollywood stars who caught my attention at the right time. She was never a great actress (IMHO) but she was a larger than life STAR.

How about you? What true crime interests you?

Saturday Night Music: Roberta Flack

Jesse Belvin: Angel Eyes

My review of MUD is on Crimespree Magazine.

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, May 3, 2013

Ed Gorman is the author of several series of crime fiction books as well as standalone mysteries, westerns, and the editor of many anthologies.

Rendezvous In Black by Cornell Woolrich

Forgotten Books: Rendezvous In Black by Cornell Woolrich

This is one of Woolrich's famous "Black" books and black it is. Bleak as David Goodis gets his protagonists usually attempt to make some kind of connection to another human being. Not with with Woolrich.

I'm not going to describe the set-up here because laid it flat it is so outlandish you might think twice about reading the book. But Cornell Woolrich was nothing if not shrewd. By the time you figure out what's going on you've had a chance to prepare yourself. You've been putting it all together piece by piece so when the picture is complete you just nod and accept it.

And anyway as with most Woolrich books and stories the set-up doesn't matter all that much anyway. What makes Woolrich Woolrich is how his protagonists respond to the set-up. This novel is built on a series of richly detailed character studies of several men who have begun dying in ways that would be ironic even to them if they could step back and see it with any objectivity.

Woolrich is often compared to Poe and while I think that's fair--they are both masters of claustrophobia and obsession--I think in all Woolrich's real literary father was Guy de Mauppassant. Woolrich has de Mauppassant's fascination with society high and low for one thing, and a sly ear and eye for realistic daily life. There is a lot of Edward Hopper in Woolrich's word paintings of the Thirties and Forties. I'm not sure that Poe an equivalent interest in his own time.

This is my favorite Woolrich novel which is to say that he has told a story of such cleverness and nihilistic power you see why Woolrich is so revered. This is one of those books, one of those books that crush, and linger on long after you finish it.

Patricia Abbott is your host. Patricia Moyes' series. (from 2008)

I don't have adequate time to do Patricia Moyes justice, but when I think back to the various detective series I read in my twenties, one that stands out for me is Patricia Moyes' series of mysteries about Inspector Henry Tibbett, who solved many of his cases with the help of his wife, Emmy. I found their marriage as well as their cases fun.

Anthony Boucher wrote this in the NYT at the time of the first of the series, DEAD MEN DON'T SKI.

“If you’re as hungry as I am for a really good whodunit. you will welcome the debut of Patricia Moyes."

We may not be as hungry for whodunits as we were then, but they can still be very satisfying when done well. If I can count on my memory, these were.

The setting for that first book DEAD MEN DON'T SKI was the Italian Alps, where Henry Tibbett, on vacation from Scotland Yard. Henry and his wife. Emmy, have settled in for some skiing, when Henry uncovers a smuggling ring, which includes hotel guests.
Then a guest who was alive when the ski lift began its descent is found dead when the lift touches bottom.

Henry Tibbett, Chief Superintendent of Scotland Yard, gave me many hours of pleasure and I remember sadly the day when I learned of Moyes' death.

Here are the books in the series:

Dead Men Don't Ski (1958)
The Sunken Sailor (1961)
aka Down Among the Dead Men
Death On the Agenda (1962)
Murder a La Mode (1963)
Falling Star (1964)
Johnny Underground (1965)
Murder By Threes (1965)
Murder Fantastical (1967)
Death and the Dutch Uncle (1968)
Who Saw Her Die? (1970)
aka Many Deadly Returns
Season of Snows and Sins (1971)
The Curious Affair of the Third Dog (1973)
Black Widower (1975)
To Kill a Coconut (1977)
aka The Coconut Killings
Who Is Simon Warwick? (1978)
Angel Death (1980)
A Six Letter Word for Death (1983)
Night Ferry to Death (1985)
Black Girl, White Girl (1989)
Twice in a Blue Moon (1993)
Collections:
Who Killed Father Christmas?: And Other Unseasonable Demises (1996)

Sergio Angelini
Les Blatt, VULTURES IN THE SKY, Todd Downing
Brian Busby, STORIES FOR LATE NIGHT DRINKERS, Michael Tremblays
Bill Crider, THE STARTLING WORLDS OF HENRY KUTTNER, Henry Kuttner
Scott Cupp, DOC SAVAGE: SKULL ISLAND, Will Murray
Martin Edwards, CORPSE GUARDS PARADE, Milward Kennedy
Curt Evans, UP HILL AND DOWN DALE: DEATH OF A CURATE, Kenneth Ashley
Jerry House, TARZAN, JR, Edgar Rice Burroughs
Randy Johnson, THE SHORES OF SPACE, Richard Matheson
Nick Jones, DR. WHO AND THE DALEKS, David Whitaker
George Kelley, SLAM THE BIG DOOR, John D. MacDonald
Margot Kinberg, A IS FOR ALIBI, Sue Grafton
B.V. Lawson, THE COMFORTABLE COFFIN, Richard S.Prather
Evan Lewis, WHAT PRICE MURDER, Cleve F. Adams
Steve Lewis, SCATTERSHOT, Bill Pronzini
Todd Mason, Some Anthologies from WEIRD TALES
J.V. Norris,ALARUM AND EXCURSION, Virginia Perdue
Neer, THE AFFAIR AT ALIQUID and BURGLARS IN BUCKS, Margaret and G.D.H. Cole
James Reasoner, THE BEST OF SPICY MYSTERY: VOL. 1, Al Jan editor
Gerard Saylor, GHOSTS OF BELFAST, Stuart Neville
Ron Scheer, THE PRAIRIE WIFE, Arthur Stringer
Michael Slind, DISSOLUTION, C.J. Sansom
Kerrie Smith, THROUGH THE WALL, Patricia Wentworth
Kevin Tipple, SHOTGUN SATURDAY NIGHT, Bill Crider
TomCat, THE TITANIC MURDERS, Max Allan Collins
Jim Winter, OUT OF SIGHT, Elmore Leonard

MY LIFE IN THE THEATER: THE TROJAN WOMEN by SITI

Saw this last week at the Power Center on the U of M campus. The actress playing Hecuba almost drew thunder from the sky. Bravo.

Your Favorite Romantic Songs

This is just one of mine, of course. What is one of yours?

OPENING CREDITS: THE OUTSIDERS

What are some of the topics/themes you have seen enough in novels?

Sadly Alzheimers has been overdone for me. I know it is the scourge of our time, but boy, I am tired of it turning up as a plot or a subplot in novels. What else? What has been overdone of late?

First Wednesday Book Review Club: BURIAL RITES, Hannah Kent

It it nearly impossible to believe that a 27 year old Australian graduate student wrote this book, so mature and polished is the writing. 

BURIAL RITES, based on the last execution of an Icelander, is the story of Agnes Magnusdottir, a woman found guilty of the murder of two men in 1828. The story begins when she is brought to a rural farmhouse to await her execution. The family is appalled at having a murderess among them, but there is no other place for her to await her execution. At least she will serve as an unpaid servant in the interim. She proves useful to the family and community more than once.

A young minister is brought in to counsel Agnes in the months before her death. It is mostly he, a good man who's more than a little in love with her, who hears most of her story. Although in the close quarters of the farmhouse, the family hears her tale too. 

Kent uses the Icelandic language here and there and summons up great authenticity by her incredibly well researched details into what everyday life was like in Iceland in the1820s. We never doubt the sense of place or the rightness of what the characters say and think. 

It is never a happy story for any of the characters, but the pages turned quickly because the writing is that good. HIghly recommended. This is sure to be one of the big books of this sumer and fall.

For more book reviews, check with Barrie Summy. 

Tuesday Night Music: THE NATIONAL

Five Years of Forgotten Books: Day 30

Andrew Nette is a Melbourne writer. He blogs at
thttp://pulpcurry.wordpress.com/



The Song Is You, Megan Abbott

The Song is You is only the second Megan Abbott book I’ve read, but it’s cemented her place in the select group of authors whose work I recommend to friends with undisguised envy about what awaits them.

Hell, can Abbott write and her take on post-Second World War Hollywood is distinctive and razor sharp.

The Song Is You focuses on Gil ‘Hop’ Hopkins, a studio publicity man/fixer/pimp whose beat is “the world of trouble between mid-night and seven am”. Whether it’s rescuing starlets from opium dens and rough trade or procuring quickie abortions for leading men and studio heads who want to maintain their happily married public personas, it’s just a job for Hopkins.

He does what he’s told and doesn’t ask questions until he gets involved in the disappearance of starlet Jean Spangler, two years missing with no clues other than a mysterious note and a swirl of rumours. They shared a moment, if you can call it that, the night before Jean disappeared. A group of them had been drinking hard and they ended up in a seedy harbour side bar, where Hop left Jean in the company of a couple of big name studio crooners with a reputation for playing very rough.

Girls like Jean, drawn to Tinseltown from dust bowl towns across America with stars in the eyes and hopes of making it big, are a dime a dozen in Hop’s world. He’d hardly given her a second thought until a friend of Jean’s makes contact, accusing him of being one of the people responsible for her disappearance.

Soon, fuelled by guilt and the need to protect his own arse he’s investigating every last detail about the night in question.

There’s a hard-bitten female journalist who is also looking into Jean’s disappearance, plenty of mob connections and a whiff that Jean may have been involved in her own illegal scam. There’s also plenty of sex. It positively oozes from the pores of the story, amid the mood lighting, calypso music, tiki torches and martinis.

The parallels between The Song Is You and Ellroy’s Black Dahlia are obvious, their noir sensibility, the era they are set in, their mix of fact and fiction, right down to their raven-haired party-girl victims. But there’s something about Abbott’s book that sets it apart.

I think big part of it is her less is more style. This allows her to hint at horrendous events, introduce the sleaziest characters and take us to the very worst places, without collapsing into cliché. She’s also a master of allowing class, sex and social observation to collide in a way that does take away from the precision of her plot and characters.

Forgotten Movies: I LOVE YOU ALICE B. TOKLAS

There are very few good movies from the sixties and this is certainly not one of them. But any movie with Peter Sellers has something going for it. I guess.

A thirty-something square falls in love with a hippie and decides to "drop out" himself.

Director:

 Hy Averback

Writers:

 Paul Mazursky, Larry Tucker

Stars:

 Peter Sellers, Jo Van Fleet, Leigh Taylor-Young |See full cast and crew

It all revolves around grass brownies. Didn't every movie in the sixties toy with this? It seems like it. Too bad it wasn't better but it is a time piece. 

Movie Theme Music; Two for the Road

Five Years Of Forgotten Books; Day 29

Gar Anthony Haywood is the award winning author of the Aaron Gunner series, two thrillers written as Ray Shannon, and most recently CEMETERY ROAD.

FAULT LINES by Teri White

One of the greatest compliments a book reviewer ever paid to something I'd written was "the best Elmore Leonard rip-off since Elmore Leonard."Publisher's Weekly was referring to my 2003 standalone MAN EATER, but the reviewer could have easily said the same thing fifteen years earlier about Teri White's terrific crime novel, FAULT LINES (Mysterious Press, 1988). I have yet to come across another book that nails the quirky, deceptively scary flavor of a Dutch Leonard novel quite so flawlessly.

True to the often-imitated but rarely duplicated Leonard formula, White populated FAULT LINES with a cast of off-beat, complex characters and then spun a tale in which their separate misadventures would ultimately collide.

Bryan Murphy is an ex-New York City cop who, forced into early retirement by a near-fatal heart attack, now makes his home in Los Angeles, where's he's bored to tears. So bored that he strikes up an uneasy friendship with an ex-con named Tray Detaglio, who's only recently gotten out of the joint. Detaglio's trying to find his ex-girlfriend Kathryn Daily, a cold-hearted hustler and pole dancer who claimed to be pregnant with his child when he last heard from her, but his clumsy attempts to track her down only land him in jail. When Murphy bails him out, being the only person Detaglio could think of to call for help, the two strike a deal: Murphy will look for Kathryn if Detaglio will take over some home repair work Murphy's weak heart prevents him from tackling himself.

Meanwhile, Kathryn---having aborted Detaglio's child years ago---is shacking up elsewhere in L.A. with two more ex-cons, former cellmates Dwight St. John and Chris Moore. Psychotic career criminals who make Detaglio look like an altar boy, Dwight and Chris seem resigned to pulling one stupid, meaningless liquor store robbery after another, until Kathryn offers them a chance at something much better: the Big, once-in-a-lifetime heist they've always dreamed of pulling. One of Kathryn's many ex-boyfriends, post-Tray Detaglio, was mobbed-up drug dealer Michael Stanzione, and before she left him, she learned all there was to know about where Stanzione likes to keep a cool half-million in his palatial Beverly Hills mansion. . .

Get it? It's a terrific set-up, and White works it all to perfection. Tight plotting, solid dialogue---it's all here. But Kathryn---hot, sexy and oh, so wicked---is the poisoned straw that stirs this drink. Bedding and playing all three men at once---Dwight, Chris and Tray---as if they were suckers in a shell game, she leads the reader on a hardcore thrill ride reminiscent of. . .

Well, yeah: a great Elmore Leonard novel.

Getting the Team Together

What is your favorite movie where the story begins with someone assembling a group or team in order to achieve a goal? I'll start with THE SEVEN SAMURAI.

Say Something Good About Detroit

Edmund Alyn Jones was a first year graduate student at the Hilberry Theater when he knocked people's socks off playing RICHARD III. Since then we have seen him play OTHELLO, and play parts memorably in other Hilberry productions of THE MOUSETRAP, OF MICE AND MEN, DETROIT. He is perhaps the finest actor I have seen in my thirty-some years of Hilberry attendance. You knew it the first time he walked on the stage. And he is one of the only young actors I have seen who can play an older man persuasively.

I am so hopeful Mr. Jones will make his way onto bigger stages. I wish him well. He has given me much pleasure.