Saturday, May 31, 2014
What is the Most Influential Song of All Time?
THE ATLANTIC asked this question in the June issue and got answers from celebrities that included
WE SHALL OVERCOME, RESPECT, ST. LOUIS BLUES, LIKE A ROLLING STONE, WEST END BLUES, HEARTBREAK HOTEL, WALK THIS WAY, SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRITS, DREAMS, AFRICA, AMAZING GRACE and SURFIN' BIRD.
Now I guess your choice depends on how you read the question. Do they mean influential in music, influential in culture, religion, in the U.S? What?
I think a case can be made for this...
and for this...
and for this
What about you? What song do you see as the most or at least very influential?
"THE ENEMY ADVANCES" is in the latest issue of ALL DUE RESPECT. Thanks!
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WE SHALL OVERCOME, RESPECT, ST. LOUIS BLUES, LIKE A ROLLING STONE, WEST END BLUES, HEARTBREAK HOTEL, WALK THIS WAY, SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRITS, DREAMS, AFRICA, AMAZING GRACE and SURFIN' BIRD.
Now I guess your choice depends on how you read the question. Do they mean influential in music, influential in culture, religion, in the U.S? What?
I think a case can be made for this...
and for this...
and for this
What about you? What song do you see as the most or at least very influential?
"THE ENEMY ADVANCES" is in the latest issue of ALL DUE RESPECT. Thanks!
Friday, May 30, 2014
Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, May 30, 2014
FFB: SPECIAL
THE FEMME FATALE
July 12, 2014I will be gone from 9-5 today. Latecomers will be seated then.
The Plastic Nightmare by Richard Neely
Ed Gorman's newest book is SCREAM QUEENS AND OTHER TALES OF HORROR
I've written here before about Neely. He wrote non-series crime novels that pretty much covered the entire range of dark suspense. I mentioned that in the best of them the weapon of choice is not poison, bullets or garrote. He always preferred sexual betrayal.
Plastic is a good example. Using amnesia as the central device Dan Mariotte must reconstruct his life. Learning that the beautiful woman at his bedside all these months in the hospital--his wife--may have tried to kill him in a car accident is only the first of many surprises shared by Mariotte and the reader alike.
What gives the novel grit is Neely's take on the privileged class. He frequently wrote about very successful men (he was a very successful adverts man himself) and their women. The time was the Seventies. Private clubs, private planes, private lives. But for all the sparkle of their lives there was in Neely's people a despair that could only be assuaged (briefly) by sex. Preferably illicit sex. Betrayl sex. Men betrayed women and women betrayed men. It was Jackie Collins only for real.
Plastic is a snapshot of a certain period, the Seventies when the Fortune 500 dudes wore sideburns and faux hippie clothes and flashed the peace sign almost as often as they flashed their American Express Gold cards. Johnny Carson hipsters. The counter culture co-opted by the pigs.
The end is a stunner, which is why I can say little about the plot. Neely knew what he was doing and I'm glad to see his book back in print. Watching Neely work is always a pleasure. This was turned in the movie "Shattered" which pretty much ruined the book.
SERIOUS INTENT, Margaret Yorke
Back in the day when I gobbled down crime fiction, or mysteries as we called it then, 3-4 a week, one of my favorite writers was Margaret Yorke who always seemed to infuse her stories with a little bit more insight than other writers of her era. Maybe not quite a psychologically astute as Margaret Millar but along those lines. Yorke died in 2012 after a hugely productive career. Some of her books feature Dr. Patrick Grant, a college dean, but many are standalones.
One of my favorites is SERIOUS INTENT.
No one knows Tom's son is in prison for murder--certainly not the boys who hang around his house. Just down the road, lives Richard Gardner with his second wife and her two sons. No one knows.she is seriously disturbed.All of the boys in this story are affected by absent or poor fathers and engage in petty thefts. Now Marigold Darwin, a retired civil servant, house hunts in Haverscot and begins to discover the intertwined serious intents in this supposedly benign neighborhood. And that lives--including her own are at serious risk. Yorke is very much a "why" writer rather than a how or who writer. And that's my favorite kind.
Yvette Banek, MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, Winifred Watson
Brian Busby. RMS Empress of Ireland, Canadian Pacific Railroad
Bill Crider, ROOKIE BLUES, Richard A. Lupoff
Martin Edwards, SHADOW OF THE DOWNS, R.C. Woodthorpe
Curt Evan, HAVING WONDERFUL CRIME, Craig Rice
Rick Horton, LAUGHING BOY, Oliver LaFarge
Jerry House, BOOKS OF MAGIC: 4, Carla Jablonski
Randy Johnson, CAPROCK REBEL, Will C. Brown
Nick Jones, THE BLACK HOUSE, Patricia Highsmith
George Kelley, NORTH BEACH GIRL/SCANDAL ON THE SAND, John Trinian
Margot Kinberg, THURSDAY NIGHT WIDOWS, Claudia Pineiro
Rob Kitchin, A DECLINE IN PROPHETS, Sulari Gentill
B.V. Lawson, HANGING DOLL MURDER, Roger Ormerond
Evan Lewis"House of the Seven Dragons" Robert Leslie Bellem
Steve Lewis/William F. Deeck, THE WINTER MURDER CASE. S.S. Van Dine
Todd Mason, NEW WORLD WRITING 16
J. F. Norris, THE GLASS-SIDED ANTS' NEST, Peter Dickinson
James Reasoner, 361, Donald Westlake
Richard Robinson, THE BLUE MURDER, Brett Halliday
Gerard Saylor, PALE CRIMINAL, Philip Kerr
Ron Scheer, LIFE'S LURE, John G. Neihardt
Kevin Tipple/Patrick Ohl, THE DREAM WALKER, Charlotte Armstron
TomCat, THE CASE OF THE BAITED HOOK, Erle Stanley Gardner
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Most Shocking Scene in a Novel (Spoilers)
Still reading the Updike bio, I am up to his writing of RABBIT RUN, which contains the 17 page scene where Rabbit's wife, Janice, drowns their baby unintentionally. I doubt any scene has ever shocked me more. There are certain things you expect in a crime novel but not in a book like this one.
What novel or scene in one shocked you the most?
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
THE FEVER
Where can I order/pre-order The Fever (pub. date June 17)? Your local bookstore, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, BN Nook (ebook), iTunes (ebook), Kobo (ebook), Powells, Books a Million and many other places.
Stores with signed copies that will ship directly to you include Book Court, Word, Brookline Booksmith, Square Books, Murder by the Book, Book People, Poisoned Pen, Aunt Agatha's, Nicola's and River Road Books.
Note: At present (May 22, 2014), The Fever may not be available for pre-order from Amazon due to the ongoing issues between Hatchette(Little Brown is part of Hatchette) and Amazon.
The Fever:
"An unforgettable inquiry into the emotional lives of young
people... It's also a powerful portrait of community, with interesting
echoes of The Crucible...Abbott may be on her way to becoming a major writer."--Booklist, Starred Review
"Thrilling...a gripping story fueled by razor-sharp treachery, jealousy, hormones, and the insecurities of teenage girls."
--Publishers Weekly
"The book to beat… in the "Is it the next 'Gone Girl'?" sweepstakes."
–Janet Maslin, New York Times
"The lives of teenage girls are dangerous, beautiful things in Abbott's stunning novel... Abbott expertly ratchet[s] up the suspense...nothing should be taken at fact value."
—Kirkus, Starred Review
Forgotten Movies: KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS
A few weeks ago, we saw a musical in NY: A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER, which was a musical version of the old British comedy KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS. It was lots of fun and has gone on to be nominated for a bunch of Tony Awards.
It is the story of an impoverished young man who leans he stands eighth in a line to a earldom and goes on to dispose of those who stand in his way.
Since we had never seen the film, we rented it last week. We were quite disappointed. Perhaps it needed to be seen in its day. Or perhaps seeing the play first was a mistake. The play was very lively and the movie was not. The incessant voice-over was annoying. The play showed the deaths with more clever staging than the movie. Jefferson Mays was amazing in the Alec Guiness role.
I am sure if we saw this film in its day, we would have quite different feeling about it. '
What movie, when you finally saw it, disappointed you.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Sunday, May 25, 2014
EXILES-AN OUTSIDER ANTHOLOGY IS OUT
Great cover art. And great stories in this. Mine is called "We Are All Special Cases". It's out on ebook now, print to follow. So much work for these editors. Does anyone realize that? Thanks to all of them.
Short Story Sunday, Day Tripper, Joe Clifford
Day Tripper is the first story in the first print collection of stories from All Due Respect and it sets a high mark for those coming after it.
The narrator is a day laborer working for an outfit called Labor Core and assigned on this day to move furniture. His companion's a guy who's saved himself by getting religion. What makes this story soar is the small details of their day in Rochester: the weather, the food, their fellow workers; the job itself--every detail is perfect in leading up to the conclusion. The mood here is superb. Our narrator is struggling to pull his life together, struggling to earn enough to get through another day, struggling with his anger, struggling over issues with his wife. Just a great little story.
The narrator is a day laborer working for an outfit called Labor Core and assigned on this day to move furniture. His companion's a guy who's saved himself by getting religion. What makes this story soar is the small details of their day in Rochester: the weather, the food, their fellow workers; the job itself--every detail is perfect in leading up to the conclusion. The mood here is superb. Our narrator is struggling to pull his life together, struggling to earn enough to get through another day, struggling with his anger, struggling over issues with his wife. Just a great little story.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Bands: An Old One and A New One-and not so different.
Our friend, Anders Engwall, from Sweden, sent me a video of his wonderful band, which is not all that different. The song they are playing dates from about a decade later. Wonderful treat.
Friday, May 23, 2014
From Crimespree Magazine and Me
Amazon/Hachette and buying books the old fashioned way
In case you’ve not heard Amazon and Hachette are having some trouble reaching an agreement on pricing and until it is resolved things may be a little weird if you are used to getting your books from Amazon. Hachette books are not available right now and this means you may have to work a little harder to get books by favorite authors, including Megan Abbott, Michael Koryta and JK Rowling
Well, my suggestion is to go old school and go to a…
BRICK AND MORTAR BOOK STORE. Here’s a list of some of the bookstores we love.
If you don’t have one near by all of these places will ship books to you.
Each store is linked to their
website.Aunt Agatha’s
Books And Company
BOOK CARNIVAL
Boswell Book Company
Centuries and Sleuths
The Moonstone Mystery Book Store
MURDER BY THE BOOK
Mysterious Galaxy
Mystery Loves Company
Mystery One Bookstore
The Mysterious Bookshop
Once Upon A Crime
seattlemystery.com
Nicola's Books (Ann Arbor)
Literati Books (Ann Arbor)
Poisoned Pen Books (Phoenix)
Book Beat (Oak Park MI)
WORD Bookstores (Brooklyn)
Greenlight Bookstore
Barnes &Noble
Elliott Bay Books (Seattle)
Book Court (Brooklyn)
Powell's
Book People (Austin)
Vroman's
Booksamillion (is offering large discounts on Hatchette preorders)
Porter Square Books (Cambridge)
Haslam's (Florida)
McNally Jackson (Manhattan)
There are a lot of other great books stores out there so don’t let this business stuff get in the way of you enjoying your favorite authors. And Libraries are always happy to see people!Please add you favorite bookstore to the list.
Friday's Forgotten Book, May 23, 2014
I decided to read this book because I admired the recent film with Scarlett Johanssen. The film was lyrical, lovely, enigmatic. The book is just as good but less of these three adjectives because the story gets spelled out to a greater degree. We get inside the protagonist's head more and she is not so other-wordly even if she still is an alien. The movie version discards story elements that do not serve its vision of it. And although the outcome bears similarities the plot arrives there quite differently.
As with the movie we wonder who Isserly is, and why is she driving the roads of Scotland looking for men? We wonder what exactly she is looking for in her victims? What happens to the men is horrifying in both screen and print version but differently laid out. We understand it better in the book but it retains some of its mystery nevertheless. In the film, it has a beauty that the book doesn't.
One of the most amazing things that happens in this novel is that as you learn more about Isserly she changes. Where at first she is a predator, and an amazingly heartless one she becomes the biggest victim in the story and we grow to care about her. Faber does this in small graceful actions.
This is a terrific story if you can accept that you won't understand all of it. But what you do understand makes it worth letting go of the rest.
The Evil Days by Bruno Fischer
Ed Gorman's most recent book is SCREAM QUEENS AND OTHER TALES OF MENACE.
Bruno Fischer had one of those careers you can't have any more. There's no market for any of it. He started out as editor and writer for a Socialist newspaper, shifted to terror pulps when the newspaper started failing, became a successful and respected hardcover mystery novelist in the Forties and early Fifties, and finally turned to Gold Medal originals when the pb boom began. His GMs sold in the millions. His House of Flesh is for me in the top ten of all GMs.
Then for reasons only God and Gary Lovisi understand, Fischer gave up writing and became an editor for Colliers books. But he had one more book in him and it turned out to be the finest of his long career.
Fischer shared with Howard Fast (Fast when he was writing mysteries under his pen names) a grim interest in the way unfulfilling jobs grind us down, leave us soulless. Maybe this was a reflection of his years on the Socialist newspaper. The soullessness features prominently in The Evil Days because it is narrated by a suburban husband who trains to work each day to labor as an editor in a publishing company where he is considered expendable. Worse, his wife constantly reminds him (and not unfairly) that they don't have enough money to pay their bills or find any of the pleasures they knew in the early years of their marriage. Fischer makes you feel the husband's helplessness and the wife's anger and despair.
The A plot concerns the wife finding jewels and refusing to turn them in. A familiar trope, yes, but Fischer makes it work because of the anger and dismay the husband feels when he sees how his wife has turned into a thief. But ultimately he goes along with her. Just when you think you can scope out the rest of the story yourself, Fischer goes all Guy de Maupassant on us. Is the wife having an affair? Did she murder her lover? Is any of this connected to the jewels? What the hell is really going on here?
Sometimes we forget how well the traditional mystery can deal with the social problems of an era and the real lives of real people. The hopelessness and despair of these characters was right for their time of the inflation-dazed Seventies. But it's just as compelling now as it was then when you look at the unemployment numbers and the calm reassurances by those who claim to know that the worst is over.
All this wrapped in one hell of a good tale by a wily old master.
Sergio Angelini, THE BIRTHDAY MURDER, Lange Lewis
Joe Barone, THE DARK VINEYARD, Martin Walker
Brian Busby, THE MONTREALER, May 1958
Bill Crider, THE VIZIER'S SECOND DAUGHTER, Robert F. Young
Martin Edwards, MISSING FROM THEIR HOMES
Curt Evans, TOP TEN MYSTERY WRITERS OF 1941
Elisabeth Grace Foley, THE GRAND SOPHY, Georgette Heyer
Rick Horton, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE and ONE MORE SPRING, Robert Nathan
Jerry House, RED THREADS, Rex Stout
Randy Johnson, SING A SONG OF SIX GUNS, Burt Arthur
Nick Jones, Patricia Highsmith's Short Stories
George Kelley, BREAKFAST IN THE RUINS, Barry N. Malzberg
Margot Kinberg, THE JUDAS PAIR, Jonathan Gash
B.V. Lawson, I'LL SING YOU TWO-O, Anthea Mary Frasier
Evan Lewis, DEALING OUT DEATH, W.T. Ballard
Steve Lewis/Allen J. Hubin, THE WRONG IMPRESSION, John Malcolm
Todd Mason, The Best From IF and WORLD'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION 1970-71
Neer, CRIME CLUB TITLES OF 1978
J.F. Norris, THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY, Charles Willeford
James Reasoner, THE COLONEL'S LADY, Clifton Adams
Richard Robinson, THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MURDERS, edited Thomas Godfrey
Gerard Saylor, KENOBI, John Jackson Miller
Ron Scheer, BIG HITCH, John Henry Reese
Kevin Tipple, "The Last Horseman" Frank Zafirro and THE THRILLING THIRTEEN
Prashant Trikinnad, THE INTRUDERS, Evan Hunter
James Winter, MARCH VIOLETS, Philip Kerr
Zybahn, NOIR, A NOVEL, Robert Coover
Then for reasons only God and Gary Lovisi understand, Fischer gave up writing and became an editor for Colliers books. But he had one more book in him and it turned out to be the finest of his long career.
Fischer shared with Howard Fast (Fast when he was writing mysteries under his pen names) a grim interest in the way unfulfilling jobs grind us down, leave us soulless. Maybe this was a reflection of his years on the Socialist newspaper. The soullessness features prominently in The Evil Days because it is narrated by a suburban husband who trains to work each day to labor as an editor in a publishing company where he is considered expendable. Worse, his wife constantly reminds him (and not unfairly) that they don't have enough money to pay their bills or find any of the pleasures they knew in the early years of their marriage. Fischer makes you feel the husband's helplessness and the wife's anger and despair.
The A plot concerns the wife finding jewels and refusing to turn them in. A familiar trope, yes, but Fischer makes it work because of the anger and dismay the husband feels when he sees how his wife has turned into a thief. But ultimately he goes along with her. Just when you think you can scope out the rest of the story yourself, Fischer goes all Guy de Maupassant on us. Is the wife having an affair? Did she murder her lover? Is any of this connected to the jewels? What the hell is really going on here?
Sometimes we forget how well the traditional mystery can deal with the social problems of an era and the real lives of real people. The hopelessness and despair of these characters was right for their time of the inflation-dazed Seventies. But it's just as compelling now as it was then when you look at the unemployment numbers and the calm reassurances by those who claim to know that the worst is over.
All this wrapped in one hell of a good tale by a wily old master.
Sergio Angelini, THE BIRTHDAY MURDER, Lange Lewis
Joe Barone, THE DARK VINEYARD, Martin Walker
Brian Busby, THE MONTREALER, May 1958
Bill Crider, THE VIZIER'S SECOND DAUGHTER, Robert F. Young
Martin Edwards, MISSING FROM THEIR HOMES
Curt Evans, TOP TEN MYSTERY WRITERS OF 1941
Elisabeth Grace Foley, THE GRAND SOPHY, Georgette Heyer
Rick Horton, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE and ONE MORE SPRING, Robert Nathan
Jerry House, RED THREADS, Rex Stout
Randy Johnson, SING A SONG OF SIX GUNS, Burt Arthur
Nick Jones, Patricia Highsmith's Short Stories
George Kelley, BREAKFAST IN THE RUINS, Barry N. Malzberg
Margot Kinberg, THE JUDAS PAIR, Jonathan Gash
B.V. Lawson, I'LL SING YOU TWO-O, Anthea Mary Frasier
Evan Lewis, DEALING OUT DEATH, W.T. Ballard
Steve Lewis/Allen J. Hubin, THE WRONG IMPRESSION, John Malcolm
Todd Mason, The Best From IF and WORLD'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION 1970-71
Neer, CRIME CLUB TITLES OF 1978
J.F. Norris, THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY, Charles Willeford
James Reasoner, THE COLONEL'S LADY, Clifton Adams
Richard Robinson, THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MURDERS, edited Thomas Godfrey
Gerard Saylor, KENOBI, John Jackson Miller
Ron Scheer, BIG HITCH, John Henry Reese
Kevin Tipple, "The Last Horseman" Frank Zafirro and THE THRILLING THIRTEEN
Prashant Trikinnad, THE INTRUDERS, Evan Hunter
James Winter, MARCH VIOLETS, Philip Kerr
Zybahn, NOIR, A NOVEL, Robert Coover
Thursday, May 22, 2014
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