Bob Randisi is interviewed at length over at Shots magazine. An excellent piece of work and a serious look at Bob's amazing career. If you want to know what the life of a working writer is like, it's all here. One of the things I noted was that while Bob and have been great friends for more than twenty years, and have always talked about our projects, there are still things Bob's done I didn't know about. Here's a sample from the interview.
Bob:
" Warren Murphy is both a friend of mine, and a hero of mine. Also, a mentor. We met in the 70s at MWA functions, and one night in a bar he asked me if I thought I could write a Destroyer novel. I had, at that point, read a few, so I said yes. There were 40 at the time, so he had the publisher send me the entire run. He sent me a detailed outline, paid me up front and I wrote one.
"Here’s why he’s my hero: I delivered the first half of the book and he said it was great. I delivered the second half and he said, “You screwed me,” only he didn’t say screwed. He said, “I paid you and you just walked away from the second half.” I offered him the money back and he said no. That book was Destroyer #43 (my actual first novel). I figured I’d actually screwed myself, but a few months later he had to go to Puerto Rico to work on the Destroyer screenplay, and he asked me to do another one. This time, when I delivered the entire book, he said, “Bobby, you gave me exactly what I wanted.” I did another after that, and one of his “Digger” books."
for the rest of the interview go here:
http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/interviews/2008/r_randisi/r_randisi.html
----------THE LAST LULLABY
Several of you asked me how you could see Al Collins' really fine new film, which I reviewed here the other night. Here's a message from the director Jeffrey Goodman:
I read where someone was asking how they could see the film. I just wanted to give you a couple of things as arsenal in case you field any more of those questions. First off, we have a LULLABY registry that I send updates to about once a month. These updates tell people where we are screening and when and also update people on our path towards wider distribution. To join the registry, people simply have to send an e-mail to register@thelastlullaby.com with "Register Me" in the subject of the e-mail. Also, for now, the only way people can see the film is at a festival. However, I expect LULLABY to begin some sort of distribution, around April of '09.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Catching Up
Hit a bad patch and am slowly gettng out of it...
----------A SHOT RANG OUT
Long before I started writing mysteries (selling to men's magazines mostly) I was reading Jon Breen's criticism. I felt then and I feel now that he's my generation's answer to Anthony Boucher, And in many respects--a finer eye for detail and style for one thing--he's even better.
Now I can prove my point by recommending his collection of author studies, essays, reviews and short takes on 100 writers. The long form author studies include eloquent and insightful takes on writers including Michael Connelly, Nicolas Freeling, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Millar and Ellery Queen.
The short takes are especially welcome because Jon looks not only at prominent writers but a number who don't get the press they deserve. The topical essays touch on everything from American Women Mystery Writers to How To Write Mysteries in Six Difficult Lessons.
He also writes something I would have thought impossible. In less than three thousand words he gives the reader a colorful detailed overview of the first eighteen years of Mystery Scene magazine. Since that involves Bob Randisi, Marty Greenberg and myself I was particularly interested in his conclusions. A lot of it made me laugh out loud. Thank God Kate Stine came long and turned it into a real magazine.
I have to note here that Jon dedicates the book to me, which makes me damnded proud. I'm not exaggerating when I say that if your shelf of mystery criticism and reviews doesn't include A Shot Rang Out it's woefully inadequate.
Order directly from Ramble House or Lulu. This is the perfect holiday gift for a mystery fan. I couldn't stop reading it. And I'll be going back to it again and again.
--------------------TV ROMANCES
Patti Abbott posted some entertaining comments on the running romances on tv series. She wonders if Pam and Jim on The Officee are too sweet for some tastes.
The answer is no, not for me anyway. But I have to say that I think this is a mediocore season for the show. Pam and Jim are at stasis point and so is this whole season. While some of the scenes are masterful the overall half hours seem to be on auto-pilot. I'm not sure why. I used to think 30 Rock was an amusing but not funny show. But this season we've found it to be the other way around. The belly laughs are to be found on 30 Rock. The episode with Jennifer Aniston was far wittier than anything on The Office this season.
Entourage has had a spotty season but when it was good it was very good. It's a romance in that each of the four principals are narcissists and thus having love affairs with themselves. The episodes with the German director were especially good. Maybe it's my age or because I spent so long in advertising but the only two characters I identify with are Ari and Eric. Vince and Johnny Drama and Turtle are stuck forever at nineteen years of age.
The final episode of the season suffered from having two hours worth of plot to cram into twenty-seven minutes. Martin Scorcese showed up in the last few minutes like the cavalry coming over the hill to rescue the settlers in an old B western.
----------A SHOT RANG OUT
Long before I started writing mysteries (selling to men's magazines mostly) I was reading Jon Breen's criticism. I felt then and I feel now that he's my generation's answer to Anthony Boucher, And in many respects--a finer eye for detail and style for one thing--he's even better.
Now I can prove my point by recommending his collection of author studies, essays, reviews and short takes on 100 writers. The long form author studies include eloquent and insightful takes on writers including Michael Connelly, Nicolas Freeling, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Millar and Ellery Queen.
The short takes are especially welcome because Jon looks not only at prominent writers but a number who don't get the press they deserve. The topical essays touch on everything from American Women Mystery Writers to How To Write Mysteries in Six Difficult Lessons.
He also writes something I would have thought impossible. In less than three thousand words he gives the reader a colorful detailed overview of the first eighteen years of Mystery Scene magazine. Since that involves Bob Randisi, Marty Greenberg and myself I was particularly interested in his conclusions. A lot of it made me laugh out loud. Thank God Kate Stine came long and turned it into a real magazine.
I have to note here that Jon dedicates the book to me, which makes me damnded proud. I'm not exaggerating when I say that if your shelf of mystery criticism and reviews doesn't include A Shot Rang Out it's woefully inadequate.
Order directly from Ramble House or Lulu. This is the perfect holiday gift for a mystery fan. I couldn't stop reading it. And I'll be going back to it again and again.
--------------------TV ROMANCES
Patti Abbott posted some entertaining comments on the running romances on tv series. She wonders if Pam and Jim on The Officee are too sweet for some tastes.
The answer is no, not for me anyway. But I have to say that I think this is a mediocore season for the show. Pam and Jim are at stasis point and so is this whole season. While some of the scenes are masterful the overall half hours seem to be on auto-pilot. I'm not sure why. I used to think 30 Rock was an amusing but not funny show. But this season we've found it to be the other way around. The belly laughs are to be found on 30 Rock. The episode with Jennifer Aniston was far wittier than anything on The Office this season.
Entourage has had a spotty season but when it was good it was very good. It's a romance in that each of the four principals are narcissists and thus having love affairs with themselves. The episodes with the German director were especially good. Maybe it's my age or because I spent so long in advertising but the only two characters I identify with are Ari and Eric. Vince and Johnny Drama and Turtle are stuck forever at nineteen years of age.
The final episode of the season suffered from having two hours worth of plot to cram into twenty-seven minutes. Martin Scorcese showed up in the last few minutes like the cavalry coming over the hill to rescue the settlers in an old B western.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Last Lullaby
The Last Lullaby, the feature film based on Max Allan Collins' short story "A Matter of Principal," is one of finest crime films I've seen in a long time. It is also unlike most crime films I've seen in a long time. When you have a hit man as the protagonist (Collins' famous Quarry character, here called Price) you expect wall-to-wall violence. While there's a good share of that what drives Lullaby is character.
I'd forgotten how good Tom Sizemore is. As Price he dominates the movie with his silence. Collins and co-screenplay writer Peter Biegen wisely limit Sizemore's dialogue to short responses for much of the film. He watches, he listens, he broods then he reacts. When he does speak at any length his words are all the more powerful for the contrast.
The set up is that Price has retired from being a hit man but is dragged back into the business when he's forced to kill a beautiful woman played by Sasha Alexander. He'd already gotten to know her when he saved her from a beating by her former boyfriend. Like Sizemore Alexander does her work quietly, subtly. There are layers to her performance. She's obvious at some points, unreadable at others. She's impossible not to watch.
One more actor who needs to be mentioned here and that's Bill Smitrovich. One of the many things that distinguishes Collins' Quarry novels is how he always shows the relationship between certain types of businessmen and the mob. Smitrovich;s Martin can be found at the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the church of his choice. He's an upstanding man. Except he's not. He needs the Alexander character killed and fast. Smitrovich turns him into an angry, frightened bully who is watching it all go away from him. A fine performance.
Director Jeffrey Goodman never sacrifices story and pacing for character but by film's end you care about the two principals far more than you usually do people in crime films. He has a gritty sense of small towns and an even grittier sense of people who want to escape themselves and their pasts.
This is a movie you really should see.
I'd forgotten how good Tom Sizemore is. As Price he dominates the movie with his silence. Collins and co-screenplay writer Peter Biegen wisely limit Sizemore's dialogue to short responses for much of the film. He watches, he listens, he broods then he reacts. When he does speak at any length his words are all the more powerful for the contrast.
The set up is that Price has retired from being a hit man but is dragged back into the business when he's forced to kill a beautiful woman played by Sasha Alexander. He'd already gotten to know her when he saved her from a beating by her former boyfriend. Like Sizemore Alexander does her work quietly, subtly. There are layers to her performance. She's obvious at some points, unreadable at others. She's impossible not to watch.
One more actor who needs to be mentioned here and that's Bill Smitrovich. One of the many things that distinguishes Collins' Quarry novels is how he always shows the relationship between certain types of businessmen and the mob. Smitrovich;s Martin can be found at the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the church of his choice. He's an upstanding man. Except he's not. He needs the Alexander character killed and fast. Smitrovich turns him into an angry, frightened bully who is watching it all go away from him. A fine performance.
Director Jeffrey Goodman never sacrifices story and pacing for character but by film's end you care about the two principals far more than you usually do people in crime films. He has a gritty sense of small towns and an even grittier sense of people who want to escape themselves and their pasts.
This is a movie you really should see.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wake The Dead
We watched the two part "Blind Beggar" Wake The Dead episodes tonight and I found myself really caught up in it. Unlike the splashy melodramatics of most Ametican crime shows Wake plays against type and trend. There's a Simenonesque thoughtfulness to the writing and the acting. Another thing it does much better than American crime shows is show the working class in real depth. This is what the people look like, talk like, behave like. And there's a spectrum of them, again against type. I liked the cops, too. Sound, sensible folks whose work is offered in detail but--thanks to editing--never lingers too long. In every respect exciting and memorable tv. Not a single Dirty Harry or Shield moment in nearly two hours.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Last of the pulps; NPR Top Five Crime Novels
A very long, extremely well-done oiece on the fate of the last of the dugest sized fiction magazines:
Pulp Magazines Struggle to Survive in Wired World
Simon Owens
by Simon Owens, November 17, 2008
Every year Locus Magazine, "The Magazine Of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field," publishes a year-in-review of the genre. This summation always includes a rundown of the circulation of the remaining speculative fiction magazines, sometimes referred to as the "pulps" because of the cheap wood pulp paper on which they used to be printed. In their heyday there were dozens of pulps -- ranging from the mystery to science fiction genres -- with circulations of 100,000 or more. But the medium steeply declined through the '80s and '90s, with magazine circulations for all the publications plummeting to well below six figures.
By the 21st century and the advent of the web, most of these once-great magazines -- Amazing Stories, Argosy, SF Age -- had died off, leaving only three speculative fiction magazines struggling to stop hemorrhaging readers: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The figures displayed in this year's Locus Magazine roundup were, as usual, not promising. Analog, the best performing of the three, had fallen to a paid circulation of 27,399, while Asimov's dropped 5.2% to 17,581. But the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction saw the sharpest decline -- 11.2% from the previous year -- to a paid circulation of 16,489. Countless science fiction convention panels and online message board topics over the last decade have tried to pinpoint the cause of such catastrophic declines and learn how to stop them. Such discussions often lead to at least one person predicting the eminent death of the short fiction magazines, always seen lurking just around the corner.
(more)
Both Asimov's and Analog (along with mystery pulps Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine) are published by Dell Magazines, a company perhaps best known for its puzzle magazines. In fact, outside critics often complain that Dell has let its fiction magazines fall by the wayside because it has concentrated its focus on crossword puzzles and Sudoku.
for the rest go here
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/11/pulp-magazines-struggle-to-survive-in-wired-world322.html
------------------Shout out to Dave Zeltserman
Holiday Book Recommendations 2008
NPR.org, November 19, 2008 · Below you can find the complete list of recommended reading for the 2008 Holidays. To print this list, choose the "Print Page" icon in the upper right-hand corner. Click on the titles to read an excerpt from the book.
Recommended Books
Recommended by Maureen Corrigan
(Top Five Crime And Mystery Novels Of 2008)
Small Crimes, by Dave Zeltserman, paperback, 272 pages, List Price: $14.95
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland, hardcover, 463 pages, List Price: $24.95
Death Vows, by Richard Stevenson, paperback, 212 pages, List Price: $14.99
The Chinaman, by Friedrich Glauser, translated from the German by Mike Mitchell, paperback, 186 pages, List Price: $14.95
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, by Judith Freeman, paperback, 368 pages, List P
Pulp Magazines Struggle to Survive in Wired World
Simon Owens
by Simon Owens, November 17, 2008
Every year Locus Magazine, "The Magazine Of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field," publishes a year-in-review of the genre. This summation always includes a rundown of the circulation of the remaining speculative fiction magazines, sometimes referred to as the "pulps" because of the cheap wood pulp paper on which they used to be printed. In their heyday there were dozens of pulps -- ranging from the mystery to science fiction genres -- with circulations of 100,000 or more. But the medium steeply declined through the '80s and '90s, with magazine circulations for all the publications plummeting to well below six figures.
By the 21st century and the advent of the web, most of these once-great magazines -- Amazing Stories, Argosy, SF Age -- had died off, leaving only three speculative fiction magazines struggling to stop hemorrhaging readers: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The figures displayed in this year's Locus Magazine roundup were, as usual, not promising. Analog, the best performing of the three, had fallen to a paid circulation of 27,399, while Asimov's dropped 5.2% to 17,581. But the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction saw the sharpest decline -- 11.2% from the previous year -- to a paid circulation of 16,489. Countless science fiction convention panels and online message board topics over the last decade have tried to pinpoint the cause of such catastrophic declines and learn how to stop them. Such discussions often lead to at least one person predicting the eminent death of the short fiction magazines, always seen lurking just around the corner.
(more)
Both Asimov's and Analog (along with mystery pulps Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine) are published by Dell Magazines, a company perhaps best known for its puzzle magazines. In fact, outside critics often complain that Dell has let its fiction magazines fall by the wayside because it has concentrated its focus on crossword puzzles and Sudoku.
for the rest go here
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/11/pulp-magazines-struggle-to-survive-in-wired-world322.html
------------------Shout out to Dave Zeltserman
Holiday Book Recommendations 2008
NPR.org, November 19, 2008 · Below you can find the complete list of recommended reading for the 2008 Holidays. To print this list, choose the "Print Page" icon in the upper right-hand corner. Click on the titles to read an excerpt from the book.
Recommended Books
Recommended by Maureen Corrigan
(Top Five Crime And Mystery Novels Of 2008)
Small Crimes, by Dave Zeltserman, paperback, 272 pages, List Price: $14.95
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland, hardcover, 463 pages, List Price: $24.95
Death Vows, by Richard Stevenson, paperback, 212 pages, List Price: $14.99
The Chinaman, by Friedrich Glauser, translated from the German by Mike Mitchell, paperback, 186 pages, List Price: $14.95
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, by Judith Freeman, paperback, 368 pages, List P
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Poker Club
Allan Guthrie was kind enough to tell me about this link to the website of director Tim McCann. Hit film clips at the top and you'll see scenes from the film.
http://www.timmccannfilm.com/filmpages/pc.html
http://www.timmccannfilm.com/filmpages/pc.html
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Joe The Plumber & other media lizards
Yeah, Joe the P being a humble dude, would have us believe that "everyone" came at him to write a book. Sorry Mr. Knopf, take a hike Random House, who do you think you're talking to Mr. Morrow? Who wants the big bucks, the bling, the babes when you can stand on principle? So instead of cashing in he'd think we'll believe:
"Everyone came at me to write a book. They had dollar signs in their eyes. '101 Things Joe the Plumber Knows' or some stupid s--- like that. Excuse me, I am sorry," he said. "You know I will get behind something solid, but I won't get behind fluff. I won't cash in, and when people do read the book they will figure out that I didn't cash in. At least I hope they figure that out."
The book, called "Joe the Plumber -- Fighting for the American Dream," is to be released by a group called PearlGate Publishing and other small publishing houses.
"I am not going to a conglomerate that way we actually can get the economy jump started. Like there is five publishing companies in Michigan. There's a couple down in Texas. They are small ones that can handle like 10 or 15,000 copies. I can go to a big one that could handle a million or two. But they don't need the help. They are already rich. So that's spreading the wealth to me," he said."
Ed here: I Googled PearlGate (as in Peraly Gate?). If I read the website correctly the company has published one book, that by the same guy who is co-authoring Joe the P's book.
(Thanks to CJR and Charley Sykes and Jeff Wagner for the info)
----------------------FULL MOONERS BAYING LOUD
Talk radio is obsessed with the notion that Obama will a) take the guns of law abiding citizens and b) force full moon talk radio out of business.
A) Can you imagine the size of the army it would take to collect the guns of the unwilling gun owners? We're talking civil war here. A ridiculous idea. But then Limpbaugh and the others would lose their audience if they didn't churn out this bullshit every day.
B) What they're talking about is the Fairness Doctrine. You take the mike and rant thereby guaranteeing me the right to respond in kind. This doctrine is so clearly unconstitutional it would be on the desk of Justice Scalia (dripping his bourbon on it as he slurped) the same day it passed the congress. Another ridiculous idea.
C'mon you guys, you can do better than that. How about Obama and Ayers being secret Scientologists?
"Everyone came at me to write a book. They had dollar signs in their eyes. '101 Things Joe the Plumber Knows' or some stupid s--- like that. Excuse me, I am sorry," he said. "You know I will get behind something solid, but I won't get behind fluff. I won't cash in, and when people do read the book they will figure out that I didn't cash in. At least I hope they figure that out."
The book, called "Joe the Plumber -- Fighting for the American Dream," is to be released by a group called PearlGate Publishing and other small publishing houses.
"I am not going to a conglomerate that way we actually can get the economy jump started. Like there is five publishing companies in Michigan. There's a couple down in Texas. They are small ones that can handle like 10 or 15,000 copies. I can go to a big one that could handle a million or two. But they don't need the help. They are already rich. So that's spreading the wealth to me," he said."
Ed here: I Googled PearlGate (as in Peraly Gate?). If I read the website correctly the company has published one book, that by the same guy who is co-authoring Joe the P's book.
(Thanks to CJR and Charley Sykes and Jeff Wagner for the info)
----------------------FULL MOONERS BAYING LOUD
Talk radio is obsessed with the notion that Obama will a) take the guns of law abiding citizens and b) force full moon talk radio out of business.
A) Can you imagine the size of the army it would take to collect the guns of the unwilling gun owners? We're talking civil war here. A ridiculous idea. But then Limpbaugh and the others would lose their audience if they didn't churn out this bullshit every day.
B) What they're talking about is the Fairness Doctrine. You take the mike and rant thereby guaranteeing me the right to respond in kind. This doctrine is so clearly unconstitutional it would be on the desk of Justice Scalia (dripping his bourbon on it as he slurped) the same day it passed the congress. Another ridiculous idea.
C'mon you guys, you can do better than that. How about Obama and Ayers being secret Scientologists?
Friday, November 14, 2008
Small Crimes Dave Zeltserman
Ed here: I got an early copy of Small Crimes and I've been pushing it hard ever since. Apparently I'm not alone in seeing it as a major novel. This is on-line at the Wash Post today and will be in the Sunday book section.
SMALL CRIMES By Dave Zeltserman | Serpent's Tail. 263 pp. Paperback, $14.95
I don't know about you, but with the world in financial free fall I don't feel like reading comic mysteries or cozies or even espionage thrillers. I don't want escapism. I long to immerse myself in literature that captures the all-encompassing anxiety of the times. There's only one type of mystery that fits that profile, and that's crime noir: the jittery genre, born during the Great Depression, about saps and grifters who ain't gotta barrel of money and just can't get a break; the genre about a world gone wrong and the greedy bumblers who made it so.
James M. Cain was one of the first writers to explore this little tributary of mystery fiction, and though some followers -- notably Cornell Woolrich, Patricia Highsmith, Jim Thompson and James Ellroy -- have pulled off stories almost as good as Cain's, nobody, at least for my money (fast dwindling though it may be), has ever bested Cain at his best. Pulp morality tales like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce hold their own against any of those highbrow novels the awards committees are always slapping ribbons on.
But there's a new name to add to the pantheon of the sons and daughters of Cain: Dave Zeltserman. If Zeltserman keeps writing novels as terrific as Small Crimes, and if the economy keeps nosediving, he may churn out a corpus that rivals Cain's. Oh, and Small Crimes is a paperback original, so fans don't even have to shell out the big bucks they no longer have for this piece of crime-noir genius.
This tale is told by a first-person narrator who's one of fortune's fools. Joe Denton is a crooked ex-cop in Bradley, Vt., who's just been released from jail after serving seven years for stabbing the local district attorney, Phil Coakley, 13 times in the face with a letter opener. Joe was coked up at the time, and he was rifling the d.a.'s office trying to find documents that fingered him as being part of a police corruption ring. Unfortunately, Phil turned up just as Joe was pouring gasoline around the office. Here's how Joe explains his side of the story:
"The funny thing was I had always liked Phil. I always thought of him as a solid person, a good family man, just an overall decent human being. If I'd had a real knife, like a fishing or hunting knife, I would've killed him that night. The letter opener wasn't sharp enough. I did damage -- Jesus, did I do damage -- but I didn't kill him."
If you're new to the conventions of crime noir, you might well think that Joe sounds like a reasonable guy and that he's ready to start over now that his debt to society has been paid. Wrong. What's past is never past in crime noir. No sooner does Joe step out of the jailhouse than cosmic I.O.U.s begin to rain down on his head. First, the grossly disfigured Phil greets Joe right outside the slammer. Phil perkily breaks the news that Manny Vassey, the local crime kingpin, is dying, has suddenly found religion and is likely to clutch at redemption by confessing his crimes.
Manny's 11th-hour mea culpa could send Joe straight back behind bars, since Joe (a gambler as well as a cokehead) was known to be in debt to Manny (and, thus, in his vile employ). Then Joe gets a "welcome back" phone call from the sheriff, who still runs the ring of crooked cops that once included Joe. The sheriff tells Joe that he needs to finish the job he started in Phil Coakley's office lo those many years ago, because if Manny squawks to Phil about all that's rotten in the little burg of Bradley, Joe's head will roll. What's a loser like Joe to do in a no-win situation like this but go out to the local tavern, where he digs himself into a deeper and deeper mess?
The plot of Small Crimes is a thing of beauty: spare but ingeniously twisted and imbued with a glossy coating of black humor. Zeltserman takes up all the familiar tropes of the formula -- femmes fatales, frighteningly dysfunctional families, self-destructive drives and the death grip of the past -- and shows how infinite are the combinations that can still be played on them.
SMALL CRIMES By Dave Zeltserman | Serpent's Tail. 263 pp. Paperback, $14.95
I don't know about you, but with the world in financial free fall I don't feel like reading comic mysteries or cozies or even espionage thrillers. I don't want escapism. I long to immerse myself in literature that captures the all-encompassing anxiety of the times. There's only one type of mystery that fits that profile, and that's crime noir: the jittery genre, born during the Great Depression, about saps and grifters who ain't gotta barrel of money and just can't get a break; the genre about a world gone wrong and the greedy bumblers who made it so.
James M. Cain was one of the first writers to explore this little tributary of mystery fiction, and though some followers -- notably Cornell Woolrich, Patricia Highsmith, Jim Thompson and James Ellroy -- have pulled off stories almost as good as Cain's, nobody, at least for my money (fast dwindling though it may be), has ever bested Cain at his best. Pulp morality tales like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce hold their own against any of those highbrow novels the awards committees are always slapping ribbons on.
But there's a new name to add to the pantheon of the sons and daughters of Cain: Dave Zeltserman. If Zeltserman keeps writing novels as terrific as Small Crimes, and if the economy keeps nosediving, he may churn out a corpus that rivals Cain's. Oh, and Small Crimes is a paperback original, so fans don't even have to shell out the big bucks they no longer have for this piece of crime-noir genius.
This tale is told by a first-person narrator who's one of fortune's fools. Joe Denton is a crooked ex-cop in Bradley, Vt., who's just been released from jail after serving seven years for stabbing the local district attorney, Phil Coakley, 13 times in the face with a letter opener. Joe was coked up at the time, and he was rifling the d.a.'s office trying to find documents that fingered him as being part of a police corruption ring. Unfortunately, Phil turned up just as Joe was pouring gasoline around the office. Here's how Joe explains his side of the story:
"The funny thing was I had always liked Phil. I always thought of him as a solid person, a good family man, just an overall decent human being. If I'd had a real knife, like a fishing or hunting knife, I would've killed him that night. The letter opener wasn't sharp enough. I did damage -- Jesus, did I do damage -- but I didn't kill him."
If you're new to the conventions of crime noir, you might well think that Joe sounds like a reasonable guy and that he's ready to start over now that his debt to society has been paid. Wrong. What's past is never past in crime noir. No sooner does Joe step out of the jailhouse than cosmic I.O.U.s begin to rain down on his head. First, the grossly disfigured Phil greets Joe right outside the slammer. Phil perkily breaks the news that Manny Vassey, the local crime kingpin, is dying, has suddenly found religion and is likely to clutch at redemption by confessing his crimes.
Manny's 11th-hour mea culpa could send Joe straight back behind bars, since Joe (a gambler as well as a cokehead) was known to be in debt to Manny (and, thus, in his vile employ). Then Joe gets a "welcome back" phone call from the sheriff, who still runs the ring of crooked cops that once included Joe. The sheriff tells Joe that he needs to finish the job he started in Phil Coakley's office lo those many years ago, because if Manny squawks to Phil about all that's rotten in the little burg of Bradley, Joe's head will roll. What's a loser like Joe to do in a no-win situation like this but go out to the local tavern, where he digs himself into a deeper and deeper mess?
The plot of Small Crimes is a thing of beauty: spare but ingeniously twisted and imbued with a glossy coating of black humor. Zeltserman takes up all the familiar tropes of the formula -- femmes fatales, frighteningly dysfunctional families, self-destructive drives and the death grip of the past -- and shows how infinite are the combinations that can still be played on them.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Gun Work David Schow
I don't remember who said "Protect me from my friends" but that is advice that Barney, the protagonist in David Schow's excellent suspense novel Gun Work, learns way too late.
When Barney's old friend Carl Ledbetter needs help reacquiring his wife Erica who has been kidnapped in Mexico City, he naturally calls his old war buddy and all-around ornery sumbitch Barney to help out.
But what seems simple at first becomes increasingly more complex with enough switchbacks, betrayls and twists to keep the reader eager to find out if Barney will escape his capture and take things up with the gang behind it all.
Schow wrote some of the most original and memorable horror fiction of the Eighties and Nineties. He had his own voice and his own approach to the genre, giving readers unique riffs on familiar tropes while always commenting on the era and its foibles.
In Gun Work all his virtues are on display. The action is relentless, the violence is brutal and the setting almost Third World in its depiction of a society ruled by gun and greed rather than law. And Erica is one dandy piece of work.
Hopefully we'll see more of Schow's new work soon.
When Barney's old friend Carl Ledbetter needs help reacquiring his wife Erica who has been kidnapped in Mexico City, he naturally calls his old war buddy and all-around ornery sumbitch Barney to help out.
But what seems simple at first becomes increasingly more complex with enough switchbacks, betrayls and twists to keep the reader eager to find out if Barney will escape his capture and take things up with the gang behind it all.
Schow wrote some of the most original and memorable horror fiction of the Eighties and Nineties. He had his own voice and his own approach to the genre, giving readers unique riffs on familiar tropes while always commenting on the era and its foibles.
In Gun Work all his virtues are on display. The action is relentless, the violence is brutal and the setting almost Third World in its depiction of a society ruled by gun and greed rather than law. And Erica is one dandy piece of work.
Hopefully we'll see more of Schow's new work soon.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The Handle
Hard to know if a book was a fairly easy go for the writer or if it drove him to drugs and e-porn. I hope The Handle by Richard Stark was a pleasure for Donald Westlake to write because it sure is a pleasure to read.
The Organization has decided that it's tired of this German guy running his big casino on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. He's beyond the jurisdiction of the Feds and it's unlikely Cuba will do much about him. Thus Parker is hired to take the casino and its other buildings down--literally. To blow them up.
Now while The Handle is every bit as tough as Dick Cheney's heart, the hardboiled aspect is played off against the sorriest group of human beings Parker may ever have had to work with. And the sardonic way Westlake portrays them had me laughing out loud at several points.
Take your pick. There's the alcoholic hood who talks as if he's auditioning for a Noel Coward play; the mob gun dealer who had to quit drinking several months ago and has increased both his cigarette intake (four or five packs a day) while maintaining both his cancer cough and his enormous weight; the pedophile who turns out to be a ringer sent to spy in Parker and his friends; the Feds who are so inept both Parker and Grofield play games seeing who can lose their tails the fastest. And then there's the the married Grofield, Parker's professional acting buddy, who never passes up a chance to impose his charms on willing women. In this case he endeavors to put the whammy on the very sexy blonde Parker himself has been shacking up with. Isn't that called bird-dogging?
And then we have Baron Wolfgang Freidrich Kastelbern von Alstein, the man who owns the island and the casino and who, over the years, has managed to make The Third Man's Harry Lime look like a candidate for sainthood. Westlake spends a few pages on the Baron's history and it becomes one of the most fascinating parts of the book, especially his days in Europe during the big war.
The book is filled with the little touches that make the Stark books so memorable. My favorite description comes when Parker and the sexy blonde sit down to a dinner that Westlake describes as "viciously expensive."
A fine fine novel.
The Organization has decided that it's tired of this German guy running his big casino on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. He's beyond the jurisdiction of the Feds and it's unlikely Cuba will do much about him. Thus Parker is hired to take the casino and its other buildings down--literally. To blow them up.
Now while The Handle is every bit as tough as Dick Cheney's heart, the hardboiled aspect is played off against the sorriest group of human beings Parker may ever have had to work with. And the sardonic way Westlake portrays them had me laughing out loud at several points.
Take your pick. There's the alcoholic hood who talks as if he's auditioning for a Noel Coward play; the mob gun dealer who had to quit drinking several months ago and has increased both his cigarette intake (four or five packs a day) while maintaining both his cancer cough and his enormous weight; the pedophile who turns out to be a ringer sent to spy in Parker and his friends; the Feds who are so inept both Parker and Grofield play games seeing who can lose their tails the fastest. And then there's the the married Grofield, Parker's professional acting buddy, who never passes up a chance to impose his charms on willing women. In this case he endeavors to put the whammy on the very sexy blonde Parker himself has been shacking up with. Isn't that called bird-dogging?
And then we have Baron Wolfgang Freidrich Kastelbern von Alstein, the man who owns the island and the casino and who, over the years, has managed to make The Third Man's Harry Lime look like a candidate for sainthood. Westlake spends a few pages on the Baron's history and it becomes one of the most fascinating parts of the book, especially his days in Europe during the big war.
The book is filled with the little touches that make the Stark books so memorable. My favorite description comes when Parker and the sexy blonde sit down to a dinner that Westlake describes as "viciously expensive."
A fine fine novel.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Fast Ships, Black Sails
I came by my love of priate stories dishonestly, not by Robert Louis Stevenson or Rafael Sabatini. I was eight years old when my cousin Bobby Driscoll played the boy in the Disney version of Treasure Island and from then on I became a fan of pirate stories, fiction and non-fiction alike.
Fast Ships, Black Sails edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer is an anthology of short stories that deals with all things piratical and in just about every way imaginable. There is whimsy, there is violence, there is adventure, there is realism, there is fantasy. What is remarkable--and how often can you say this?--there's not a bad one in the bunch. And most of them are excellent.
Of course with a line-up that includes Michael Moorcock, Elizabeth Bear and Naomi Novik it would be difficult to go wrong. I mention these three because I enjoyed their stories the most. But each piece takes an element of pirate legend and gives it new--and sometimes startling--life.
An impressive and enjoyable book for the fireplace nights ahead.
Fast Ships, Black Sails edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer is an anthology of short stories that deals with all things piratical and in just about every way imaginable. There is whimsy, there is violence, there is adventure, there is realism, there is fantasy. What is remarkable--and how often can you say this?--there's not a bad one in the bunch. And most of them are excellent.
Of course with a line-up that includes Michael Moorcock, Elizabeth Bear and Naomi Novik it would be difficult to go wrong. I mention these three because I enjoyed their stories the most. But each piece takes an element of pirate legend and gives it new--and sometimes startling--life.
An impressive and enjoyable book for the fireplace nights ahead.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Michael Chrichton; Gor
Very interesting article in SFGate this morning on Chrichton as genre science fiction writer :
Remembering Michael Crichton
Michael Berry Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The headline Wednesday on the Los Angeles Times Web site was startling: "Michael Crichton, million-selling science-fiction author, dies at 66." Not only because there had been no warning that the youthful-looking novelist, screenwriter, film director and television producer was ill, but because he was being identified so prominently as a writer of science fiction.
Well, of course, right? With "The Andromeda Strain," written while he was attending Harvard Medical School, Crichton updated and inverted H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds." "Sphere" is "Forbidden Planet" transplanted to the ocean floor. "Timeline" plays with temporal paradoxes familiar to anyone who has read Robert A. Heinlein. In "Science Fiction of the 20th Century: An Illustrated History," Frank M. Robinson correctly identifies Crichton as "the most commercially successful science-fiction writer of all time," especially given "Jurassic Park" and its film adaptation and sequels.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/09/RV9L13VGDJ.DTL&type=printable
Remembering Michael Crichton
Michael Berry Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The headline Wednesday on the Los Angeles Times Web site was startling: "Michael Crichton, million-selling science-fiction author, dies at 66." Not only because there had been no warning that the youthful-looking novelist, screenwriter, film director and television producer was ill, but because he was being identified so prominently as a writer of science fiction.
Well, of course, right? With "The Andromeda Strain," written while he was attending Harvard Medical School, Crichton updated and inverted H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds." "Sphere" is "Forbidden Planet" transplanted to the ocean floor. "Timeline" plays with temporal paradoxes familiar to anyone who has read Robert A. Heinlein. In "Science Fiction of the 20th Century: An Illustrated History," Frank M. Robinson correctly identifies Crichton as "the most commercially successful science-fiction writer of all time," especially given "Jurassic Park" and its film adaptation and sequels.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/09/RV9L13VGDJ.DTL&type=printable
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Elvis Mitchell-Edward Norton
Check Turner Classic for a series of hour long interviews that critic Elvis Mitchell is doing with actors. I caught the first one last night. Mitchell does something rare among interviewers--he lets his subject talk at length. There were long periods when Mitchell was neither seen nor heard. The most interesting part of the discussion for me was the Martin Scorcese section. Norton noted that the dark drama Taxi Driver and the black comedy King of Comedy are inter-related thematically. The killer Travis Bickel is one side of the same coin as wanna-be comedian Rupert Pupkin. Both are dealing with the ravages of isolation. Since these are among my top five Scorcese films--and I'd never thought of them as being related--I found his theory fascinating. With a lot of scenes from the movies Norton discusses, the hour is a serious but never pretentious look at the films and actors who have influenced Norton.
Friday, November 07, 2008
William Campbell Gault; Weird Tales
Shamus Winner David Fulmer has an excellent long review of Bill Gault's The Bloody Bokhara on The Rap Sheet tonight. One paragraph is particularly evocative of both Bill and his work:
"Gault was a writer with definite tone. Whether he was dealing in hot cars or hot lead, his brand of grit came from the same shadows of post-World War II America. Playing in both fields, he displayed a deep sense for the dislocation in the shallows of those years. From Midwest dirt tracks on hot Sunday afternoons to a seedy Los Angeles saloon in the wee small hours, the man nailed loners doing brave and often thankless work."
Ed here: I've written about Bill here several times. He's been one of my favorite writers since my teen years in the Fifties and one of my favorite people since meeting him via Mystery Scene in 1984. I probably talked to him twenty times over the years and I liked him all the more every conversation.
He embodied everything I like and admire about the working class and his work is suffused with that. He once spent a long conversation telling me about all the jobs he had before he finally got established full-time as a writer. I can still hear his great cigarette laugh as he told his stories. He was like most of us who write. He saw civilians as people to spy on for the sake of the work. This didn't diminish his fondness for people. I never heard him bitter or jealous. Even when he was telling me about how all the western writers working out of LA (Bill never wrote westerns, just knew these guys) told him stories about how Louis L'Amour would never give anybody blurbs--Why should I help the competition? (L'Amour had the same attitude when he had 75% of all western pb rack space--what competition?) He was laughing his ass off relating this. His usual target was himself and all the things he'd screwed up in his life. You'll find this particular attitude in virtually everything he wrote. "Loners doing brave and of thankless work." per the review.
I want to thank David Fulmer for writing such a eloqent piece. I hope it inspires people to pick up a Bill Gault novel. There are a lot of damned good ones.
--------Weird Tales
What was it that attracted would-be young literary writers back in the Thirties and Forties to try and sell to Weird Tales? Tennessee Williams sold them a story (and a pretty good one) when he was seventeen; Truman Capote tried them several times; and now we learn that no less a figure than Norman Mailer also tried to sell them at least one story.
"Gault was a writer with definite tone. Whether he was dealing in hot cars or hot lead, his brand of grit came from the same shadows of post-World War II America. Playing in both fields, he displayed a deep sense for the dislocation in the shallows of those years. From Midwest dirt tracks on hot Sunday afternoons to a seedy Los Angeles saloon in the wee small hours, the man nailed loners doing brave and often thankless work."
Ed here: I've written about Bill here several times. He's been one of my favorite writers since my teen years in the Fifties and one of my favorite people since meeting him via Mystery Scene in 1984. I probably talked to him twenty times over the years and I liked him all the more every conversation.
He embodied everything I like and admire about the working class and his work is suffused with that. He once spent a long conversation telling me about all the jobs he had before he finally got established full-time as a writer. I can still hear his great cigarette laugh as he told his stories. He was like most of us who write. He saw civilians as people to spy on for the sake of the work. This didn't diminish his fondness for people. I never heard him bitter or jealous. Even when he was telling me about how all the western writers working out of LA (Bill never wrote westerns, just knew these guys) told him stories about how Louis L'Amour would never give anybody blurbs--Why should I help the competition? (L'Amour had the same attitude when he had 75% of all western pb rack space--what competition?) He was laughing his ass off relating this. His usual target was himself and all the things he'd screwed up in his life. You'll find this particular attitude in virtually everything he wrote. "Loners doing brave and of thankless work." per the review.
I want to thank David Fulmer for writing such a eloqent piece. I hope it inspires people to pick up a Bill Gault novel. There are a lot of damned good ones.
--------Weird Tales
What was it that attracted would-be young literary writers back in the Thirties and Forties to try and sell to Weird Tales? Tennessee Williams sold them a story (and a pretty good one) when he was seventeen; Truman Capote tried them several times; and now we learn that no less a figure than Norman Mailer also tried to sell them at least one story.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
James Reasoner
James Reasoner is a fine writer and a fine guy. The Tainted Archive interviewed him the other day following James' annoucement that h'ed just finished book number 225. His recent noir novel Dust Devils ranks among the best crime novels of the past few years.
"JAMES REASONER - HOW THE WEST WAS WROTE
James Reasoner is a highly regarded western writer - his books are tightly plotted with realistic characters and engaging plots. His writing style is pacey and the author is always sure to satisfy anyone looking for a well written western novel to pass away a few hours. As well as westerns he's done crime, thrillers and historical fiction. In fact he's currently responsible for 227 books but that number will probably increase before you've finished this article.
He has written under many different names and you may have read him without realising it - I did - I loved Elmer Kelton's Sons of Texas series and I later discovered James wrote the sixth book in the series, Defiant. Chances are you may have a western lurking in the collection written by Reasoner.
He is a man of many names. A true modern version of the pulp writer.
That's not to say Reasoner's work is light weight - far from it. Everything he writes is the result of a consummate professional at work and he has gained many gleaming critical reviews. He has written at least a couple of crime classics - Dust Devils is amazingly good and stuck around in my mind for weeks after reading and his early crime novel, Texas Wind enjoys cult status with paperback collectors. However for this feature it is his westerns of which we are primarily concerned - His recent series of Deadwood novels, not based on the stunning TV series but on the actual history of the illegal town, are excellent semi-fictions that add more flesh to the characters we've come to know from the TV series. "
for the rest go here:
http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/2008/11/james-reasoner-how-west-was-wrote.html
"JAMES REASONER - HOW THE WEST WAS WROTE
James Reasoner is a highly regarded western writer - his books are tightly plotted with realistic characters and engaging plots. His writing style is pacey and the author is always sure to satisfy anyone looking for a well written western novel to pass away a few hours. As well as westerns he's done crime, thrillers and historical fiction. In fact he's currently responsible for 227 books but that number will probably increase before you've finished this article.
He has written under many different names and you may have read him without realising it - I did - I loved Elmer Kelton's Sons of Texas series and I later discovered James wrote the sixth book in the series, Defiant. Chances are you may have a western lurking in the collection written by Reasoner.
He is a man of many names. A true modern version of the pulp writer.
That's not to say Reasoner's work is light weight - far from it. Everything he writes is the result of a consummate professional at work and he has gained many gleaming critical reviews. He has written at least a couple of crime classics - Dust Devils is amazingly good and stuck around in my mind for weeks after reading and his early crime novel, Texas Wind enjoys cult status with paperback collectors. However for this feature it is his westerns of which we are primarily concerned - His recent series of Deadwood novels, not based on the stunning TV series but on the actual history of the illegal town, are excellent semi-fictions that add more flesh to the characters we've come to know from the TV series. "
for the rest go here:
http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/2008/11/james-reasoner-how-west-was-wrote.html
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Michael Chrichton; Gor
Hard to imagine a more staggering or influential career in popular fiction than that of Michael Chrichton. Jurassic Park alone made him immortal, on film if not in literature. I prefered his early novels, A Case of Need (his Edgar winner as by Jeffery Hudson) being my favorite. I also really amdired The Great Train Robbery--a masterful historical and a damned fine suspense novel. And that's not to forget Wstworld, which is still a lot of fun to watch.
---GOR
Back in the Sixties stoners of the male variety used to sit in college dorms and read passages of John Norman's Gor novels out loud. I knew a few guys who actually believed that they weren't for real, that somebody at the National Lampoon (then at its zenith) was cranking them out as a goof. I mean, they were beyond sexism, delving into (you should pardon the verb) a view of women that was really too insane to take seriously.
Part of the fun of any romantic relationship is the give and take out of which lasting bonds are made. I've been told (and I suspect it's true) that women can be smart, tough, industrious, loving, tender and just sort of wonderful to have around. I even suspect that they can be funny as hell. I also suspect that in most ways they're superior to men (Carol being proof absolute--no kidding there).
I hadn't thought of Norman for many many decades but then he shows up cited on the e-fanzine Ansible:
"John Norman plugs his new Gor novel: 'What man, in his deepest heart, does not want to own a female, to have her for his own, utterly, as a devoted, passionate, vulnerable, mastered slave, and what woman, in her deepest heart, does not want to be so intensely desired, so unqualifiedly and fiercely desired, that nothing less than her absolute ownership will satisfy a male, her master?' "
Ed here: The thing is I no longer believe this old fart is kidding.
---GOR
Back in the Sixties stoners of the male variety used to sit in college dorms and read passages of John Norman's Gor novels out loud. I knew a few guys who actually believed that they weren't for real, that somebody at the National Lampoon (then at its zenith) was cranking them out as a goof. I mean, they were beyond sexism, delving into (you should pardon the verb) a view of women that was really too insane to take seriously.
Part of the fun of any romantic relationship is the give and take out of which lasting bonds are made. I've been told (and I suspect it's true) that women can be smart, tough, industrious, loving, tender and just sort of wonderful to have around. I even suspect that they can be funny as hell. I also suspect that in most ways they're superior to men (Carol being proof absolute--no kidding there).
I hadn't thought of Norman for many many decades but then he shows up cited on the e-fanzine Ansible:
"John Norman plugs his new Gor novel: 'What man, in his deepest heart, does not want to own a female, to have her for his own, utterly, as a devoted, passionate, vulnerable, mastered slave, and what woman, in her deepest heart, does not want to be so intensely desired, so unqualifiedly and fiercely desired, that nothing less than her absolute ownership will satisfy a male, her master?' "
Ed here: The thing is I no longer believe this old fart is kidding.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
News
Congratulations to my buddy Tom Piccirilli for winning a slot on Amazon’s Ten Best Crime and Suspense Novels of 2008
The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli
Congratulations to my friends Carolyn Hart-Margaret Maron
The PW List of Year’s Best Mysteries 2008
Wild Inferno
Sandi Ault (Berkley Prime Crime)
Ault smoothly blends a murder mystery plot with Native American lore in this impressive sequel to her debut, Wild Indigo.
Lie Down with the Devil
Linda Barnes (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Boston PI Carlotta Carlyle suspects her mob-associated fiancé of infidelity after he disappears in this utterly compelling 12th outing.
Ghost at Work
Carolyn Hart (Morrow)
A ghost turns sleuth in this intriguing first in a new series by veteran Hart, who's won Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards.
The Private Patient
P.D. James (Knopf)
Adam Dalgliesh, the charismatic police commander, investigates a private plastic surgery clinic after the murder of a patient in what fans will hope is not his last case.
The Messengers of Death: A Mystery in Provence
Pierre Magnan, trans. from the French by Patricia Clancy (St. Martin's Minotaur)
French author Magnan blends elegant clue-laying and deft characterizations that strike to the core of human frailties in his second mystery set in Provence.
Death's Half Acre
Margaret Maron (Grand Central)
Corruption and murder stalk rural Colleton County, N.C., in Maron's outstanding 14th mystery to feature Judge Deborah Knott and her extended family.
Salt River
James Sallis (Walker)
Poetic prose and the richly described rural Southern backdrop lift Sallis's sublime third novel to feature philosophical sheriff John Turner.
Fear of Landing
David Waltner-Toews (Poisoned Pen)
Set in the repressive Indonesia of the early 1980s, this compelling debut introduces an unlikely detective, a Canadian veterinarian.
The Calling
Inger Ash Wolfe
(Harcourt)
In this bracingly original mystery set in rural Ontario, a middle-aged female police inspector investigates the murder of an elderly cancer patient.
Two sequels to Road To Perdition planned
Posted in: Movie News
Author: Paul Heath
Nov 2, 2008 - 8:08:49 PM
vote nowBuzz up!
"Road to Perdition," the Oscar-winning 2002 film directed by Sam Mendes that starred Tom Hanks, Jude Law, Daniel Craig and the late Paul Newman, is becoming a trilogy. The follow-up films are "Road to Purgatory" and "Road to Paradise."
"Road to Purgatory" will follow the character of Michael Sullivan, Jr., the son of Tom Hanks' character in the original film, who returns from World War II with a new determination to avenge his murdered father. His quest ultimately leads him to Frank Nitti, whom he is urged to kill on the orders of Al Capone. The second sequel will follow Sullivan's continued plight.
Pic will be helmed by Max Allan Collins, who has also penned the screenplay, in his directorial debut. Executive producer is Illinois-based Phillip W. Dingeldein.
Jeffrey B. Mallian's JBM Production Company is producing with Joel Eisenberg and EMO Films. Mallian's credits include "Over the Line," "Leprechaun" and "Angel Eyes." EMO Films recently wrapped the Columbine-themed "April Showers." Upcoming projects include "Cage of Stars," based on the New York Times Bestseller, and "Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines," a biopic of the titular comic book publisher, with John Landis. Eisenberg is a partner in EMO Films, with Timothy Owens.
“Road to Purgatory” will be dedicated to Paul Newman.
The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli
Congratulations to my friends Carolyn Hart-Margaret Maron
The PW List of Year’s Best Mysteries 2008
Wild Inferno
Sandi Ault (Berkley Prime Crime)
Ault smoothly blends a murder mystery plot with Native American lore in this impressive sequel to her debut, Wild Indigo.
Lie Down with the Devil
Linda Barnes (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Boston PI Carlotta Carlyle suspects her mob-associated fiancé of infidelity after he disappears in this utterly compelling 12th outing.
Ghost at Work
Carolyn Hart (Morrow)
A ghost turns sleuth in this intriguing first in a new series by veteran Hart, who's won Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards.
The Private Patient
P.D. James (Knopf)
Adam Dalgliesh, the charismatic police commander, investigates a private plastic surgery clinic after the murder of a patient in what fans will hope is not his last case.
The Messengers of Death: A Mystery in Provence
Pierre Magnan, trans. from the French by Patricia Clancy (St. Martin's Minotaur)
French author Magnan blends elegant clue-laying and deft characterizations that strike to the core of human frailties in his second mystery set in Provence.
Death's Half Acre
Margaret Maron (Grand Central)
Corruption and murder stalk rural Colleton County, N.C., in Maron's outstanding 14th mystery to feature Judge Deborah Knott and her extended family.
Salt River
James Sallis (Walker)
Poetic prose and the richly described rural Southern backdrop lift Sallis's sublime third novel to feature philosophical sheriff John Turner.
Fear of Landing
David Waltner-Toews (Poisoned Pen)
Set in the repressive Indonesia of the early 1980s, this compelling debut introduces an unlikely detective, a Canadian veterinarian.
The Calling
Inger Ash Wolfe
(Harcourt)
In this bracingly original mystery set in rural Ontario, a middle-aged female police inspector investigates the murder of an elderly cancer patient.
Two sequels to Road To Perdition planned
Posted in: Movie News
Author: Paul Heath
Nov 2, 2008 - 8:08:49 PM
vote nowBuzz up!
"Road to Perdition," the Oscar-winning 2002 film directed by Sam Mendes that starred Tom Hanks, Jude Law, Daniel Craig and the late Paul Newman, is becoming a trilogy. The follow-up films are "Road to Purgatory" and "Road to Paradise."
"Road to Purgatory" will follow the character of Michael Sullivan, Jr., the son of Tom Hanks' character in the original film, who returns from World War II with a new determination to avenge his murdered father. His quest ultimately leads him to Frank Nitti, whom he is urged to kill on the orders of Al Capone. The second sequel will follow Sullivan's continued plight.
Pic will be helmed by Max Allan Collins, who has also penned the screenplay, in his directorial debut. Executive producer is Illinois-based Phillip W. Dingeldein.
Jeffrey B. Mallian's JBM Production Company is producing with Joel Eisenberg and EMO Films. Mallian's credits include "Over the Line," "Leprechaun" and "Angel Eyes." EMO Films recently wrapped the Columbine-themed "April Showers." Upcoming projects include "Cage of Stars," based on the New York Times Bestseller, and "Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines," a biopic of the titular comic book publisher, with John Landis. Eisenberg is a partner in EMO Films, with Timothy Owens.
“Road to Purgatory” will be dedicated to Paul Newman.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Studs Terkel
Ed here--mediabistro offered a Studs Terkel quote this morning that demonstrates how true and brave and irreplacable the man was.
In 1997, Studs Terkel blamed journalists and writers for sugar-coating the first Gulf War: "Our most prestigious journals found the horrors visited by our smart bombs upon Iraqi women and kids news not fit to print. It is no secret that our media -- TV and radio, owned by the same Big Boys, compounding the obscenity -- played the role of bat boys to the sluggers of the Pentagon."
In 1997, Studs Terkel blamed journalists and writers for sugar-coating the first Gulf War: "Our most prestigious journals found the horrors visited by our smart bombs upon Iraqi women and kids news not fit to print. It is no secret that our media -- TV and radio, owned by the same Big Boys, compounding the obscenity -- played the role of bat boys to the sluggers of the Pentagon."
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Lost TV
According to ABC, more than 200 made-for-TV mystery movies were telecast during the 1973-1974 season alone. To save on production costs, these cheapies were shot very quickly on videotape instead of 35mm film and ran only around 70 minutes. Despite the small budgets and audiences, ABC attracted many popular television actors to star in these mysteries, which probably took only a few days to shoot: Christopher George, Michael Parks, Julie Newmar, Meredith Baxter, John Vernon, John Astin, Claude Akins, Fritz Weaver, Anne Francis and Tim Matheson, just to name a few. None of them ever air on television these days, and very few made it to home video. Some of them may no longer exist, as it was common then for networks to erase videotaped programming so they could reuse the tapes, which is why many game shows and even the first ten years of THE TONIGHT SHOW no longer exist.
for the rest go here
http://craneshot.blogspot.com/
A few days ago Marty McCee (above) wrote a piece about the CBS series of the early 70s that is mostly lost to time. This made me think about a book from the late 70s I look through from time to time.
The American Vein: Directions and Directors in Television by Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi evaluates the contributions to tv drama of the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies by such directors as Sydney Pollack, Robert Aldrich, Bob Rafelson, Steven Speilberg, Budd Boetticher, Don Siegel and many, many more.
To be sure, much of tv deserved(s) its "vast wasteland" knock but the writers here make a convinaing case for many of the episodic series and original movies that are lost to film vaults, much like so many of the silent films and a fair share of the talkies right on up through the Forties.
What I like about the book is how its tough-mined evaluation of directorial careers make its recommendations all the more persuasive. There are a lot of black and white shows I'd love to check out again.
for the rest go here
http://craneshot.blogspot.com/
A few days ago Marty McCee (above) wrote a piece about the CBS series of the early 70s that is mostly lost to time. This made me think about a book from the late 70s I look through from time to time.
The American Vein: Directions and Directors in Television by Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi evaluates the contributions to tv drama of the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies by such directors as Sydney Pollack, Robert Aldrich, Bob Rafelson, Steven Speilberg, Budd Boetticher, Don Siegel and many, many more.
To be sure, much of tv deserved(s) its "vast wasteland" knock but the writers here make a convinaing case for many of the episodic series and original movies that are lost to film vaults, much like so many of the silent films and a fair share of the talkies right on up through the Forties.
What I like about the book is how its tough-mined evaluation of directorial careers make its recommendations all the more persuasive. There are a lot of black and white shows I'd love to check out again.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Frederic Brown
Yes, I had an epiphany last night. Honest. I was re-reading one of my favorite Fredric Brown novels, The Deep End, and I realized suddenly why I've always felt such a spiritual closeness to his crime fiction.
I had a paper route when I was twelve and thirteen. I delivered in the neighborhood where I lived, a working class quadrant of the small city packed with bars. The men and women in the bars always liked to treat to me a bottle of pop or a game of shuffleboard or pool. We were all Micks from the same parish.
I can't say I got to know any but a few of them personally. But I did have an understanding of them as an aggregate, especially the men who were in their twenties, their fates already sealed by families, lack of college education and, in most cases, a compliance with the wishes of the gods (Lovecraft's gods to my mind).
The bar was their escape. My favorite bar was part of a seedy hotel. The owner liked hillbilly music and he put all of Elvis' Sun records on it as early as 1955 before Elvis was widely known. Same with Johnny Cash. A very cool place.
I overheard stories. Men fighting with their wives; men stepping out on their wives; men who couldn't pay their bills and were heavy into loan companies already. Some of the men blue collar, some of men lower-echelon white collar. There were fights sometimes; wives occasionally appeared and hauled their humiliated husbands out of the places. The great tragedy was the much-decorated Marine who'd fought in Korea. Popular high school basketball player, happy hard-working good looking guy who was crazy about his wife and brought her in frequently, lovely frail Irish girl-woman. He got killed in a highway accident and his wife (true facts) set herself on fire in grief.
Lives significant only to them and their kind (my kind).
And while I was reading The Deep End last night (a novel so redolent of Fifties morality it could be used in a sociology text book, even though it takes enormous liberties with the sexual mores of the time, the love affair here a knockout) I realized that I like Brown so much (I was already reading him back then) because he wrote about my neighborhood and my people. Most of his crime novels, I know now, are filled with the men and women in the bars on my old paper route.
I keep hearing about how Brown's Coming Back. I sure hope that's true.
I had a paper route when I was twelve and thirteen. I delivered in the neighborhood where I lived, a working class quadrant of the small city packed with bars. The men and women in the bars always liked to treat to me a bottle of pop or a game of shuffleboard or pool. We were all Micks from the same parish.
I can't say I got to know any but a few of them personally. But I did have an understanding of them as an aggregate, especially the men who were in their twenties, their fates already sealed by families, lack of college education and, in most cases, a compliance with the wishes of the gods (Lovecraft's gods to my mind).
The bar was their escape. My favorite bar was part of a seedy hotel. The owner liked hillbilly music and he put all of Elvis' Sun records on it as early as 1955 before Elvis was widely known. Same with Johnny Cash. A very cool place.
I overheard stories. Men fighting with their wives; men stepping out on their wives; men who couldn't pay their bills and were heavy into loan companies already. Some of the men blue collar, some of men lower-echelon white collar. There were fights sometimes; wives occasionally appeared and hauled their humiliated husbands out of the places. The great tragedy was the much-decorated Marine who'd fought in Korea. Popular high school basketball player, happy hard-working good looking guy who was crazy about his wife and brought her in frequently, lovely frail Irish girl-woman. He got killed in a highway accident and his wife (true facts) set herself on fire in grief.
Lives significant only to them and their kind (my kind).
And while I was reading The Deep End last night (a novel so redolent of Fifties morality it could be used in a sociology text book, even though it takes enormous liberties with the sexual mores of the time, the love affair here a knockout) I realized that I like Brown so much (I was already reading him back then) because he wrote about my neighborhood and my people. Most of his crime novels, I know now, are filled with the men and women in the bars on my old paper route.
I keep hearing about how Brown's Coming Back. I sure hope that's true.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Van Damme Returns
I was never much of a Jean-Claude Van Damme fan. Action movies tend to put me to sleep and the only one I saw Van Damme in didn't do much for me (as I recall).
But I have to say he's come up with an interesting comeback vehicle--much more interesting than just grinding out another predictable `splosion movie.
From USA Today's Pop Candy:
"What's it like to be Van Damme?
"Have you heard about the new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? It looks really good.
"I write that without a hint of sarcasm or irony. Van Damme's latest flick, JCVD, is a bit different than the typical bloody, shoot-'em-up fare he's associated with. For starters, the action star plays himself -- and it's a pretty worn-down version of Van Damme at that.
"In the movie, the 47-year-old actor is hounded by fans and has just lost a role to Steven Seagal. He returns to Brussels and faces a (fictional) custody battle for his daughter and mounting financial problems."
Ed here: This sounds worth a look.
But I have to say he's come up with an interesting comeback vehicle--much more interesting than just grinding out another predictable `splosion movie.
From USA Today's Pop Candy:
"What's it like to be Van Damme?
"Have you heard about the new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? It looks really good.
"I write that without a hint of sarcasm or irony. Van Damme's latest flick, JCVD, is a bit different than the typical bloody, shoot-'em-up fare he's associated with. For starters, the action star plays himself -- and it's a pretty worn-down version of Van Damme at that.
"In the movie, the 47-year-old actor is hounded by fans and has just lost a role to Steven Seagal. He returns to Brussels and faces a (fictional) custody battle for his daughter and mounting financial problems."
Ed here: This sounds worth a look.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Worst sidekicks
If Bill Crider and James Reasoner and I were to sit down and discuss sidekicks we'd likely bring up the great Gabby Hayes and work our way down to Fuzzy St. John (I always felt sorry for him; even as a kid I knew he was lame) and the aggravating Smiley Burnette. (My opinions only--Bill and James may disgaree.)
But for younger folks here's a funny piece I ran across from Empire magazine online--10 Worst Sidekicks. I have to admit they make ole Fuzzy and Smiley look positively Oscar-worthy.
http://www.empireonline.com/features/top10/worst_sidekicks.asp?NID=23032
But for younger folks here's a funny piece I ran across from Empire magazine online--10 Worst Sidekicks. I have to admit they make ole Fuzzy and Smiley look positively Oscar-worthy.
http://www.empireonline.com/features/top10/worst_sidekicks.asp?NID=23032
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
LU DOULOS; A.A. Fair; John Updike
From Fred Blosser
Ed, I see that Criterion has just released Jean-Pierre Melville's LE
DOULOS (1963) on DVD. My capsule review from MYSTERY SCENE #70, based
on the 2001 VHS edition, might be of interest for those who may not have
seen the movie:
"Silien (Jean Paul Belmondo) is a Parisian 'finger man' who steers
robbers and safecrackers toward potential jobs. Some of his associates
suspect that he's also in the gendarmes' pay as an informant. Therese
doesn't like it that this slippery character is pals with her boyfriend
Maurice, a thief preparing for a big score. 'He plays cozy, and you
tell him everything,' she frowns. Responds Maurice, 'Silien's my friend
until I know different.' Maybe his trust is unwisely placed. While
Maurice is out on his heist, Silien comes calling on Therese and roughs
her up until she tells him where Maurice is operating. Moments later,
the cops interrupt the score, gun down Maurice's partner as the thieves
flee, and nearly nab Maurice himself. Did Silien double-cross his
friend? Jean-Pierre Melville's LE DOULOS, newly reissued on home video
by Kino, loops through 50 or so twists and turns until Melville finally
reveals the answer. This hardboiled noir from 1963 is one of
Melville's best, served up in a style so cool that it's beyond cool.
The videocassette's visual quality isn't up to Kino's usual high
standards, but if it's a choice between less than perfectly packaged
Melville or no Melville, I'll still put my money down."
I haven't seen the Criterion disc yet -- but given Criterion's high
standards, the fact that a new 35mm print of LE DOULOS was struck a
couple of years ago, and my guess that the DVD was burned from the new
print, I anticipate that the disc will have much sharper detail and much
richer blacks, whites, and grays than the old VHS tape, even above and
beyond the basic superiority of DVD to VHS. I may be one of the few
fans who think that LE DOULOS surpasses LE SAMOURAI, which most critics
seem to feel was Melville's masterpiece.
By the way, looking for the LE DOULOS review, I glanced through MYSTERY
SCENE #61 and noticed my review of Robert Benton's TWILIGHT (1997), not
to be confused with the later Stephanie Meyer teen vampire novel. When
Paul Newman died recently, I remembered that while TWILIGHT had received
generally good notices, I wasn't greatly impressed. My review reminded
me of a key weakness: "... the script ... never gets a good fix on
Harry Ross' character [Ross was the retired private eye played by
Newman] except to the extent that it tries to make him an object of the
audience's pity. Bad mistake. In the performances that we remember him
for, Newman never had to beg for sympathy, never wanted to." William F.
Nolan once said he enjoyed Ross Macdonald's earliest Lew Archer novels
more than the later ones, because the later, older Archer was like the
younger Archer's grandfather. Even so, it's a pity that the aging but
persistently hard-nosed Archer of THE INSTANT ENEMY or THE BLUE HAMMER
couldn't have been Newman's PI swan song.
Fred
-----------------------------------A.A. FAIR
Bruce Grossman posted one of his nifty oldies review columns on Bookgasm this morning.
As I've said here many times my favorite Erle Stanley Gardner series ifsthe A.A. Fair books, especially those written in the Forties. A number of prominent writers showed their influence down the years but nobody did them quite las well as Gardner--screwball comedy-mysteries filled with Gardner's cynical take on American business and businessmen.
Here's Bruce:
BATS FLY AT DUSK by Erle Stanley Gardner — This is not your typical Cool & Lam mystery, since Donald Lam is nowhere to be found. We’re told he signed up for the Navy, which is fitting since this book was written in 1942. He makes somewhat of an appearance through a few telegrams, but that’s all. This one is all about Bertha Cool taking center stage.
The story deals with a blind man who sells ties on the street, trying to find a woman he knows got hurt in an accident. But what Bertha gets herself into is more trouble than she expects, becoming the prime suspect in a case that develops. All the blind man wanted was a name and to make sure the girl was okay, but this story takes a turn that keeps readers guessing until a great reveal toward the end.
for the rest go here:
http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/bullets-broads-blackmail-bombs-halloween-decorations/#more-5085
-------------------------------JOHN UPDIKE
An excellent NPR interview with John Updike (yes I still read and admire him). His almost mournful defense of realism ("the beauty of the everday") certainly rang true with me. He wasn't bitter; he simply wished there was still a place for fiction that didn't include "heroism" or melodrama.
Ed, I see that Criterion has just released Jean-Pierre Melville's LE
DOULOS (1963) on DVD. My capsule review from MYSTERY SCENE #70, based
on the 2001 VHS edition, might be of interest for those who may not have
seen the movie:
"Silien (Jean Paul Belmondo) is a Parisian 'finger man' who steers
robbers and safecrackers toward potential jobs. Some of his associates
suspect that he's also in the gendarmes' pay as an informant. Therese
doesn't like it that this slippery character is pals with her boyfriend
Maurice, a thief preparing for a big score. 'He plays cozy, and you
tell him everything,' she frowns. Responds Maurice, 'Silien's my friend
until I know different.' Maybe his trust is unwisely placed. While
Maurice is out on his heist, Silien comes calling on Therese and roughs
her up until she tells him where Maurice is operating. Moments later,
the cops interrupt the score, gun down Maurice's partner as the thieves
flee, and nearly nab Maurice himself. Did Silien double-cross his
friend? Jean-Pierre Melville's LE DOULOS, newly reissued on home video
by Kino, loops through 50 or so twists and turns until Melville finally
reveals the answer. This hardboiled noir from 1963 is one of
Melville's best, served up in a style so cool that it's beyond cool.
The videocassette's visual quality isn't up to Kino's usual high
standards, but if it's a choice between less than perfectly packaged
Melville or no Melville, I'll still put my money down."
I haven't seen the Criterion disc yet -- but given Criterion's high
standards, the fact that a new 35mm print of LE DOULOS was struck a
couple of years ago, and my guess that the DVD was burned from the new
print, I anticipate that the disc will have much sharper detail and much
richer blacks, whites, and grays than the old VHS tape, even above and
beyond the basic superiority of DVD to VHS. I may be one of the few
fans who think that LE DOULOS surpasses LE SAMOURAI, which most critics
seem to feel was Melville's masterpiece.
By the way, looking for the LE DOULOS review, I glanced through MYSTERY
SCENE #61 and noticed my review of Robert Benton's TWILIGHT (1997), not
to be confused with the later Stephanie Meyer teen vampire novel. When
Paul Newman died recently, I remembered that while TWILIGHT had received
generally good notices, I wasn't greatly impressed. My review reminded
me of a key weakness: "... the script ... never gets a good fix on
Harry Ross' character [Ross was the retired private eye played by
Newman] except to the extent that it tries to make him an object of the
audience's pity. Bad mistake. In the performances that we remember him
for, Newman never had to beg for sympathy, never wanted to." William F.
Nolan once said he enjoyed Ross Macdonald's earliest Lew Archer novels
more than the later ones, because the later, older Archer was like the
younger Archer's grandfather. Even so, it's a pity that the aging but
persistently hard-nosed Archer of THE INSTANT ENEMY or THE BLUE HAMMER
couldn't have been Newman's PI swan song.
Fred
-----------------------------------A.A. FAIR
Bruce Grossman posted one of his nifty oldies review columns on Bookgasm this morning.
As I've said here many times my favorite Erle Stanley Gardner series ifsthe A.A. Fair books, especially those written in the Forties. A number of prominent writers showed their influence down the years but nobody did them quite las well as Gardner--screwball comedy-mysteries filled with Gardner's cynical take on American business and businessmen.
Here's Bruce:
BATS FLY AT DUSK by Erle Stanley Gardner — This is not your typical Cool & Lam mystery, since Donald Lam is nowhere to be found. We’re told he signed up for the Navy, which is fitting since this book was written in 1942. He makes somewhat of an appearance through a few telegrams, but that’s all. This one is all about Bertha Cool taking center stage.
The story deals with a blind man who sells ties on the street, trying to find a woman he knows got hurt in an accident. But what Bertha gets herself into is more trouble than she expects, becoming the prime suspect in a case that develops. All the blind man wanted was a name and to make sure the girl was okay, but this story takes a turn that keeps readers guessing until a great reveal toward the end.
for the rest go here:
http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/bullets-broads-blackmail-bombs-halloween-decorations/#more-5085
-------------------------------JOHN UPDIKE
An excellent NPR interview with John Updike (yes I still read and admire him). His almost mournful defense of realism ("the beauty of the everday") certainly rang true with me. He wasn't bitter; he simply wished there was still a place for fiction that didn't include "heroism" or melodrama.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Lunch
We had a three hour lunch with Barb and Al (Max) Collins and Marthayn Peligrimas and Bob Randisi. One of the highlights of my year, no kidding. We laughed about everything except the publishing business. Not much to laugh about there. We're among the lucky ones with work. Many of our friends who started out in the late seventies and early eighties have long left the writing field. The Private Eye Writers of America did a roast of Bob, I got to hear many of the stories told about him. I kicked in a few of my own. Bob has just finished the screenplay based on his first (and very popular) Rat Pack novel about Sinatra and the boys in `60s Vegas. Barb brought the new hardcover she'd done with Al, a really sly wry traditional about the antiques business. Carol talked about the novel she's working on--her best (I've read a big chunk of it). I'm hoping Marthayn has a story for m to read when and if we sell the next Year's Best. I say what I always say about Al--the funniest guy I've ever known. He talked about writing the The Goliath Bone, his collaboration with Mickey Spillane. In my review here I mentioned how it managed to be compelling in a modern way but also nostalgic for people who grew up on Mickey. Wish I had a day like this once a week.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Tony Hillerman; Sleeping Dogs
What there's to say? Tony Hillerman was one of the great writers and great gentlemen of mystery fiction. Sarah Weinman has an excellent round-up of respones to his death. http://www.sarahweinman.com/
I thought the Christian Science Monitor's was especially good.
In appreciation of Tony Hillerman
By Marjorie Kehe | 10.27.08
E-mail a friend
“Tony Hillerman’s place alongside such great mystery writers as Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is certain,” wrote Monitor Book editor Jim Bencivenga in 1997. Today, as readers worldwide mourn Hillerman’s death at the age of 83, there are many who would agree.
Hillerman wrote “lyrical, authentic and compelling mystery novels set among the Navajos of the Southwest,” books that “blazed innovative trails in the American detective story,” writes Marilyn Stasio in an obituary in today’s International Herald Tribune. “Hillerman’s evocative novels, which describe people struggling to maintain ancient traditions in the modern world, touched millions of readers, who made them best sellers.”
Hillerman’s childhood prepared him well for the books that would eventually make him famous. Born in Sacred Heart, Okla., in 1925, he grew up surrounded by native Americans and their culture. Eventually he landed in New Mexico, where he worked as a journalist till the age of 40 when, restless, he decided to try his hand at writing fiction.
for the rest go here
http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2008/10/27/in-appreciation-of-tony-hillerman/
--------------SLEEPING DOGS
My novel Sleeping Dogs will soon be available on audio. Here are the details:
http://speakingvolumes.us/detail.asp?pid=95
I thought the Christian Science Monitor's was especially good.
In appreciation of Tony Hillerman
By Marjorie Kehe | 10.27.08
E-mail a friend
“Tony Hillerman’s place alongside such great mystery writers as Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is certain,” wrote Monitor Book editor Jim Bencivenga in 1997. Today, as readers worldwide mourn Hillerman’s death at the age of 83, there are many who would agree.
Hillerman wrote “lyrical, authentic and compelling mystery novels set among the Navajos of the Southwest,” books that “blazed innovative trails in the American detective story,” writes Marilyn Stasio in an obituary in today’s International Herald Tribune. “Hillerman’s evocative novels, which describe people struggling to maintain ancient traditions in the modern world, touched millions of readers, who made them best sellers.”
Hillerman’s childhood prepared him well for the books that would eventually make him famous. Born in Sacred Heart, Okla., in 1925, he grew up surrounded by native Americans and their culture. Eventually he landed in New Mexico, where he worked as a journalist till the age of 40 when, restless, he decided to try his hand at writing fiction.
for the rest go here
http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2008/10/27/in-appreciation-of-tony-hillerman/
--------------SLEEPING DOGS
My novel Sleeping Dogs will soon be available on audio. Here are the details:
http://speakingvolumes.us/detail.asp?pid=95
Sunday, October 26, 2008
David L. Ulin; Todd Mason
David L. Ulin Book editor of The Los Angeles Times wrote an interesting piece on what our national ecoonomic catastrophe may mean for the publishing business. He's more optomistic than I am but it's a different take.
"(Neyfakh's) piece went on to suggest that, with money getting tight, publishers might start to consider only books or writers they see as sure things, and that for lesser-known talent -- the so-called mid-list authors -- "the advances are going to be lower and it will be that much harder to sell them."
"Maybe so, although this is hardly a new argument; I've been listening to it for 20 years.
"What's more likely, I think, is that publishers will scale back some of their higher-end advances, especially in regard to certain risky properties: books blown out of magazine stories, over-hyped first novels, multi-platform "synergies." At least, I hope that's what happens, because one of the worst trends in publishing -- in culture in general -- over the last decade or so has been its air of desperate frenzy, which far more than falling numbers tells you that an industry is in decline."
for the rest go here
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-ulin26-2008oct26,0,5551013.story
----------TODD MASON
Where has Todd been lately? Haven't heard from him in a couple of months.
"(Neyfakh's) piece went on to suggest that, with money getting tight, publishers might start to consider only books or writers they see as sure things, and that for lesser-known talent -- the so-called mid-list authors -- "the advances are going to be lower and it will be that much harder to sell them."
"Maybe so, although this is hardly a new argument; I've been listening to it for 20 years.
"What's more likely, I think, is that publishers will scale back some of their higher-end advances, especially in regard to certain risky properties: books blown out of magazine stories, over-hyped first novels, multi-platform "synergies." At least, I hope that's what happens, because one of the worst trends in publishing -- in culture in general -- over the last decade or so has been its air of desperate frenzy, which far more than falling numbers tells you that an industry is in decline."
for the rest go here
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-ulin26-2008oct26,0,5551013.story
----------TODD MASON
Where has Todd been lately? Haven't heard from him in a couple of months.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Norm Partridge on movies
Further comments on Touch of Evil:
Norm Partridge:
It really amazes me all the stuff Hollywood threw out. Of course, I wouldn't have expected anyone to anticipate DVDs with all those extra features, but jeeze. It would have been nice to see some of this stuff uncut, as the director originally intended it. But it seems like (mostly) the studios just buried all the footage that wasn't in the final release print in landfills. Maybe that's what's under Burbank.
And, for my money, Universal was the worst. I love those old monster movies especially. Have heard about missing scenes/test color footage for SON OF FRANKENSTEIN/Lugosi's screen test as the monster for the original FRANK/alternate cut of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN in which Lugosi's monster talks.... all that stuff FOR YEARS. And Universal keeps releasing different editons, and wait a sec--this time even a specialer edition--but they don't seem to have a single frame of that stuff. It's just a crying shame that they tossed EVERYTHING. I get upset just clicking over to the special features on their discs. I know that all I'm going to get is a half hour of talking heads (their A&C MEETS FRANK disc doesn't even have the outtakes that you can find on Youtube, fer chrissakes!).
The Warner Brothers discs are almost uniformly fun, though. Even if they don't have a lot of extra material that ties into the movie, I always get a kick out of the Warner Night at the Movies features. Great to see those old short subjects and cartoons, and they really help get me in the mood for the main feature.
What surprised me is that TOUCH OF EVIL also got really bad press when it was released. I love that movie to pieces (even with Fritz Weaver's character being so annoyingly nervous and wacky). Also really dig THE STRANGER even though Welles thought it was his least important film (it was apparently his only truly successful one too). CITIZEN CANE helped to establish a lot of the noir mood that crime pics eventually became known for. If the man had stuck to crime early on out of the gate and actually embraced the genre, I wonder if he would've been truly embraced by the public.
I love TOUCH OF EVIL, too. Even Chuck Heston as a Mexican. In a twisted way, it's fun to check out first-round reviews like that. I came across one for Charles Beaumont's THE HUNGER AND OTHER STORIES awhile back that pretty much carved it up. I'm sure a lot of the fifties guys had reviews like that (if they got reviewed at all). One book I've always been curious about is I AM LEGEND. I'd like to go back and see what folks made of that when it first came out. I think it was a pb original, so I'll bet it didn't get too much coverage, but it would be fun to investigate.
Norm
Norm Partridge:
It really amazes me all the stuff Hollywood threw out. Of course, I wouldn't have expected anyone to anticipate DVDs with all those extra features, but jeeze. It would have been nice to see some of this stuff uncut, as the director originally intended it. But it seems like (mostly) the studios just buried all the footage that wasn't in the final release print in landfills. Maybe that's what's under Burbank.
And, for my money, Universal was the worst. I love those old monster movies especially. Have heard about missing scenes/test color footage for SON OF FRANKENSTEIN/Lugosi's screen test as the monster for the original FRANK/alternate cut of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN in which Lugosi's monster talks.... all that stuff FOR YEARS. And Universal keeps releasing different editons, and wait a sec--this time even a specialer edition--but they don't seem to have a single frame of that stuff. It's just a crying shame that they tossed EVERYTHING. I get upset just clicking over to the special features on their discs. I know that all I'm going to get is a half hour of talking heads (their A&C MEETS FRANK disc doesn't even have the outtakes that you can find on Youtube, fer chrissakes!).
The Warner Brothers discs are almost uniformly fun, though. Even if they don't have a lot of extra material that ties into the movie, I always get a kick out of the Warner Night at the Movies features. Great to see those old short subjects and cartoons, and they really help get me in the mood for the main feature.
What surprised me is that TOUCH OF EVIL also got really bad press when it was released. I love that movie to pieces (even with Fritz Weaver's character being so annoyingly nervous and wacky). Also really dig THE STRANGER even though Welles thought it was his least important film (it was apparently his only truly successful one too). CITIZEN CANE helped to establish a lot of the noir mood that crime pics eventually became known for. If the man had stuck to crime early on out of the gate and actually embraced the genre, I wonder if he would've been truly embraced by the public.
I love TOUCH OF EVIL, too. Even Chuck Heston as a Mexican. In a twisted way, it's fun to check out first-round reviews like that. I came across one for Charles Beaumont's THE HUNGER AND OTHER STORIES awhile back that pretty much carved it up. I'm sure a lot of the fifties guys had reviews like that (if they got reviewed at all). One book I've always been curious about is I AM LEGEND. I'd like to go back and see what folks made of that when it first came out. I think it was a pb original, so I'll bet it didn't get too much coverage, but it would be fun to investigate.
Norm
Friday, October 24, 2008
Sarah Weinman; Tom Piccirilli
Sarah Weinman's Sunday LA Times review discusses a man few if any of us have heard of previously. A fascinating and important piece.
Rediscovering early fictional America detective James Brampton
By Sarah Weinman
October 26, 2008
It is a truth universally acknowledged that after Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious death in 1849, detective fiction did not make another splash on these shores until a pipe-smoking Englishman with remarkable powers of deduction became a transatlantic sensation...
(more)
.. but mystery readers looking for immediate literary successors to Poe's dark tales of detection would have to resign themselves to a vacuum of time until Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins' gothic-tinged detective novels showed up on the scene.
(more)
Acknowledged truths, however, have a funny way of being flouted. The recent reissue of a series of detective tales published more than 20 years before "A Study in Scarlet" (Doyle's first Holmes tale) appeared in 1887 adds a welcome link to the chain connecting the early masters of detective fiction. "
for the rest go here
times.com/features/books/la-caw-dark-passages26-2008oct26,0,3963325.story
-----Tom Piccirilli
Ed here: I our recent exchange of letters about Robert Ryan (previous post) Norm Partridge and I recommended that Tom watch Day of The Outlaw. Tom wrote us today:
Watched DAY OF THE OUTLAW last night and man, you guys were right. What a damn nihilistic piece of filmmaking. That opening speech Robert Ryan says about why he'll fight anyone trying to box him in is amazing. Nobody spits dialogue like RR! When you get down to it, the film was as noir, if not more so, than most film noir. Everybody's a heavy in some capacity, everybody's marching off to death whether they know it or not, some folks find redemption along the way, and in the end you've got nothing but a freezing hell waiting. The film also uses very little music, just letting that frozen wasteland do it's singing for it. Good call!
Rediscovering early fictional America detective James Brampton
By Sarah Weinman
October 26, 2008
It is a truth universally acknowledged that after Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious death in 1849, detective fiction did not make another splash on these shores until a pipe-smoking Englishman with remarkable powers of deduction became a transatlantic sensation...
(more)
.. but mystery readers looking for immediate literary successors to Poe's dark tales of detection would have to resign themselves to a vacuum of time until Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins' gothic-tinged detective novels showed up on the scene.
(more)
Acknowledged truths, however, have a funny way of being flouted. The recent reissue of a series of detective tales published more than 20 years before "A Study in Scarlet" (Doyle's first Holmes tale) appeared in 1887 adds a welcome link to the chain connecting the early masters of detective fiction. "
for the rest go here
times.com/features/books/la-caw-dark-passages26-2008oct26,0,3963325.story
-----Tom Piccirilli
Ed here: I our recent exchange of letters about Robert Ryan (previous post) Norm Partridge and I recommended that Tom watch Day of The Outlaw. Tom wrote us today:
Watched DAY OF THE OUTLAW last night and man, you guys were right. What a damn nihilistic piece of filmmaking. That opening speech Robert Ryan says about why he'll fight anyone trying to box him in is amazing. Nobody spits dialogue like RR! When you get down to it, the film was as noir, if not more so, than most film noir. Everybody's a heavy in some capacity, everybody's marching off to death whether they know it or not, some folks find redemption along the way, and in the end you've got nothing but a freezing hell waiting. The film also uses very little music, just letting that frozen wasteland do it's singing for it. Good call!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Opie speaks
Ron Howard has put together one of the best campaing spots of the election. With Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler joining him to promote Obama. http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/cc65ed650d
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Norm Patridge and Tom Piccirilii
My two buddies Norm Partridge and Tom Piccirilli and I have been trading letters. One of the subjects Orson Welles' the Lady From Shanghai. In the course of my letter I said "I saw Lady From Last week. I know Welles ditched because she was "boring" but how boring could Rita Hayworth be?"
From Norm Patridge:
There was a great story about her in a Mitchum bio Pic recommended to me. They were on location somewhere in the Pacific, bored to tears, and the mail came in. Mitchum came across Hayworth on deck with a big canvas sack full of mail. She was ripping the envelopes in half without opening them, then tossing them into the water.
"What are you doing?" Mitchum said. "There might be checks in there!"
"Sure," said Rita. "But they'll be more bad news than good."
Welles and Hayworth had a house down in Big Sur when nothing was there but pine cones and Wm. Randolph Hearst's own personal Xanadu. The old Welles/Hayworth place is now a restaurant. Hamburgers there cost more than ten bucks (welcome to California), but the place overlooks the ocean from a cliff and makes you think of guys taking a pass on the forties to drink beer and look at the water. I was talking to one of the publishers from Night Shade Books about it, and he'd been there too. This was several years ago. He spotted an actor having lunch, and when the waitress showed up to take the order, he told her: "I'll have whatever Lee Marvin is having." To which the waitress replied: "That's not Lee Marvin. He's dead. That's James Coburn."
Hearing the story, I said: "Man, you're kidding me! You couldn't tell the difference between Lee Marvin and James Coburn?"
"Well, they both have that white hair, and they're both kind of cool, and--"
"Yeah," I said, "but if you got in a fight with Coburn, you'd probably end up lighting incense, discussing the Buddha, and concentrating on your third eye. Lee Marvin, man.. he'd just bite your ear off and be done with it."
Anyway, I'm a big fan of LADY FROM SHANGHAI, too. If Welles would have done more stuff like that and TOUCH OF EVIL, he would have been a lot better off. He had the knack for it.
Norm
From Tom Piccirilli
I just listened to the commentary on LADY. Apparently, Welles' original cut was two and a half hours long, while the finished product, edited by the studio, isn't even nintey minutes. Never before have I been so aware of the edits made in a film. The whole opening seems to nearly be a montage with Welles' voice-over trying to clarify what the hell the scene is supposed to be about. It's full of what will eventually be known as that flash-cut MTV style editing. It really bothered me. Later on there seem to be entire scenes missing. One in particular has Rita and her hubby lying side by side and she stands up and starts zipping down the streets looking for Welles. When she stands her hubby yells, "Lover!" and then she's off. It feels like there's a whole argument and tons of dialogue that has been cut just to get Rita moving along. So much of the backstory is apparently missing. Hell, who the hell knew or even suspected that the butler was actually a former PI until they actually tell us that he is. Until then, he's just some wormy dude who's hardly even around and doesn't say a damn thing. Then there's Welles' buddy who also works for Rita who just kind of comes in and out every so often to lay down a line and then off he goes again.
What's there is really intriguing and there's a strong sense of noir, but man, the editing actually got on my nerves and made me grimace at times even before I listened to Bogdonovich talking about how they chopped half the movie out.
What surprised me is that TOUCH OF EVIL also got really bad press when it was released. I love that movie to pieces (even with Fritz Weaver's character being so annoyingly nervous and wacky). Also really dig THE STRANGER even though Welles thought it was his least important film (it was apparently his only truly successful one too). CITIZEN CANE helped to establish a lot of the noir mood that crime pics eventually became known for. If the man had stuck to crime early on out of the gate and actually embraced the genre, I wonder if he would've been truly embraced by the public.
T
From Norm Patridge:
There was a great story about her in a Mitchum bio Pic recommended to me. They were on location somewhere in the Pacific, bored to tears, and the mail came in. Mitchum came across Hayworth on deck with a big canvas sack full of mail. She was ripping the envelopes in half without opening them, then tossing them into the water.
"What are you doing?" Mitchum said. "There might be checks in there!"
"Sure," said Rita. "But they'll be more bad news than good."
Welles and Hayworth had a house down in Big Sur when nothing was there but pine cones and Wm. Randolph Hearst's own personal Xanadu. The old Welles/Hayworth place is now a restaurant. Hamburgers there cost more than ten bucks (welcome to California), but the place overlooks the ocean from a cliff and makes you think of guys taking a pass on the forties to drink beer and look at the water. I was talking to one of the publishers from Night Shade Books about it, and he'd been there too. This was several years ago. He spotted an actor having lunch, and when the waitress showed up to take the order, he told her: "I'll have whatever Lee Marvin is having." To which the waitress replied: "That's not Lee Marvin. He's dead. That's James Coburn."
Hearing the story, I said: "Man, you're kidding me! You couldn't tell the difference between Lee Marvin and James Coburn?"
"Well, they both have that white hair, and they're both kind of cool, and--"
"Yeah," I said, "but if you got in a fight with Coburn, you'd probably end up lighting incense, discussing the Buddha, and concentrating on your third eye. Lee Marvin, man.. he'd just bite your ear off and be done with it."
Anyway, I'm a big fan of LADY FROM SHANGHAI, too. If Welles would have done more stuff like that and TOUCH OF EVIL, he would have been a lot better off. He had the knack for it.
Norm
From Tom Piccirilli
I just listened to the commentary on LADY. Apparently, Welles' original cut was two and a half hours long, while the finished product, edited by the studio, isn't even nintey minutes. Never before have I been so aware of the edits made in a film. The whole opening seems to nearly be a montage with Welles' voice-over trying to clarify what the hell the scene is supposed to be about. It's full of what will eventually be known as that flash-cut MTV style editing. It really bothered me. Later on there seem to be entire scenes missing. One in particular has Rita and her hubby lying side by side and she stands up and starts zipping down the streets looking for Welles. When she stands her hubby yells, "Lover!" and then she's off. It feels like there's a whole argument and tons of dialogue that has been cut just to get Rita moving along. So much of the backstory is apparently missing. Hell, who the hell knew or even suspected that the butler was actually a former PI until they actually tell us that he is. Until then, he's just some wormy dude who's hardly even around and doesn't say a damn thing. Then there's Welles' buddy who also works for Rita who just kind of comes in and out every so often to lay down a line and then off he goes again.
What's there is really intriguing and there's a strong sense of noir, but man, the editing actually got on my nerves and made me grimace at times even before I listened to Bogdonovich talking about how they chopped half the movie out.
What surprised me is that TOUCH OF EVIL also got really bad press when it was released. I love that movie to pieces (even with Fritz Weaver's character being so annoyingly nervous and wacky). Also really dig THE STRANGER even though Welles thought it was his least important film (it was apparently his only truly successful one too). CITIZEN CANE helped to establish a lot of the noir mood that crime pics eventually became known for. If the man had stuck to crime early on out of the gate and actually embraced the genre, I wonder if he would've been truly embraced by the public.
T
Monday, October 20, 2008
So THAT's how it works
From Galleycat
Posted by Ron | 07:00 AM | Party Hopping | Email this post | 0 Comments
Why Didn't Borders Want Your Book?
Andrew Wheeler, a marketing manager at Wiley, has a long, thoughtful essay about why the national chain bookstores don't order every book published, including some books by imprints at the biggest conglomerates. "I market books for a living, so I can tell you an unpleasant truth: the order for any book, from any account, starts at zero," Wheeler warns. "The publisher's sales rep walks in the door with tipsheets and covers, past sales figures and promotional plans, to convince that bookseller's buyer to buy that book... Sometimes, that buyer is not convinced, and the order stays at zero."
"Generally, for a hardcover or trade paperback that's not being pitched for something promotional... you're talking about whether the order is one, two, or maybe three copies per store," he explains—but there's also the possibility that they'll only order inventory for the stores that sell that book's category best. And it goes without saying that an author's past performance will factor into the store buyer's consideration—looking at the two prominent Borders "skips" of books in the science fiction genre that prompted Wheeler's explanation, the decisions appear purely numbers-based, brutal but economically sound from the store's standpoint. "
For the rest go here
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/
Posted by Ron | 07:00 AM | Party Hopping | Email this post | 0 Comments
Why Didn't Borders Want Your Book?
Andrew Wheeler, a marketing manager at Wiley, has a long, thoughtful essay about why the national chain bookstores don't order every book published, including some books by imprints at the biggest conglomerates. "I market books for a living, so I can tell you an unpleasant truth: the order for any book, from any account, starts at zero," Wheeler warns. "The publisher's sales rep walks in the door with tipsheets and covers, past sales figures and promotional plans, to convince that bookseller's buyer to buy that book... Sometimes, that buyer is not convinced, and the order stays at zero."
"Generally, for a hardcover or trade paperback that's not being pitched for something promotional... you're talking about whether the order is one, two, or maybe three copies per store," he explains—but there's also the possibility that they'll only order inventory for the stores that sell that book's category best. And it goes without saying that an author's past performance will factor into the store buyer's consideration—looking at the two prominent Borders "skips" of books in the science fiction genre that prompted Wheeler's explanation, the decisions appear purely numbers-based, brutal but economically sound from the store's standpoint. "
For the rest go here
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Richard Jessup
As I've mentioned before the careers of writers well known and not interest me. As I read The Cincinatti Kid by Richard Jessup last night I thought of what a fairly long and spotty career his was.
We first see Jessup in the early `50s when Gold Medal was promoting him as their own angry young man. The books were thick and dealt with social themes such as race and juveVile delinquency. I haven't read them in years but I remember liking them. And somewhere in here he wrote radio and live Tv including the science fiction series Tom Corbett. Two of his long Gold Medals became movies.
His next incarnation, after the angry young man phase ended, comes in the middle to late period of that decade. Jessup, under at least two pen-names, writes crime novels and westerns. After the James Bond boom he creates a spy series that people seem to love or despise.
Then came the massive hit. The popularity of the movie version of The Cincinatti Kid made Jessup a star. Reading it last night I found it to be even richer than the movie. A small tight masterpiece.
But then...
Jessup wasn't a one-hit wonder because he wrote three or four moderately successful novels after Kid. His publishers were careful to disassociate him from his genre work. I recall seeing an edition of Kid that gave the impression this was a first novel.
But he never came close to achieving another huge seller or one as culturally important as Kid. So what if he took The Hustler as his template and used poker instead of pool? Kid was indeibly Jessup just as Hustler was indeliby Walter Tevis.
It's difficult to learn what he did exactly after the success of Kid. There were the books I mentioned but as an old paperback original writer he seemed to have a lot of time on his hands. I checked IMDB and his Hollywood career seems to have been limited mostly to a few minor movies television and even there he didn't get many credits..
In the early eighties he wrote two door-stopper size suspense novels both of which I liked but neither of which seemed to do very well, at least in comparison to Kid.
I think what we're looking at here is the career of a working writer who got awfully lucky with the best book of his life. We should all have such luck,
But most of his books gave me so much pleasure--he was a hell of a good western writer; and his Gold Medal Wolfcop is a fine hardboiled novel--I wish he was remembered for more than just Kid. He brought a precise, evocative style to all his books and at least once a novel he fried your brain. I'm thinking here of Wyoming Jones when Jones is caught with a young Indian woman who is betrothed to the Chief. Jones is tied to a post and prepared for being burned at the stake if the young woman doesn't prove to still be a virgin. An old Indian woman is to examine her. Chandler always said that you needed to work inside the formula, give it touches that only you could bring. Jssup did that frequetly.
He died way too young of lung cancer. It made me remember all those dramatic author photographs of him with a cigarette between his fingers.
We first see Jessup in the early `50s when Gold Medal was promoting him as their own angry young man. The books were thick and dealt with social themes such as race and juveVile delinquency. I haven't read them in years but I remember liking them. And somewhere in here he wrote radio and live Tv including the science fiction series Tom Corbett. Two of his long Gold Medals became movies.
His next incarnation, after the angry young man phase ended, comes in the middle to late period of that decade. Jessup, under at least two pen-names, writes crime novels and westerns. After the James Bond boom he creates a spy series that people seem to love or despise.
Then came the massive hit. The popularity of the movie version of The Cincinatti Kid made Jessup a star. Reading it last night I found it to be even richer than the movie. A small tight masterpiece.
But then...
Jessup wasn't a one-hit wonder because he wrote three or four moderately successful novels after Kid. His publishers were careful to disassociate him from his genre work. I recall seeing an edition of Kid that gave the impression this was a first novel.
But he never came close to achieving another huge seller or one as culturally important as Kid. So what if he took The Hustler as his template and used poker instead of pool? Kid was indeibly Jessup just as Hustler was indeliby Walter Tevis.
It's difficult to learn what he did exactly after the success of Kid. There were the books I mentioned but as an old paperback original writer he seemed to have a lot of time on his hands. I checked IMDB and his Hollywood career seems to have been limited mostly to a few minor movies television and even there he didn't get many credits..
In the early eighties he wrote two door-stopper size suspense novels both of which I liked but neither of which seemed to do very well, at least in comparison to Kid.
I think what we're looking at here is the career of a working writer who got awfully lucky with the best book of his life. We should all have such luck,
But most of his books gave me so much pleasure--he was a hell of a good western writer; and his Gold Medal Wolfcop is a fine hardboiled novel--I wish he was remembered for more than just Kid. He brought a precise, evocative style to all his books and at least once a novel he fried your brain. I'm thinking here of Wyoming Jones when Jones is caught with a young Indian woman who is betrothed to the Chief. Jones is tied to a post and prepared for being burned at the stake if the young woman doesn't prove to still be a virgin. An old Indian woman is to examine her. Chandler always said that you needed to work inside the formula, give it touches that only you could bring. Jssup did that frequetly.
He died way too young of lung cancer. It made me remember all those dramatic author photographs of him with a cigarette between his fingers.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Hardboiled Sentimentality
Dorothy Parker once said that "Hemingway talks sentimental out of the side of his mouth." Meaning that Two-Gun Ernie for all his hardboiled nihilism was as full of sentimentality as most of us.
In the LA Times today Sarah Weinman reviews a book called 'Hard-Boiled Sentimentality' by Leonard Cassuto
The connection between crime fiction and 19th century sentimental novels.
Here are a few quotes form the review:
"DEVOTED readers of crime fiction can recite the tropes of hard-boiled novels by heart. Tough-talking detectives. Femmes fatales. Prose harder than diamonds. And lots of violence, preferably by someone holding a gun.
"Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are the standards, giving rise to the idea that the darker the crime novel, the better -- and more respected by the literati and academia.
(more)
"The book's title comes from a letter by John D. MacDonald's publisher at Gold Medal, Knox Burger, praising the early Travis McGee novels' "hard-boiled sentimentality . . . as enormously successful and attractive."
(more)
"One can always play the equivalent of fantasy baseball with a book like "Hard-Boiled Sentimentality," quibbling with what's included (forgettable, out-of-print work by Robert Finnegan and Harold Browne), or with what's left out. Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels merit just a few sentences; James Crumley's P.I. protagonists, Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue, are not mentioned at all."
I have to say that I disagree with Sarah on Robert Finnegan, a serious writer Maxim Jakubowski and I have been pushing for years. To me he was a leftist radical whose crime novels on post-war San Francisco work as both mysteries and fascinating snapshots of SF of that time. As for "Harold Brown" if Howard Browne is meant I'd argue that A Taste of Ashes is one of the finest private eye novels ever written.
These things aside, I'd say that there isn't a more elegant, graceful, adenturesome reviewer in our field today. If I ever had to teach a course in writing reviews I'd copy this one and hand it out to my students.
Read the entire review here:
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book17-2008oct17,0,298939.story
In the LA Times today Sarah Weinman reviews a book called 'Hard-Boiled Sentimentality' by Leonard Cassuto
The connection between crime fiction and 19th century sentimental novels.
Here are a few quotes form the review:
"DEVOTED readers of crime fiction can recite the tropes of hard-boiled novels by heart. Tough-talking detectives. Femmes fatales. Prose harder than diamonds. And lots of violence, preferably by someone holding a gun.
"Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are the standards, giving rise to the idea that the darker the crime novel, the better -- and more respected by the literati and academia.
(more)
"The book's title comes from a letter by John D. MacDonald's publisher at Gold Medal, Knox Burger, praising the early Travis McGee novels' "hard-boiled sentimentality . . . as enormously successful and attractive."
(more)
"One can always play the equivalent of fantasy baseball with a book like "Hard-Boiled Sentimentality," quibbling with what's included (forgettable, out-of-print work by Robert Finnegan and Harold Browne), or with what's left out. Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels merit just a few sentences; James Crumley's P.I. protagonists, Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue, are not mentioned at all."
I have to say that I disagree with Sarah on Robert Finnegan, a serious writer Maxim Jakubowski and I have been pushing for years. To me he was a leftist radical whose crime novels on post-war San Francisco work as both mysteries and fascinating snapshots of SF of that time. As for "Harold Brown" if Howard Browne is meant I'd argue that A Taste of Ashes is one of the finest private eye novels ever written.
These things aside, I'd say that there isn't a more elegant, graceful, adenturesome reviewer in our field today. If I ever had to teach a course in writing reviews I'd copy this one and hand it out to my students.
Read the entire review here:
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book17-2008oct17,0,298939.story
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Capricorn One
Cinema Retro ran a piece (in its usual fine intresting style) on a new DVD of Capricorn One. I have a special interest in that film because one night when Carol and I were driving back from Chicago we decided to listen to loopy late night radio. In those days (not sure how its goes these days) late night was rarely political. It was, instead, about conspiracy theories of all kinds.
Here's a piece of the Cinema Retro review:
"Capricorn Onewas the first major release to center on a clearly crackpot theory and present it as a plausible thesis. In this case, the notion is that corrupt NASA executives concoct an audacious plot to fake the first landing on Mars. They gain the co-operation of the three astronauts involved using a combination of appeals to their patriotism coupled with implied threats against their families. As crazy as the scenario sounds, Hal Holbrook, as the plot's mastermind, delivers a speech to the men that makes it sound sensible (they have to have a triumph or public apathy for NASA will result in cancelation of the space program). Things quickly go awry when technical glitches make it appear the capsule was destroyed en route back to earth. In order to maintain the facade, Holbrook has to order the assassination of the astronauts, played by James Brolin, Sam Waterston and O.J. Simpson. The men realize they are expendable and make a daring break for freedom across the desert."
The show we heard had listeners calling in from the US and Canada claiming that this was in fact what happened when we claimed to have landed on the moon. It was all staged in a TV studio by the US government.
I'm pretty sure this theory still has credence among the full-mooners. In fact I heard Sarah Palin promise to look into it if she and that nasty old bastard she's running with ever happen to take the White House.
Here's a piece of the Cinema Retro review:
"Capricorn Onewas the first major release to center on a clearly crackpot theory and present it as a plausible thesis. In this case, the notion is that corrupt NASA executives concoct an audacious plot to fake the first landing on Mars. They gain the co-operation of the three astronauts involved using a combination of appeals to their patriotism coupled with implied threats against their families. As crazy as the scenario sounds, Hal Holbrook, as the plot's mastermind, delivers a speech to the men that makes it sound sensible (they have to have a triumph or public apathy for NASA will result in cancelation of the space program). Things quickly go awry when technical glitches make it appear the capsule was destroyed en route back to earth. In order to maintain the facade, Holbrook has to order the assassination of the astronauts, played by James Brolin, Sam Waterston and O.J. Simpson. The men realize they are expendable and make a daring break for freedom across the desert."
The show we heard had listeners calling in from the US and Canada claiming that this was in fact what happened when we claimed to have landed on the moon. It was all staged in a TV studio by the US government.
I'm pretty sure this theory still has credence among the full-mooners. In fact I heard Sarah Palin promise to look into it if she and that nasty old bastard she's running with ever happen to take the White House.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Bob Randisi; Tm Piccirilli
Ed here: I hope this doesn't mean that Bob will make me start mowing his lawn again. This just might go to his head.
From Variety
Randisi solves 'Rat Pack Mysteries'
Hackett options first novel 'Everybody Kills'
By MIKE FLAHERTY
The Rat Pack lives -- sort of.
In a move that features life and art imitating each other like a dog chasing its tail, Sandy Hackett has optioned Robert Randisi’s novel, “Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime,” the first of Randisi’s “Rat Pack Mysteries” featuring the eponymous Hollywood bad boys.
Hackett, son of late comedian Buddy Hackett, created “The Rat Pack Is Back” tribute revue at Las Vegas’ Plaza Hotel. He met Randisi when the author was researching the Pack in 2007, and the two struck a pact this summer.
“Everybody” is set in 1960 when the storied showbiz gang (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Bishop) was shooting “Ocean’s 11” during the day and headlining the Sands’ Copa Room at night.
The tale finds Randisi’s protagonist, pit-boss Eddie Gianelli, summoned to look into a series of death threats against Martin.
“The Rat Pack were drinking before there was alcoholism, smoking before cancer, and having sex before AIDS,” says Hackett. Still, he adds, “There is a romanticism about them.”
With Randisi set to deliver the screenplay —his first — by year’s end, Hackett, who also co-exec-produced the 2007 horror film “Portal,” hopes to roll cameras by the first quarter of 2010.
It’s not too early, however, for Randisi to muse on who might make a good bigscreen Sinatra: “If Michael Buble or Harry Connick Jr. read Variety, I’d like them to get in touch with me.”
More than one option
* (Person) Dean Martin
Actor, Music, Song
* (Person) Dean Martin
Driver, Key Grip, Production
--------Tom Piccirilli's Blog Spot
Tom just announced that his new blog is open for business. I;m sure it'll be as cool as his fiction.
http://thecoldspot.blogspot.com/
From Variety
Randisi solves 'Rat Pack Mysteries'
Hackett options first novel 'Everybody Kills'
By MIKE FLAHERTY
The Rat Pack lives -- sort of.
In a move that features life and art imitating each other like a dog chasing its tail, Sandy Hackett has optioned Robert Randisi’s novel, “Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime,” the first of Randisi’s “Rat Pack Mysteries” featuring the eponymous Hollywood bad boys.
Hackett, son of late comedian Buddy Hackett, created “The Rat Pack Is Back” tribute revue at Las Vegas’ Plaza Hotel. He met Randisi when the author was researching the Pack in 2007, and the two struck a pact this summer.
“Everybody” is set in 1960 when the storied showbiz gang (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Bishop) was shooting “Ocean’s 11” during the day and headlining the Sands’ Copa Room at night.
The tale finds Randisi’s protagonist, pit-boss Eddie Gianelli, summoned to look into a series of death threats against Martin.
“The Rat Pack were drinking before there was alcoholism, smoking before cancer, and having sex before AIDS,” says Hackett. Still, he adds, “There is a romanticism about them.”
With Randisi set to deliver the screenplay —his first — by year’s end, Hackett, who also co-exec-produced the 2007 horror film “Portal,” hopes to roll cameras by the first quarter of 2010.
It’s not too early, however, for Randisi to muse on who might make a good bigscreen Sinatra: “If Michael Buble or Harry Connick Jr. read Variety, I’d like them to get in touch with me.”
More than one option
* (Person) Dean Martin
Actor, Music, Song
* (Person) Dean Martin
Driver, Key Grip, Production
--------Tom Piccirilli's Blog Spot
Tom just announced that his new blog is open for business. I;m sure it'll be as cool as his fiction.
http://thecoldspot.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Say it ain't so!
Maybe Kathy Griffin was right when she joked years ago that Dakota Fanning had been in rehab when she was five or six (Griffin lost her Red Carpet job for repeating the gag over and over).
From DeFamer today:
Young divas
Dakota Fanning A Diva From Hell, Claims Her Latest Director
Rowan Woods, the director of Fanning's upcoming film Winged Creatures, just gave an interview branding the young star as a "diva" whose scenes he had to cut:
Woods said his high profile cast was a pleasure to work with except for teenage starlet Dakota Fanning, who could be a diva on the set.
She initially refused to come out of her trailer on day one of shooting because her scene wasn't filmed first, and was "intensely jealous" of her young co-star Josh Hutcherson.
"Everyone was on their best behaviour on this film because they have got a `really serious Australian director who is known for his ensemble work'," Woods laughed.
"(Fanning) was the only one who was naughty."
Woods said while he thinks Fanning is a fine actor, on this film she didn't hit the mark.
"She is a gorgeous girl ... but she was the disaster," he said.
"There was something about her presence that wasn't ringing true.
"Most of our work was cutting her scenes and a lot of her scenes were cut."
Ed here: Is there anything left to believe in? If you can think of anything please let me know.
From DeFamer today:
Young divas
Dakota Fanning A Diva From Hell, Claims Her Latest Director
Rowan Woods, the director of Fanning's upcoming film Winged Creatures, just gave an interview branding the young star as a "diva" whose scenes he had to cut:
Woods said his high profile cast was a pleasure to work with except for teenage starlet Dakota Fanning, who could be a diva on the set.
She initially refused to come out of her trailer on day one of shooting because her scene wasn't filmed first, and was "intensely jealous" of her young co-star Josh Hutcherson.
"Everyone was on their best behaviour on this film because they have got a `really serious Australian director who is known for his ensemble work'," Woods laughed.
"(Fanning) was the only one who was naughty."
Woods said while he thinks Fanning is a fine actor, on this film she didn't hit the mark.
"She is a gorgeous girl ... but she was the disaster," he said.
"There was something about her presence that wasn't ringing true.
"Most of our work was cutting her scenes and a lot of her scenes were cut."
Ed here: Is there anything left to believe in? If you can think of anything please let me know.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Forgotten Books: Margaret Millar
In my effort to get people to read Margaret Millar I'm reprinting some comments that the late Tom Piccirilli and I exchanged in e mails via his site The Big Adios.
Tom:
Finished up Margaret Millar's THE CANNIBAL HEART today and really dug it. Man, she's got such a gothic underpining to her fiction, her writing is just drenched in atmosphere. This was a solid tale of a family renting a beach house from a woman whose husband has recently committed suicide and whose retarded son has recently also died. A touch slow in the opening but soon you get the snaky feeling that all is not right (and don't we all love that?) A lot of flavor and style reminiscent of Shirley Jackson.
Ed
Tom, you nailed it with the "gothic" angle. Millar like Shirley Jackson was much enamored of gothic elements the difference being (my theory) is that Jackson and early Capote (his early stuff was pure gothic) etc came out of Faulkner as did so many other Southern writers. Where Millar came out of a very white Northern and mostly middle-class environment. But the results were similar occasionally. Millar, like Jackson, was a tart and sometimes droll social observer though in her later novels I think Millar surpassed Jackson at this.
Tom:
Ed, I agree about how Millar's sense of the gothic doesn't have that sweaty southern sensibility to it, although I think she early on left behind the white north and gave her gothic a dark southern California feel. Man, southern Cali at the time must've just had such a hook. Both she and (her huisband Ross) Macdonald came out of Canada and just seemed to leave it completely behind. That black Cali mood is reflected in Macdonald's work as well. He gives you the weird gothic families underscored by a hipster PI narrative, whereas Millar focuses on the "un-hip" elements and just pours out the atmosphere. You're right that the droll social commentary comes through, usually where underlying and hidden tension in marriage and family is concerned. I know that Jackson's marriage was rough-going, and her husband had a number of flings. I wonder if all the disatisfied married characters in Millar's work parallel her own marriage. Damn, just more reason to read the bio.
Ed:
Tom Nolan's biograph of Ross Macdonald (Millar) is a masterpiece.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Wrath of God
I'm rereading The Wrath of God by Jack Higgins (originally published as by James Graham and some of those editions are still around) one of my favorite adventure novels by one of my favorite adventure writers.
The early Higgins novels hold up extremely well mixing, as they do, protagonists bitter over the Irish troubles, ready to fight even kill if necessary and and always aware of how corrupt political systems are.
Wrath is set in Mexico during the time of the Revolution at the start of the last century. It is a frightening book in its take on humanity and political beliefs. The murderous priest who is not a priest, the obscene mobster-type, the devious officers of the regular Army...and of course the slaughter of innocents. If the book wasn't so page-turning exciting and filled with numrous switch-backs in the plotting you'd realize how despairing it really is.
A fine harsh believable novel about political systems then and--alas--now.
I found an interesting Australian interview with Higgins, a part of which I'm quoting here:
Which writers have inspired you?
"There are writers I've read, at a literary level, who write different kinds of books than me. I suppose that when I was trying to hone my skills, I very much admired Graham Greene. I admired classic writers, like F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was never a Hemingway fan. But, in terms of thriller writers I always admired Alistair Maclean at his best – HMS Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare. Years later when his health wasn't good, a few of the novels became shorter and thinner, but that was because at that stage he found it more convenient to write them as film scripts.
"He was very good to me because once I was coming out of the Collins offices and my name was shouted; I turned around and it was Maclean, and he'd been in the building and he'd asked the receptionist who I was. So he came out and called to me and insisted that we had a drink, and we sat in the pub. He simply said, "I've read your book and you've really got big potential. I think you're going to make it in a big way". Then we had a general chat about life and publishing, where he made a few points that I'll always remember: that he'd given up reading reviews, that people will put you down because you're not writing a Booker Prize book, you're writing a thriller.
And he said, "after all I have an MA in English Literature from Glasgow University." So he said, "I'm hardly a fool." He said to me, "What about you?" "Well yes, in fact, I'm a Senior Lecturer at a university." I saw him again quite a long time later, and he liked The Eagle Has Landed so much he gave us a great puff, which stayed on the cover for years. Nice man. His work at his best was definitely an inspiration."
The early Higgins novels hold up extremely well mixing, as they do, protagonists bitter over the Irish troubles, ready to fight even kill if necessary and and always aware of how corrupt political systems are.
Wrath is set in Mexico during the time of the Revolution at the start of the last century. It is a frightening book in its take on humanity and political beliefs. The murderous priest who is not a priest, the obscene mobster-type, the devious officers of the regular Army...and of course the slaughter of innocents. If the book wasn't so page-turning exciting and filled with numrous switch-backs in the plotting you'd realize how despairing it really is.
A fine harsh believable novel about political systems then and--alas--now.
I found an interesting Australian interview with Higgins, a part of which I'm quoting here:
Which writers have inspired you?
"There are writers I've read, at a literary level, who write different kinds of books than me. I suppose that when I was trying to hone my skills, I very much admired Graham Greene. I admired classic writers, like F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was never a Hemingway fan. But, in terms of thriller writers I always admired Alistair Maclean at his best – HMS Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare. Years later when his health wasn't good, a few of the novels became shorter and thinner, but that was because at that stage he found it more convenient to write them as film scripts.
"He was very good to me because once I was coming out of the Collins offices and my name was shouted; I turned around and it was Maclean, and he'd been in the building and he'd asked the receptionist who I was. So he came out and called to me and insisted that we had a drink, and we sat in the pub. He simply said, "I've read your book and you've really got big potential. I think you're going to make it in a big way". Then we had a general chat about life and publishing, where he made a few points that I'll always remember: that he'd given up reading reviews, that people will put you down because you're not writing a Booker Prize book, you're writing a thriller.
And he said, "after all I have an MA in English Literature from Glasgow University." So he said, "I'm hardly a fool." He said to me, "What about you?" "Well yes, in fact, I'm a Senior Lecturer at a university." I saw him again quite a long time later, and he liked The Eagle Has Landed so much he gave us a great puff, which stayed on the cover for years. Nice man. His work at his best was definitely an inspiration."
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Goliath Bone
For crime writers my age reading Mickey Spillane was a right of passage. While my cousin had shown me underlined passages in I, The Jury, I didn't read a Spillane novel until I was fourteen. One Lonely Night remains one of my favorite mysteries and greatest influences. I've spent a fair share of my writing career trying to duplicate the opening of that novel, the hellish fog that entombs the bridge Hammer is walking across.
Few writers have been as reviled or misunderstood as Spillane in his early years. Lost in the controversy was the fact that he was a master storyteller whose take on post war America was, politics aside, not only dark and bitter but also true.
From the publishe on The Goliath Bone::
"In the midst of a Manhattan snowstorm, Hammer halts the violent robbery of a pair of college sweethearts who have stumbled onto a remarkable archaeological find in the Valley of Elah: the perfectly preserved femur of what may have been the biblical giant Goliath. Hammer postpones his marriage to his faithful girl Friday, Velda, to fight a foe deadlier than the mobsters and KGB agents of his past—Islamic terrorists and Israeli extremists bent upon recovering the relic for their own agendas.
"A week before his death, Mickey Spillane entrusted a substantial portion of this manuscript and extensive notes to his frequent collaborator, Max Allan Collins, to complete. The result is a thriller as classic as Spillane’s own I, the Jury, as compelling as Collins’s Road to Perdition, and as contemporary as The Da Vinci Code."
Collins is especially adroit as using the Hammer persona but carefully, persuaively bringing it into this century. No easy trick. What could have been little more than a stunt becomes here a rich, gripping updating of the Hammer persona, making the Goliath Bone a compelling and clever adventure that honors the best of both Mickey and Max Allan Collins.
There's another colaboration on itsway and I can't wait to read it.
Few writers have been as reviled or misunderstood as Spillane in his early years. Lost in the controversy was the fact that he was a master storyteller whose take on post war America was, politics aside, not only dark and bitter but also true.
From the publishe on The Goliath Bone::
"In the midst of a Manhattan snowstorm, Hammer halts the violent robbery of a pair of college sweethearts who have stumbled onto a remarkable archaeological find in the Valley of Elah: the perfectly preserved femur of what may have been the biblical giant Goliath. Hammer postpones his marriage to his faithful girl Friday, Velda, to fight a foe deadlier than the mobsters and KGB agents of his past—Islamic terrorists and Israeli extremists bent upon recovering the relic for their own agendas.
"A week before his death, Mickey Spillane entrusted a substantial portion of this manuscript and extensive notes to his frequent collaborator, Max Allan Collins, to complete. The result is a thriller as classic as Spillane’s own I, the Jury, as compelling as Collins’s Road to Perdition, and as contemporary as The Da Vinci Code."
Collins is especially adroit as using the Hammer persona but carefully, persuaively bringing it into this century. No easy trick. What could have been little more than a stunt becomes here a rich, gripping updating of the Hammer persona, making the Goliath Bone a compelling and clever adventure that honors the best of both Mickey and Max Allan Collins.
There's another colaboration on itsway and I can't wait to read it.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Comic book writers as novelists; Mystery Scene
Really interesting piece on Booklgasm today about comic book writers and artists who've turned on some solid toextra fine novels.
CAPES, COWLS & COSTUMES >> Comic Book Writers Without the Comics
Author: Paul Kupperberg
Books with no pictures in them? What would comic book writers know about those? More than you might think, at least in the last quarter century or so. Sure, there’s always been the occasional comic book writer who broke out of the funny book ghetto and made the move to writing prose (Mickey Spillane, William Woolfolk, Gardner Fox, Alvin Schwartz, to name a few), but for the most part, comic book writers stuck with the medium what brung ‘em. If they did write prose, it was likely to be a novelization or adaptation of some comic book or other media property.
These days, those boundaries have pretty much disappeared. Successful novelists such as Greg Rucka, Brad Meltzer and Jodi Picoult routinely make the switch between prose and comics. And comic book writers such as Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis are doing work that gets them shelved in the literature section instead of graphic novels or science fiction. With the advent of respectability for the art form (THE NEW YORK TIMES says we’re art, so there!), comic book writers are finally being taken seriously as writers.
for the rest go here
http://www.bookgasm.com/
---------------MYSTERY SCENE
I'm writing an inroduction to Richard Neely's novel Shattered. I did a Mystery Scene interview with him in 1990 or 1991. Unfortunately I don't have any copies form that era. I'll pay somebody the smashing figure of ten bucks for either a copy of the magazine or for faxing me a copy of the interview. I'm getting desperate here. I've tried several sources and have had no luck. Thanks. Ed
CAPES, COWLS & COSTUMES >> Comic Book Writers Without the Comics
Author: Paul Kupperberg
Books with no pictures in them? What would comic book writers know about those? More than you might think, at least in the last quarter century or so. Sure, there’s always been the occasional comic book writer who broke out of the funny book ghetto and made the move to writing prose (Mickey Spillane, William Woolfolk, Gardner Fox, Alvin Schwartz, to name a few), but for the most part, comic book writers stuck with the medium what brung ‘em. If they did write prose, it was likely to be a novelization or adaptation of some comic book or other media property.
These days, those boundaries have pretty much disappeared. Successful novelists such as Greg Rucka, Brad Meltzer and Jodi Picoult routinely make the switch between prose and comics. And comic book writers such as Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis are doing work that gets them shelved in the literature section instead of graphic novels or science fiction. With the advent of respectability for the art form (THE NEW YORK TIMES says we’re art, so there!), comic book writers are finally being taken seriously as writers.
for the rest go here
http://www.bookgasm.com/
---------------MYSTERY SCENE
I'm writing an inroduction to Richard Neely's novel Shattered. I did a Mystery Scene interview with him in 1990 or 1991. Unfortunately I don't have any copies form that era. I'll pay somebody the smashing figure of ten bucks for either a copy of the magazine or for faxing me a copy of the interview. I'm getting desperate here. I've tried several sources and have had no luck. Thanks. Ed
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Jonah Hex
This could be pretty cool. But then again knowing Hwood...From the definitely cool Hollywood Elsewhere:
Sci-Fi Gunslinger
"I'm told that the deal is sealed for Josh Brolin to star in Jonah Hex, based on the graphic novel and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank, Game) and to be funded and released by Warner Bros. Brolin's rep is not only denying this but claiming Brolin is "not attached," but a voice is telling me to consider the word of a friend who tells me the deal was locked down last night.
"Jonah Hex is a western comic book anti-hero created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga and published by DC Comics. DC Comics is producing along with Mad Chance.
The movie, I'm told, is going to be some kind of sci-fi western with CG up the wazoo. There's nothing sci-fi-ish about the Hex comic book that's explained on the Wikipedia.page, but there's always the creative option. Hex is a middle-aged bounty hunter and gunslinger (born in 1838, dies in 1904) with a heavily scarred face whose quest in the film is tracking down a voodoo practitioner and...I don't know anything more. But it sounds like another stab at launching another Warner Bros. franchise, and most definitely a fat paycheck gig for Brolin."
Sci-Fi Gunslinger
"I'm told that the deal is sealed for Josh Brolin to star in Jonah Hex, based on the graphic novel and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank, Game) and to be funded and released by Warner Bros. Brolin's rep is not only denying this but claiming Brolin is "not attached," but a voice is telling me to consider the word of a friend who tells me the deal was locked down last night.
"Jonah Hex is a western comic book anti-hero created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga and published by DC Comics. DC Comics is producing along with Mad Chance.
The movie, I'm told, is going to be some kind of sci-fi western with CG up the wazoo. There's nothing sci-fi-ish about the Hex comic book that's explained on the Wikipedia.page, but there's always the creative option. Hex is a middle-aged bounty hunter and gunslinger (born in 1838, dies in 1904) with a heavily scarred face whose quest in the film is tracking down a voodoo practitioner and...I don't know anything more. But it sounds like another stab at launching another Warner Bros. franchise, and most definitely a fat paycheck gig for Brolin."
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Movies about New York City
Like Bill Crider, I like lists. This is a particularly interesting one if you, like me, love pictures about New York City. From Vanity Fair today. The list is packed with masterpieces.
In honor of Vanity Fair’s 25th anniversary, the magazine’s editors flexed their list-making muscles to determine the 25 best of everything—from book covers and news photos to parties and political one-liners. Herewith, VF.com ranks the top 25 best films about New York. Vote for your favorites after the jump.
Vanity Fair's 25 Best Films About New York
Executive Suite (1954), directed by Robert Wise
Lover Come Back (1961), directed by Delbert Mann
Working Girl (1988), directed by Mike Nichols
Annie Hall (1971), directed by Woody Allen
Manhattan (1979), directed by Woody Allen
The Warriors (1979), directed by Walter Hill
King Kong (1933), directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Raging Bull (1980), directed by Martin Scorsese
Saturday Night Fever (1977), directed by John Badham
The Best of Everything (1959,) directed by Jean Negulesco
Wall Street (1987), directed by Oliver Stone
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), directed by Joseph Sargent
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), directed by Blake Edwards
Angels in America (2003), directed by Mike Nichols
Mean Streets (1973), directed by Martin Scorsese
Ghostbusters (1984), directed by Ivan Reitman
Dog Day Afternoon (1975), directed by Sidney Lumet
The Apartment (1960), directed by Billy Wilder
All About Eve (1950,) directed by Joseph Mankiewicz
West Side Story (1961), directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise
Speedy (1928), directed by Ted Wilde
Taxi Driver (1976), directed by Martin Scorsese
Midnight Cowboy (1969), directed by John Schlesinger
The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), directed by Alexander Mackendrick
Goodfellas (1990), directed by Martin Scorsese
In honor of Vanity Fair’s 25th anniversary, the magazine’s editors flexed their list-making muscles to determine the 25 best of everything—from book covers and news photos to parties and political one-liners. Herewith, VF.com ranks the top 25 best films about New York. Vote for your favorites after the jump.
Vanity Fair's 25 Best Films About New York
Executive Suite (1954), directed by Robert Wise
Lover Come Back (1961), directed by Delbert Mann
Working Girl (1988), directed by Mike Nichols
Annie Hall (1971), directed by Woody Allen
Manhattan (1979), directed by Woody Allen
The Warriors (1979), directed by Walter Hill
King Kong (1933), directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Raging Bull (1980), directed by Martin Scorsese
Saturday Night Fever (1977), directed by John Badham
The Best of Everything (1959,) directed by Jean Negulesco
Wall Street (1987), directed by Oliver Stone
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), directed by Joseph Sargent
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), directed by Blake Edwards
Angels in America (2003), directed by Mike Nichols
Mean Streets (1973), directed by Martin Scorsese
Ghostbusters (1984), directed by Ivan Reitman
Dog Day Afternoon (1975), directed by Sidney Lumet
The Apartment (1960), directed by Billy Wilder
All About Eve (1950,) directed by Joseph Mankiewicz
West Side Story (1961), directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise
Speedy (1928), directed by Ted Wilde
Taxi Driver (1976), directed by Martin Scorsese
Midnight Cowboy (1969), directed by John Schlesinger
The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), directed by Alexander Mackendrick
Goodfellas (1990), directed by Martin Scorsese
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Roger Zelazny; Shameless Promo-ing
One of the many Hard Case Crime novels I'm looking forward to is The Dead Man's Brother by Roger Zelazny. In case you're not familiar with the name, Zelazny was one of the most extraordinary science fiction and fantasy writers of the Sixties and Seventies and Eighties.
Wikipedia:
"Zelazny portrayed worlds with plausible magic systems, powers, and supernatural beings. His descriptions of the nuts and bolts of magical workings set his fantasy writing apart from otherwise similar authors. His science fiction was highly influenced by mythology, poetry, including the French, British, and American classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and by wisecracking detective fiction. His novels and short stories often involved characters from myth, depicted in the modern world. He was also apt to include modern elements, such as cigarettes and references to Marxism, in his fantasy worlds. Novels such as Jack of Shadows and Changeling revolve around a tension between two worlds, one based on magic and the other on technology."
Ed here: What this assessment doesn't convey is the magic of his writing. Even in his lesser works his words can stone you with their vitality and freshness.
I remember when the stories that comprised his first two collections (Four for Tomorrow (1967) and The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1969)) began appearing first in magazines. He came in with the New Wave and was one of its most exciting proponents.
It was The Chronicles of Amber, a pure adventure series, that made him famous. A fair share of reviewers considered this too commercial an approach but even here the rapier cunning of his style makes the occasional thud and blunder worthwhile.
He had fans in every genre. I believe it was Barbara Mertz a/k/a Elizabth Peters and I who spent part of a few phone calls back in the Eighties talking about how much we enjoyed his novel Changeling. A good deal of his work reads like suspense fiction with quirky sarcastic heroes involved in mysteries.
All this comes to mind because I picked up Zelazny's Doorways In The Sand by chance today, read the first chapter and am now on page eighty-six.
I'm eager to read his one and only suspense novel. Charles Ardai knows how to pick `em.
-----------CAGE OF NIGHT
I have four copies of the PS Publishing edition of Cage that I'll sell and inscribe for twenty dollars a book. The list price is forty. The cover is really fine and they did a nice job with the hardcover package. Makes a nice holiday gift. Today they sent me a review from a UK magazine that has now switched to a website as well (I think that's right).
"Why doesn’t everyone talk about Ed Gorman?
> I came to him through his short fiction: ‘Angie’ a dark crime piece that
> (like a lot of good work in the field) physically attacks you in the
> last few paragraphs. That story alone was enough to sell me the first
> two volumes of The Collected Ed Gorman PS Publishing released last year.
> They’re big books, just shy of 40 stories and novellas. Know how many
> duds there are between the covers? None.
> I say again: why doesn’t everyone talk about Ed Gorman?
> Now, thanks once more to PS, we have Cage of Night a novel that Stephen
> Gallagher’s introduction informs us was once rejected by a mainstream
> publisher due to its ‘fantastical content’. I doubt there are any Hub
> readers who need me to tell them that publishers can sometimes be very
> stupid.
> Cage of Night - like Gallagher’s Valley of Lights - is a crime novel
> with a peppering of fantasy. Possibly.
> The blurb: `Twenty-one-year-old Spence returns to his hometown after two
> years in the Army and falls in love with Cindy Brasher, Homecoming Queen
> and town goddess to a long line of jealous men.
> A string of robberies puts Spence at odds with his obsessive love for
> Cindy. One by one Spence's rivals are implicated in horrorific crimes.
> Spence wonders how much Cindy knows and why she wants him, like her past
> boyfriends, to visit the old well in the woods...'
> Gorman’s pitch-perfect prose is clean and solid, its ability to serve
> characters as real people putting you in mind of Joe R. Lansdale when in
> a conversational frame of mind. Unlike Lansdale - whose prose always
> threatens to split open and reveal violent lunacy or a really naughty
> joke - Gorman’s writing has an undercurrent of nothing less potent than
> realism: we believe every damn word he tells us. In that sense alone he
> shares a quality with Cindy Brasher, the beautifully damaged girl
> sitting at the heart of the novel.
> Despite the fact that you never forget you are reading a tragedy (with
> all the inevitable destruction that form promises) Gorman knows how to
> craft a story and keeps the novel’s options wide enough to avoid utter
> predictability. Not that I for one would have cared, while Gorman can
> plot as well as the rest of ‘em, it’s the sheer pleasure of his
> storytelling that pulls me in. He is that apocryphal writer that could
> publish his shopping list and I’d still buy it (duct tape, bourbon, a
> second-hand Conan paperback and some decent columbian coffee at a guess).
> Recommended with rabid enthusiasm, hell, I’ll make everyone talk about
> Gorman if it kills me."
Wikipedia:
"Zelazny portrayed worlds with plausible magic systems, powers, and supernatural beings. His descriptions of the nuts and bolts of magical workings set his fantasy writing apart from otherwise similar authors. His science fiction was highly influenced by mythology, poetry, including the French, British, and American classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and by wisecracking detective fiction. His novels and short stories often involved characters from myth, depicted in the modern world. He was also apt to include modern elements, such as cigarettes and references to Marxism, in his fantasy worlds. Novels such as Jack of Shadows and Changeling revolve around a tension between two worlds, one based on magic and the other on technology."
Ed here: What this assessment doesn't convey is the magic of his writing. Even in his lesser works his words can stone you with their vitality and freshness.
I remember when the stories that comprised his first two collections (Four for Tomorrow (1967) and The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1969)) began appearing first in magazines. He came in with the New Wave and was one of its most exciting proponents.
It was The Chronicles of Amber, a pure adventure series, that made him famous. A fair share of reviewers considered this too commercial an approach but even here the rapier cunning of his style makes the occasional thud and blunder worthwhile.
He had fans in every genre. I believe it was Barbara Mertz a/k/a Elizabth Peters and I who spent part of a few phone calls back in the Eighties talking about how much we enjoyed his novel Changeling. A good deal of his work reads like suspense fiction with quirky sarcastic heroes involved in mysteries.
All this comes to mind because I picked up Zelazny's Doorways In The Sand by chance today, read the first chapter and am now on page eighty-six.
I'm eager to read his one and only suspense novel. Charles Ardai knows how to pick `em.
-----------CAGE OF NIGHT
I have four copies of the PS Publishing edition of Cage that I'll sell and inscribe for twenty dollars a book. The list price is forty. The cover is really fine and they did a nice job with the hardcover package. Makes a nice holiday gift. Today they sent me a review from a UK magazine that has now switched to a website as well (I think that's right).
"Why doesn’t everyone talk about Ed Gorman?
> I came to him through his short fiction: ‘Angie’ a dark crime piece that
> (like a lot of good work in the field) physically attacks you in the
> last few paragraphs. That story alone was enough to sell me the first
> two volumes of The Collected Ed Gorman PS Publishing released last year.
> They’re big books, just shy of 40 stories and novellas. Know how many
> duds there are between the covers? None.
> I say again: why doesn’t everyone talk about Ed Gorman?
> Now, thanks once more to PS, we have Cage of Night a novel that Stephen
> Gallagher’s introduction informs us was once rejected by a mainstream
> publisher due to its ‘fantastical content’. I doubt there are any Hub
> readers who need me to tell them that publishers can sometimes be very
> stupid.
> Cage of Night - like Gallagher’s Valley of Lights - is a crime novel
> with a peppering of fantasy. Possibly.
> The blurb: `Twenty-one-year-old Spence returns to his hometown after two
> years in the Army and falls in love with Cindy Brasher, Homecoming Queen
> and town goddess to a long line of jealous men.
> A string of robberies puts Spence at odds with his obsessive love for
> Cindy. One by one Spence's rivals are implicated in horrorific crimes.
> Spence wonders how much Cindy knows and why she wants him, like her past
> boyfriends, to visit the old well in the woods...'
> Gorman’s pitch-perfect prose is clean and solid, its ability to serve
> characters as real people putting you in mind of Joe R. Lansdale when in
> a conversational frame of mind. Unlike Lansdale - whose prose always
> threatens to split open and reveal violent lunacy or a really naughty
> joke - Gorman’s writing has an undercurrent of nothing less potent than
> realism: we believe every damn word he tells us. In that sense alone he
> shares a quality with Cindy Brasher, the beautifully damaged girl
> sitting at the heart of the novel.
> Despite the fact that you never forget you are reading a tragedy (with
> all the inevitable destruction that form promises) Gorman knows how to
> craft a story and keeps the novel’s options wide enough to avoid utter
> predictability. Not that I for one would have cared, while Gorman can
> plot as well as the rest of ‘em, it’s the sheer pleasure of his
> storytelling that pulls me in. He is that apocryphal writer that could
> publish his shopping list and I’d still buy it (duct tape, bourbon, a
> second-hand Conan paperback and some decent columbian coffee at a guess).
> Recommended with rabid enthusiasm, hell, I’ll make everyone talk about
> Gorman if it kills me."
Monday, October 06, 2008
The Hard Way
I'm one of the few people on the planet who've never read a Lee Child novel. Or was. The derring-do genre just doesn't interest me. Never has really.
But I saw a copy of his novel The Hard Way on a Quick Pik shelf at the library and decided to give it a try. The man is a master. I kept finding excuses to go back to it when I should have been doing something else.
Once I realized it wasn't going to be gritty in the style I prefer, I was able to appreciate the stunning way he plots, creates cliff-hangers and paints nightmare pictures of New York that harken back to Bob Kane's original Batman stories.
In The Hard Way Reacher is hired by a mysterious man named Lane whose wife and young daughter have been kidnapped. Nothing is at it seems, of course, not Lane, not the kidnappers and not even Reacher who has to keep shifting his plans every time he learns that just about everybody involved is lying to him.
I'm still not much for derring-do. But'm glad I have a whole lot of other Lee Child novels to read.
But I saw a copy of his novel The Hard Way on a Quick Pik shelf at the library and decided to give it a try. The man is a master. I kept finding excuses to go back to it when I should have been doing something else.
Once I realized it wasn't going to be gritty in the style I prefer, I was able to appreciate the stunning way he plots, creates cliff-hangers and paints nightmare pictures of New York that harken back to Bob Kane's original Batman stories.
In The Hard Way Reacher is hired by a mysterious man named Lane whose wife and young daughter have been kidnapped. Nothing is at it seems, of course, not Lane, not the kidnappers and not even Reacher who has to keep shifting his plans every time he learns that just about everybody involved is lying to him.
I'm still not much for derring-do. But'm glad I have a whole lot of other Lee Child novels to read.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Did somebody just drop a dish?
Thank God for Sarah Weinman. Her Confession of An idiosynratic Mind leads me to really interesting articles I'd never find on my own.
Case in point this piece about literary readings:
Why Are Literary Readings so Excruciatingly Bad?
By Michael Carbert
September 10, 2008
"A poet I know likes to talk about his idea for the perfect reading. The room would be reserved, publicity done, books available, refreshments served. Everyone would come and meet and talk…but no one would read. My friend is completely serious about this. He is convinced these occasions serve primarily as social events and, deep down, everyone would rather forego the reading itself. I suspect he’s right.
"One of the best depictions of how a literary reading becomes something to be endured instead of enjoyed is to be found in Russell Smith’s comic novel Noise. The protagonist attends a poetry reading in an unventilated room with a strong “odour of feet” and a drunken patron who shouts invective at the small gathering. The distractions mount:
"The dishwashing machine at the bar came to life with a mighty buzz, and Dick’s voice was drowned. Simultaneously, someone in the front bar put money in the Dukes of Hazzard pinball machine, and it awoke with a synthesized William Tell overture and a fanfare of bells. …Another drunken shout from the bar, and a chorus of shushes from the crowd. “Whatsamatter,’ came the drunken voice, ‘am I in church, or what? Thought it was a bar.’"
for the rest go here http://www.maisonneuve.org/index.php?&page_id=12&article_id=3187
Ed here: Because I directed commercials for so long I got to know a lot of working actors--i.e., non-stars eager for work--and because Carol did her fair share of acting (which is how I met her) we both count a number of actors as friends.
Many of their favorite horror stories have to do with acting in dinner theaters where you are expected to stay in character while dishes are being dropped, kitchen orders are being shouted and drunks insist on carrying on conversations.
While Soapdish isn't a masterpiece it's a very funny movie with Sally Fields, Kevin Kline, Robert Downey, Jr, Whoppie Goldberg and a radiant Elizabeth Shue in her first movie. The plot revolves around a soap opera that needs some new blood--old blood actually since the man they want (Kline) left the show in a dispute with his on-screen and real life lover Fields.
To me the funniest scene is the opening where Kline, down on his luck, is performing Death of a Salesman in the dinner theater from hell. There's so much noise it sounds like a battle zone. One source of it is particularly annoying--an ancient man who keeps bellering to his wife "What'd he say?"
Finally Kline can't take it any more and comes down from the stage and yells his lines in the old man's face.
The "shock" ending is pretty tame by today's standards but Fields is fantastic and Kline as the preening, self-absorbed new lead is spot on.
In the beginning Downey has to lure him back to the show with various promises. Kline, desperate to get off the dinner theater circuit, suggests that one thing Downey could do for him is "Back my one-man Hamlet" in a theater somewhere.
How many speaking parts does Hamlet have? A one man Hamlet?
It's one of those small sort of trashy but larky movies that keeps you smiling all the way through.
Case in point this piece about literary readings:
Why Are Literary Readings so Excruciatingly Bad?
By Michael Carbert
September 10, 2008
"A poet I know likes to talk about his idea for the perfect reading. The room would be reserved, publicity done, books available, refreshments served. Everyone would come and meet and talk…but no one would read. My friend is completely serious about this. He is convinced these occasions serve primarily as social events and, deep down, everyone would rather forego the reading itself. I suspect he’s right.
"One of the best depictions of how a literary reading becomes something to be endured instead of enjoyed is to be found in Russell Smith’s comic novel Noise. The protagonist attends a poetry reading in an unventilated room with a strong “odour of feet” and a drunken patron who shouts invective at the small gathering. The distractions mount:
"The dishwashing machine at the bar came to life with a mighty buzz, and Dick’s voice was drowned. Simultaneously, someone in the front bar put money in the Dukes of Hazzard pinball machine, and it awoke with a synthesized William Tell overture and a fanfare of bells. …Another drunken shout from the bar, and a chorus of shushes from the crowd. “Whatsamatter,’ came the drunken voice, ‘am I in church, or what? Thought it was a bar.’"
for the rest go here http://www.maisonneuve.org/index.php?&page_id=12&article_id=3187
Ed here: Because I directed commercials for so long I got to know a lot of working actors--i.e., non-stars eager for work--and because Carol did her fair share of acting (which is how I met her) we both count a number of actors as friends.
Many of their favorite horror stories have to do with acting in dinner theaters where you are expected to stay in character while dishes are being dropped, kitchen orders are being shouted and drunks insist on carrying on conversations.
While Soapdish isn't a masterpiece it's a very funny movie with Sally Fields, Kevin Kline, Robert Downey, Jr, Whoppie Goldberg and a radiant Elizabeth Shue in her first movie. The plot revolves around a soap opera that needs some new blood--old blood actually since the man they want (Kline) left the show in a dispute with his on-screen and real life lover Fields.
To me the funniest scene is the opening where Kline, down on his luck, is performing Death of a Salesman in the dinner theater from hell. There's so much noise it sounds like a battle zone. One source of it is particularly annoying--an ancient man who keeps bellering to his wife "What'd he say?"
Finally Kline can't take it any more and comes down from the stage and yells his lines in the old man's face.
The "shock" ending is pretty tame by today's standards but Fields is fantastic and Kline as the preening, self-absorbed new lead is spot on.
In the beginning Downey has to lure him back to the show with various promises. Kline, desperate to get off the dinner theater circuit, suggests that one thing Downey could do for him is "Back my one-man Hamlet" in a theater somewhere.
How many speaking parts does Hamlet have? A one man Hamlet?
It's one of those small sort of trashy but larky movies that keeps you smiling all the way through.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Past and Present
The new Locus, the news magazine of science fiction and fantasy, has a piece about how prominent sf writer Elizabeth Bear recently noted that The Greatest Generation (Robert Silverberg etc) doesn't read the Baby Boomers Generation and neither of them read the Generation X Generation. She says "There's a generation gap (in science fiction and fantasy)." Silverberg, my favorite sf writer, responds with his usual eloquence and irony (he also read stories by a few of the writers Bears suggested and liked them).
My sense of Bear's statement is that she seems to think that each generation reads only its its own. (She says that she means no disrespect, that the older writers are fine etc.)
If that's true it doesn't hold for the genres I know pretty well--mystery and crime, horror and westerns. Patti Abbott alone runs a Forgotten Books Friday on her blog where anywhere from six to twelve writers review mystery and suspense writers from decades past.
And some of today's hottest young crime writers including Allan Guthrie, Duane Swierczynski, Dave Zelsterman and Tom Piccirlli spend a good deal of their blogging time discussing writers of the forties, fifties and sixties.
Not understanding the past is all right for readers. Every once in awhile I run into somebody who seems to be under the impression that hardboiled fiction first appeared sometime around 2002.
But not understanding and drawing on the past seems deadly for writers. Fiction of every kind is a continuum. And a marathon. One generation after another handing on the baton.
We are blessed that so many of our writers and readers honor the past as a way of enriching the present.
My sense of Bear's statement is that she seems to think that each generation reads only its its own. (She says that she means no disrespect, that the older writers are fine etc.)
If that's true it doesn't hold for the genres I know pretty well--mystery and crime, horror and westerns. Patti Abbott alone runs a Forgotten Books Friday on her blog where anywhere from six to twelve writers review mystery and suspense writers from decades past.
And some of today's hottest young crime writers including Allan Guthrie, Duane Swierczynski, Dave Zelsterman and Tom Piccirlli spend a good deal of their blogging time discussing writers of the forties, fifties and sixties.
Not understanding the past is all right for readers. Every once in awhile I run into somebody who seems to be under the impression that hardboiled fiction first appeared sometime around 2002.
But not understanding and drawing on the past seems deadly for writers. Fiction of every kind is a continuum. And a marathon. One generation after another handing on the baton.
We are blessed that so many of our writers and readers honor the past as a way of enriching the present.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette!
Cinema Retro writers are among the best on any website dealing with the entertainment business. In a long review of the new Honey West DVD collection here's a very interesting insight for those of us who grew up watching ads for tobacco products:
"VCI has done a good job of remastering the episodes, which look crisp and clean. Sadly, Ms. Francis is not interviewed on the set perhaps due to the fact that she is said to be in fragile health. However, the packaging is impressive and there are extensive liner notes listing prominent directors and guest-stars. Not incidentally, a highly enjoyable aspect of the set is the inclusion of an abundance of TV commercials from the 1960s. None relate to the show and most are for consumer products ranging from laundry detergent to cigarettes. One realizes how much revenue the TV industry lost when cigarette ads were banned in the early 1970s. I hadn't seen these in decades, but such was their impact on a child, that I could still recall the dialogue and tunes in certain episodes. It's amazing how smoking dominated popular culture during that era. In one ad for Sucrets throat lozenges, the ad advises you to take a tablet and feel free to smoke if you're suffering from a sore throat! There are also spots with George Burns ensdorsing the "luxury" of El Producto cigars- at least until the announcer mentions you can buy them at two for 25 cents! There are also promos for women's cosmetics, Edie Adams shilling another brand of cigars and some vintage ads for The F.B.I., A Man Called Shenandoah, The Legend of Jesse James and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. If you can't get into Honey West, these ads should be worth the price of the set alone. - Lee Pfeiffer"
"VCI has done a good job of remastering the episodes, which look crisp and clean. Sadly, Ms. Francis is not interviewed on the set perhaps due to the fact that she is said to be in fragile health. However, the packaging is impressive and there are extensive liner notes listing prominent directors and guest-stars. Not incidentally, a highly enjoyable aspect of the set is the inclusion of an abundance of TV commercials from the 1960s. None relate to the show and most are for consumer products ranging from laundry detergent to cigarettes. One realizes how much revenue the TV industry lost when cigarette ads were banned in the early 1970s. I hadn't seen these in decades, but such was their impact on a child, that I could still recall the dialogue and tunes in certain episodes. It's amazing how smoking dominated popular culture during that era. In one ad for Sucrets throat lozenges, the ad advises you to take a tablet and feel free to smoke if you're suffering from a sore throat! There are also spots with George Burns ensdorsing the "luxury" of El Producto cigars- at least until the announcer mentions you can buy them at two for 25 cents! There are also promos for women's cosmetics, Edie Adams shilling another brand of cigars and some vintage ads for The F.B.I., A Man Called Shenandoah, The Legend of Jesse James and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. If you can't get into Honey West, these ads should be worth the price of the set alone. - Lee Pfeiffer"
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
The Other Side of Silence
Bill Pronzini has become not only a poet of people but a poet of place as well. Corporate Security specialist Rick Fallon is, like many Pronzini protagonists, spiritually adrift. And with good reason. The death of his son also meant the death of his marriage. So when he finds Casey Dunbar in an isolated pocket of Death Valley and finds her suicidal he recognizes a kindred spirit.
Her son has been abducted by her vengeful and cynical husband not because he cares about the boy but because he wants to destroy her. The desert speaks to both Fallon and Casey and in its solemn silence they agree to start on the long and dangerous journey to recapture her son.
Pronzini's prose has never been more evocative, giving us a land as seared as the people who inhabit it. The pursuit of the boy is filled with page-turning suspense and constant revelation of the characters the two protagonists meet on their way to the explosive and unexpected ending.
If you need any more evidence as to why The Mystery Writers of America named Bill Pronzini this year's Grand Master, this novel should make the case once and for all.
Her son has been abducted by her vengeful and cynical husband not because he cares about the boy but because he wants to destroy her. The desert speaks to both Fallon and Casey and in its solemn silence they agree to start on the long and dangerous journey to recapture her son.
Pronzini's prose has never been more evocative, giving us a land as seared as the people who inhabit it. The pursuit of the boy is filled with page-turning suspense and constant revelation of the characters the two protagonists meet on their way to the explosive and unexpected ending.
If you need any more evidence as to why The Mystery Writers of America named Bill Pronzini this year's Grand Master, this novel should make the case once and for all.
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