From Max Allan Collins

Heart and Soul Pt. 1

March 22nd, 2016 by Max Allan Collins

First off, I want to say how thrilled I am that QUARRY’S CHOICE has been nominated for a Barry Award (Best Paperback Original). Toward the bottom of this update will be links to the full list as well as some reviews.
Also, note the cover art for the audio of MURDER NEVER KNOCKS – just finished listening to Stacy Keach’s reading of the book, and it’s fantastic. Speaking of MURDER NEVER KNOCKS, if you’ve read and liked it, please post an Amazon review.
I am back writing these updates (after the four canned entries that appeared during the month following my open-heart surgery). For the next several updates, I am going to talk about my experiences of late, and you are welcome not to read them and to wait until I get back to books and movies and other “funner” topics. But this is on my mind, and I need to purge some.
A month ago today (as I write this) I had my operation, which involved a valve replacement, two bypasses and a couple of other let’s-keep-this-bastard-alive-while-we’re-in-here items. Of that first day, I remember nothing apart from getting wheeled in the operating room. Barb reports that several hours after the operation, I said, “I made it…I made it….” Shortly after that, like most of us with a pulse, I began complaining.
That night, in the ICU, I hallucinated that I was on a spacecraft and being held prisoner. I could see a long windowed-off corridor where futuristic nurses strolled, ignoring my cries of “Help!”
I remember little of the next two days. I know Barb and Nate were with me as much as possible. Apparently I was not a stellar patient. At some point I learned that my right arm and hand were (to use the medical term) fucked up. Basically the arm was weak and the hand felt like a bunch of sausages sticking out of a wad of mashed potatoes. After initial alarm, I wasn’t worried because I figured it would be temporary.
Various nasty things happened during the ICU stay, including getting tubes yanked out of me and the removal of a catheter. But nothing was nastier than the food. I am considering writing a cookbook called HOW TO SCREW UP TATER TOTS. What saved me was Barb, who was spending every afternoon with me, bringing me food from the outside.
The nurses were nice, very helpful, supportive and even sweet. My heart surgeon dropped by every day, and assured me my hand would “come back.” I gradually came to understand that this would include me working very hard to make that happen.
The worst part of the stay was the long nights. Something about my sleep cycle got screwed up as a side-effect of the heart surgery, so that I would sleep for half an hour and then wake up, thinking it was morning. I spent the nights alternating between reading and sleeping and watching movies on a portable blu-ray player and sleeping some more. Of course due to the surgery I had to sleep on my back. The bed was every bit as comfortable as a hotel-room couch fold-out affair. Nurses came in about once an hour to check vitals and give me tests on my lungs and the occasional pills. I hated these long nights and began begging Barb to take me home.
That wasn’t to be – my hand/arm problem required physical therapy and that meant I was headed to the fifth floor. While still on the seventh floor, I began walking (with a walker at first) and had some preliminary work on my hand. Barb spent many hours with me.
The night of the move I hallucinated again. I thought I was sleeping in a bed in a department store showroom that a nurse and an orderly were disassembling. Then they rolled me out of the showroom onto an elevator and down a hall and into a dark room where I was abandoned. I felt afraid, in fact terrified. I began to shout for help and when a kindly older nurse came in, I said I wasn’t comfortable staying here and wanted to call my wife on the phone. The nurse settled me down and I somehow got back to sleep.
NEXT WEEK: THE BEST HALLUCINATION YET

– – –

Here is a fantastic MURDER NEVER KNOCKS review from the great Ed Gorman (glad to have him back reviewing again!).
Here, at the Rap Sheet, is the complete list of Barry Award nominees.
There are several nice mentions of Nate Heller and me in this wonderful piece by Jeff Pierce at the Kirkus blog.
Here’s a short but nice piece on Mickey.
Finally, here’s a good if patronizing review of CARNAL HOURS. The reviewer seems put off by the sexual content – this continues to baffle me, and must be generational. One of the commenters, apparently a Heller fan, finds the novel the “weakest” of the series. I certainly disagree, and have often given it to readers who wanted to sample Heller, because it’s highly self-contained and has a real-life locked-room mystery.
M.A.C.

Tags: Awards, Carnal Hours, Mike Hammer, Murder Never Knocks, Nathan Heller, Quarry, Quarry's Choice, Spillane
Posted in Message from M.A.C. |  3 Comments »

13 of the Best Female Sleuths from Pop Culture SADIE TROMBETTA

13 of the Best Female Sleuths from Pop Culture

SADIE TROMBETTA   FROM CRIMINAL ELEMENT FOR THE ENTIRE PIECE GO HERE http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2016/03/13-of-the-best-female-
sleuths-from-pop-culture-dana-scully-miss-marple-agatha-
christie-jessica-fletcher-murder-she-wrote

Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and the Hardy Boys, but what about the best female sleuths from pop culture? Women have been solving crime and catching bad guys in books, television, and movies just as long as men—only they’ve been doing it better. Let’s face it, women do almost everything better.

Call it female intuition, call it women’s instinct, call it whatever you like—women are natural problem solvers. It’s unsurprising we make great cops, detectives, spies, and amateur mystery solvers. We’re great at finding clues, we can get anyone to talk, and we always know when someone is lying to us.

We’re smart, sly, and experts in the art of manipulation (hey, we’re girlfriends and mothers, it’s part of the job description), so even the sneakiest, most dastardly criminals can’t escape our clutches. Combine that with our ability to kick ass and take names, and you can understand why the best sleuths from television, movies, and books are always women.

Don’t believe me? Let me prove it to you with this list of 13 amazing female sleuths from pop culture. Trust me, these ladies will have you convinced.

1. Miss Marple

When you think of great sleuths, you probably don’t think of elderly spinsters, but Miss Marple will change all that. One of Agatha Christie’smost famous detectives, this little old lady’s nosy nature is good for more than just the week’s hottest gossip. Clever and intuitive, Miss Marple never misses a clue—proving that not only do women make great detectives, but the elderly can, too.

2. Dana Scully

FBI Special Agent Dana Scully may be a skeptic when it comes to monsters and aliens, but luckily for us, it hasn’t stopped her from solving case after mysterious case. Highly intelligent and analytical, there is no situation, no baddie bad enough, to scare Scully away, and no matter the case, she doesn’t stop until it’s solved. If you ever find yourself in the midst of a government conspiracy or alien abduction, just ask yourself:

“What would Scully do?”

3. Nancy Drew

Every little’s girls first favorite detective, Nancy Drew has evolved a lot over her 86-year history as a girl detective—but no matter what changes she goes through, one thing is always certain: she’s an inspiring character and one smart woman. From the paperbacks to the movies to the graphic novels, Nancy Drew’s intelligence, independence, and kind heart make her not only a great crime solver, but also a wonderful role model and one of the best female sleuths ever created.

4. Olivia Benson

If ever you’re in New York and find yourself victim to a crime, your only hope is that there is a real life detective as persistent, committed, and thorough as Olivia Benson. One of the longest serving characters in the extensive Law & Order universe, Benson continually proves herself an asset to the SVU team, rising through the ranks from junior detective to leadership positions—and now, as the squad’s commanding officer—we can only assume more amazing things will come from this incredible detective.

5. Jessica Fletcher

This author isn’t just good at writing mysteries, but she’s great at solving them, too. With a knack for finding murder wherever she travelled, Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher—one of the greatest TV characters of all time, and one of the best detectives to ever grace the screen—was even named “most prolific sleuth” by Guinness World Records. Yes, she really is that amazing, and if you don’t believe me, there are 12 seasons and 4 TV movies you can binge-watch for proof.

Gold Medal Writers-John McPartland

Ed here: I've reprinted my own piece on John McPartland two or three times in the past five years. Thought I'd let you see what a real critic has to say about him. This is John Fraser's take on McPartland, one of the Gold Medal boys who never got his due. What made him interesting to me was that he had a great Fitzgeraldian social eye for every strata of society, from blue collar all the way up to the gated communitiy folks.

McPartland was no genius but he came to writing with a voice and social take all his own and neither had anything to do with the hardboiled material then flooding the market. As John Fraser said to me in a recent letter, "McPartland deserves the attention. He seems rather to have slipped through the critical net, maybe because he didn't deal in  cliched noir depressiveness, with the inevitable failure of love."
.


John McPartland by John Fraser copyright 1998

The Face of Evil (1954)

She was the kind of woman a man noticed, mostly because of her eyes. Dark, almost black pools, they had a warmth that I felt could turn to fire. She had turned her head, looking over the shoulder of the man she was with, and we looked at each other. The third or fourth time it happened he noticed it and I paid some attention to what he was like.

He was a type. You find guys like him driving ten-wheeler transport trucks, or flying, or sometimes as chief petty officers in the Navy, on a sub or a destroyer. Square-built, tough tanned skin, big hands with knuckles that are chunks of stone.The type—what makes him recognizable as a wanderer, a fighter, sometimes a killer—shows in his face.

Big white teeth, yellow a little from cigarettes like his fingers, and he smiles with his teeth closed, talking through them when he’s angry. A thin line of short black hairs for a mustache, sideburns of curling hair, hair black and curly, a face that is rough and yet young, and it won’t change much if he lives to be fifty. The eyes are fierce, amused, hard.

It’s a special breed of man, and the breed are men. Maybe a mixture of German, Irish, French-Canadian, with a streak of Comanche, Ute, or Cheyenne in there about three generations back. You meet men like this one in the truck-stop cafés along U.S. 40, with the diesels drumming outside; or you meet them walking toward the plane on the airstrip; or in jail, still smiling, still ready for a fight.

This guy was laughing as he swung off the bar stool. He was still laughing as he walked over to me.

The Face of Evil (1954)

I
McPartland is that rarity, a writer of tough novels who feels tough himself. (Was Spillane a barroom brawler? If so, did he win?)

McPartland was one of the Gold Medal blue-collar writers; had served in Korea; obviously knew the black-market milieu of that war; came back and wrote raw, rugged, at times very powerful novels; obviously drank, lived with a mistress and illegitimate kids before it was OK to do so; and died young of a heart attack. He was the kind of person who knew what it meant to be in trouble with the law, doing dumb impetuous things, getting into fights.

What comes across again and again in his novels is his understanding of power, the hard masculine will to dominate others, break them, destroy them. His bad guys are some of the most frightening in thriller fiction: Southern rednecks, syndicate “troopers,” the Mob. His fights are fights in which the loser can get hurt very badly.

When a black-marketing non-com says he’s going to scramble someone’s eggs with his combat boots (crush his testicles), or the middle-echelon syndicate enforcer Whitey Darcy tells the fixer Bill Oxford, “We’re going to make you cry, feller,” or when Buddy Brown, the twenty-year-old petty crook in Big Red’s Daughter (1955) tells Jim Work that he’s going to make him crawl, we know that’s just what they intend to do.

They are hard men.

King McCarthy in The Face of Evil (1955) is a natural fighter. Buddy Brown wins his first two fights with the hero—knocks him down with a sucker punch; gets a painful lock on his knuckles and punches him in the throat while they’re sitting drinking beer in a barroom booth. And the Syndicate, the Mafia, punish offenders ruthlessly. Oxford knows what it will be like to go to prison and have your kidneys smashed by an inmate, crippled with pain for the rest of your life every time you pee. Johnny Cool’s end in The Kingdom of Johnny Cool is dreadful.

However, in most of the novels there isn’t just violence, there’s also love, and things work out all right in the end for the hero and heroine. They very easily couldn’t, though. A strong, focussed counter-energy on the part of the heroes is necessary.

II
McPartland’s best book is The Face of Evil, about the fixer Bill Oxford, who’s been on the long downward slide of compromise, complicity, corruption, and has been sent to Long Beach by the PR agency to which he’s attached to ruin a genuinely decent reform candidate, upon pain of being stripped of all his high-living perks and slammed into prison. It is tense and well-made throughout.

The Kingdom of Johnny Cool is his other best novel. When it appeared, I wrote to Ross Macdonald (a total stranger, but he’d done a Ph.D. in English himself) to ask him to review it for a student journal I was co-editing. He declined, saying that it seemed to be simply Spillane-type melodrama. He was wrong.

The novel is a powerful account of a Sicilian criminal’s rise and fall in America—a more interesting one than W.R. Burnett’s Little Caesar (1929)—and it takes us into dark cold waters full of predators. McPartland was on to the Mafia as a subject twelve years before The Godfather, and his attitude towards it is far healthier than Puzo’s sentimental power worship. There’s nothing cute or admirable about McPartland’s Italianos.

MURDER NEVER KNOCKS by Max Allan Collins

  

 MURDER NEVER KNOCKS is such a superior example of Great American Pulp Fiction I suspect many readers will have the same problem I did. I couldn't stop reading it. 

    The set-up is masterful. A number of hit men attempt to kill Mike Hammer. Given their mission they seem odd choices for assassins. They look more like small city insurance men for one thing and their kill skills are no match for Hammer's. Their peculiarity lends the novel its first stroke of darkness. As if they are not quite human. A fantastical touch I  really enjoyed.

   What the hell is going on? This question propels the novel from first page to last. Not only are Hammer and Velda in mortal danger throughout the book so are a number of other people who seem to have no connection with each other or with the mystery assassin.
    The city scenes of violence stay with you from the savage death of a cabbie to a hit-and-run at a newsstand. They remind us how easily civilization can be violated.

    Hammer even picks up a security gig, something he rarely agrees to. A Hollywood producer's fiance, a beautiful woman Collins creates carefully and perfectly, is having a pre-wedding party. Given the swells who'll be there there will be a king's ransom worth expensive gifts. Hammer's hand (and gun) is the protection the producer needs. The portrait of the producer is spot on. Easy to imagine that Max used some of his own Hollywood experiences in creating the guy.

    The party is just one of several set pieces that demonstrate Collins' writerly gifts. Throughout the book he gives us indelible glimpses into the Manhattan of the mid-Sixties, even including the presence of then fashionable gossip columnist Hy Gardner who helps in sussing out some of the murky showbiz angles of the story. And this certainly includes an unexpectedly gentle scene with a young hippie woman Hammer comes to like.  

    But as I said it is the mystery--coupled with the shadowy violence--that drives the novel. The resolution stunned me. Though Manhattan is a long way from Agatha Christie's British countryside, I'd put the ending (and the motive for the killings) of MURDER NEVER KNOCKS in league with hers. It's that fresh and startling.

Gravetapping: GOIN' by Jack M. Bickham

GOIN' by Jack M. Bickham

Posted: 16 Mar 2016 07:50 PM PDT

Ben Boulden:

1971 was a big year for Jack M. Bickham.  He turned 41, published six novels, including his novel The Apple Dumpling Gang, and his much lesser known novel Goin’.  Goin’ is different than much of Mr Bickham’s work.  It is a mainstream novel.  Or at least something approaching a mainstream novel.  Perhaps a hybrid between a straight hippie novel and a modern western is more apt.   

The year is 1969.  Stan Pierce is 40, newly divorced—

“CONGRATULATIONS, STAN.  YOU’RE FREE.  BARBARA”   

—and going through a mid-life crisis.  His hair has grown to his collar, he purchased a little Honda 450 street bike, and as the novel opens Stan is headed for the road.  He has no clear destination, but he knows what is behind him; an ex-wife, a young daughter, and a seething personal unhappiness.  

Once on the road Stan joins two bikers who are short on cash, and he tags along to a farm outside the rural city of Kirkerville (likely Arizona, but it is never identified as such), and hires on as a fruit picker.  In Kirkerville he meets a young married woman named Elizabeth Faering.  She is everything he wants.  Young.  Beautiful.  Independent.  Free.  The two lovers concoct a future together, but the dream is interrupted by a fruit pickers’ strike.  A strike Stan agrees with, but a strike that is commandeered by a man who is less interested in getting the workers’ better pay and working conditions, and more interested in starting a revolution. 

Goin’is a pretty great novel.  It fits its time and place; think back to an age when motorcycle riders were considered hooligans, smoking reefer was an unconscionable sin, free love was the opposite of “up-tight”, and Eugene McCarthy was a saint of liberalism.  

The tension is generated both by plot—the strike and the population’s reaction to it—and Stan’s inner turmoil.  He is an everyman outsider.  He attempts to fit, but he is ostracized by Kirkerville’s residents as an outside agitator, it is not uncommon for him to be called a “pinko,” and the strikers, particularly his two friends, view him as a traitor.  His affair with Liz ends badly, although not unexpectedly, and it is written with a powerful simplicity, which makes Stan’s emotional pain visceral.

Goin’ was published as a paperback original by Paperback Library in July 1971, and to my knowledge it has never seen print again.  

This review originally went live April 4, 2014, and I've been thinking about it again the last few weeks. It is a very good novel that should have an audience.

Forgotten Books-They Shoot Horses Don't They

(from 2010)

Ed here: Whenever anybody begins arguing for or against crime fiction being real literature various titles are always put forth immediately and vociferously. It seems the same book can be used by either side. I am personally tired of the argument but I will say that one of the books I'd use to demonstrate how noir can compete in the class of world literature is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy. This is crime fiction's version of The Great Gatsby, a perfect utterance. There is no other novel in the canon like it and it is as savage today as it was in the Thirties. (To me the film was a corny Hwood failure.)

What prompts this post is a recent review of its reissue by Laura Wilson in the UK's Guardian. Quick and deft.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, by Horace McCoy (Serpent's Tail, £7.99)

Forget Raymond Chandler and his overrated ilk – Horace McCoy's 1935 novel (filmed in 1969, under the same title) is the best example of American noir ever written. Set in the great depression, amid the desperation, barbarity and pathos of a dance marathon, it is an extraordinary achievement and every bit as shocking and moving today as it must have been for its original readers. Gripping from the beginning – when we are given to understand that the narrator is being condemned to death for an unknown crime – it's the story of two losers stumbling endlessly round a grotty Hollywood ballroom in a grotesque and ultimately futile struggle for survival. The characters are both more, and less, than human, the writing is tersely perfect, and the ending almost unbearably moving. This timely reissue comes complete with an excellent introduction from the veteran British crime writer John Harvey.

New Books Dean Wesley Smith STAR RAIN

Smith’s Monthly #26

Dean Wesley Smith

Over sixty-five thousand words of original fiction from USA Todaybestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith.

In this twenty-sixth monthly volume the full novel Star Rain: A Seeders Universe Novel, plus five short stories, and half of a non-fiction writing book.

Short Stories

Not Saleable for Sale: A Poker Boy Story
The Life and Death of Fortune Cookie Tyrant
A Time to Dream: A Captain Bryan Saber Story
Tumbling Down the Nighttime
In Search of the Perfect Orgasm or How Doing It with a Giant Lizard Can Be Fun

Full Novel

Star Rain: A Seeders Universe Novel

Serial Nonfiction

Writing into the Dark (Part 1 of 2)

Nonfiction

Introduction: A Writing Book

From Max Allan Collins

Better Dead

March 15th, 2016 by Max Allan Collins

Hardcover:    
E-Book:   

The first Nathan Heller novel in three years, BETTER DEAD takes a step back in time from the JFK Trilogy (BYE BYE, BABY; TARGET LANCER; ASK NOT) to deal with the events of the Red Scare-era 1950s.
This book has been coming for a long time. It’s one of the projects that got set aside when it came time for Heller to make a comeback after about a decade away. To get Heller back out there, I proposed the Kennedy trio, a good bet for a sale because of the high-profile nature of the material; a trilogy with Marilyn Monroe, Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy was appealing. But it meant skipping several things I had planned to do, including a Robert Kennedy/Jimmy Hoffa book that I hope eventually to get around to.
With BETTER DEAD, the tricky thing is that I have two cases for Nate to deal with. Neither seemed right for a single book, but together – with the shared era and a number of common characters beyond Heller himself – the whole just might exceed the sum of its parts.
Joe McCarthy is one of the characters – and factors – that joins the two stories: the Rosenberg “atom spies” case, and the Frank Olson murder. The latter has to do with the Army scientist who was dosed with LSD at a CIA retreat, which had unfortunate results.
Heller is working on the East Coast exclusively this time around – he’s just opened a branch office in the Empire State Building – which puts him right in the heart of Mike Hammer’s world circa 1953. Heller has always had things in common with Hammer, but this time – in this setting – those commonalities come out more prominently. In fact, as the guy completing the Hammer stories from Spillane’s files, I several times questioned whether I’d slipped out of Heller territory and into Hammer. And is that a bad thing? Certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
On the other hand, Heller’s victories can never be as complete as Hammer’s.
Others in the cast include Bettie Page, Dashiell Hammett, Roy Cohn, Bobby Kennedy, and Sidney Gottlieb (the CIA’s Dr. Feelbad).
It’s a wild one. Watch for it May 3rd.

– – –

Check out this cool QUARRY’S LIST review.
MURDER NEVER KNOCKS is a Pierce’s Pick this week!
Here’s a nice review of QUARRY’S DEAL.
And here’s a somewhat late-in-the-game review of DEAD STREET.
M.A.C.

Tags: Ask Not, Better Dead, Bye Bye Baby, Dead Street, Mike Hammer, Murder Never Knocks, Nathan Heller, Quarry, Quarry's Deal, Quarry's List, Reviews, Spillane, Target Lancer
Posted in Message from M.A.C. |  6 Comments »

Shadow Games and Other Sinister Stories of Show Business available for pre-order!

"Shadow Games is a page-turning, gut-wrenching barnburner of a book."—Robert Bloch

 

Ed here: My first cousin Bobby Driscoll was a major child star of the late 1940s and early 1950s. He died at thirty of drugs. While I don't use any of Bobby's life in this novel I do look at child stardom here. Theses a slightly revised edition of Shadow Games (1992) which I wrote at the time I was writing scripts for  two different directors and learning a little about the ways of Hwood. 



Cover art © by JT Lindroos

"Shadow Games unflinchingly examines the dark side of humanity and reaches a finale that is both moving and terrifying."
—Ramsey Campbell

"What keeps you reading is not the traditional question of whodunit but the slick and artful ease with which Gorman portrays the alienated, uncaring world of his creation."

--The London Sunday Times

Cobey Daniels had it all. He was rich, he was young and he was the hottest star in the country. Then there was all that messy business with the teenage girl . . . and it all went to hell for Cobey.

But that was a few years ago. Now Cobey's pulled his life together again they're letting him out of the mental hospital and he's ready for his big comeback, but the past is still out there, waiting for him. Waiting to show Cobey a hell much more terrible than he could ever have imagined.

The American 90s come brutally alive: "Gorman knows how to shunt electricity into the raw nerve endings buried far below the reader's already clammy skin."
—Locus

© Ed Gorman


PRAISE FOR SHADOW GAMES

"Ed Gorman's is a strong and unique voice."
—Richard Matheson

"(Gorman) should be required reading for anyone who wants to experience the art of the short story as practiced by a master craftsman."
—Mystery News

"Gorman is the poet of dark suspense."
—The Bloomsbury Review

"John D. MacDonald meets Jim Thompson in a maelstrom of malicious evil and perverse maipulation that doesn't let up until the final few pages...thoughtful, tightly knit and elegantly structured."
—Million (UK)

"This is a bleak moral tale but written with such hot feeling and such cool style that it entertains even as it keens."
—Morning Star (UK)


Title Details:

RRP Price: £11.95
Publisher: Short, Scary Tales Publications
Release Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-909640-52-8 (6" x 9" Trade Paperback)
First Edition
Pages: 354


This brand new edition is available for pre-order from the Short, Scary Tales website. The first 100 copies sold direct from the site will be signed by me and the cover artist, JT Lindroos!

PAPERBACK PARADE #92: edited by Gary Lovisi

PAPERBACK PARADE #92:

edited by Gary Lovisi

    This is the latest issue of my book collector magazine and is a terrific issue not to be missed! 

It takes a detailed look at the wonderful British pulp science fiction of the 1950s and a key man 

behind the pseudonyms of many of the most wild digest-size paperbacks -- Denis Hughes! It 

contains amazing info by Phil Harbottle that has never before been available, and it is loaded 

with many amazing pulp sf covers all in FULL COLOR! Also this issue contains a look at the 

France Books series -- fancy fold-out cover gga 1960s sleaze vintage paperbacks that is a 

feast for the eyes! I take a look at the fine crime noir Dead To Bed by Don Tracy -- 

a forgotten writer today who should be revived -- and an examination of the classic noir 

thriller Wages of Fear, and the two films made from this masterpiece. Then there is a look at 

the spy books featuring Colonel Peter Trees and a first-ever detailed examination of the 

Tor Science Fiction Doubles with most covers shown! There is also my "Paperback Talk" column, 

news, letters, ads and much more, a fine fun issue that no book lover or collector should be without. 

PP 92 is out now at $15 + $3 postage (in USA) from Gryphon Books, PO Box 280209, Brooklyn, NY

 11228, USA, or you can purchase a copy or subscription through Paypal at my 

website: www.gryphonbooks.com. Back issues are also available, so see my website or 

facebook page for more info.

Peyton Place: "Everything in this town happens behind brown wrappers"

from the great http://www.classicfilmtvcafe.com

Peyton Place: "Everything in this town happens behind brown wrappers"

In a 1956 interview with journalist Hal Boyle, Peyton Place author Grace Metalious said: "To a tourist, these towns look as peaceful as a picture postcard. But if you go underneath that picture, it's like turning over a rock with your foot--all kinds of strange things crawl out. Everybody that lives in town knows what's going on--there are no secrets--but they don't want outsiders to know."

A fictional exposé about a New England town called Peyton Place, her debut novel enthralled readers with its dark small town secrets. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and attracted the attention of Hollywood. Producer Jerry Wald convinced 20th Century-Fox to pay $100,000 for the film rights to Peyton Place. Wald was known for making films with strong female characters, such as Mildred Pierce, Flamingo Road, Johnny Belinda, and Caged. From the outset, he wanted 37-year-old Lana Turner for the lead role of Constance Mackenzie, a single mother who keeps her distance from men. The studio, however, envisioned Jane Wyman or Olivia de Havilland as Constance. In the end, Wald got his way.

Lee Phillips as Mike Rossi and Lana.

The film adaptation, as did the novel, also centers on Constance's bright teenage daughter Allison (Diane Varsi) and her friend, Selena (Hope Lange), who lives in one of the shanties outside of town. Allison develops a fondness for Norman (Russ Tamblyn), a shy young man who lives with his possessive mother. Selena has to cope with her drunken, leering stepfather (Arthur Kennedy), who beats her mother and drives away her older brother. Other characters include: Michael Rossi, the high school's handsome new principal; Allison's wealthy classmate Rodney Harrington and his provocative girlfriend Betty; and the town's physician--and conscience--Dr. Swain.

Reliable Lloyd Nolan as Dr. Swain.

It's easy to label Peyton Place as a big screen soap due to its interwoven dramatic elements. Perhaps, it is, but who says that's a criticism anyway? Even in her novel, Metalious amped up the turmoil by incorporating incidents from three real-life New Hampshire towns. Critics were kind to Peyton Place, with many considering it an improvement on the novel (though I wonder how many of them actually read the book).

The film received nine Academy Award nominations, including: Best Picture, Best Director (Mark Robson); Best Screenplay; Best Cinematography; Best Actress (Lana Turner); and four supporting performances (Diane Varsi, Hope Lange, Russ Tamblyn, and Arthur Kennedy). Amazingly, Franz Waxman's lovely, bittersweet score was totally ignored. He likely fared better from a commercial standpoint, especially after his title theme was heard two to three times weekly when the Peyton Place TV series aired from 1964 to 1969.

Hope Lange as Selena.

The standouts in the Peyton Place cast are young stars Diane Varsi and Hope Lange. Varsi's poignant narration provides the nostalgic transitions as the plot progresses from 1941 into the World War II years. She also effectively captures Allison's passion for life and later her disillusionment when she learns the truth about her deceased father. Lange has a smaller role, but evolves nicely from an innocent young woman to one harboring dark secrets that weigh heavily.

Diane Varsi as Allison.

Lange went on to a long career in film (The Young Lions) and television (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir). Diane Varsi was not as fortunate. She had hitchhiked to San Franciso in the late 1950s after seeing Rebel Without a Cause. Her first film role was Peyton Place, with 20th Century-Fox signing her to a contract. After high profile parts in Ten North Frederick (as Gary Cooper's daughter), From Hell to Texas, and Compulsion, she had a nervous breakdown. She retired from acting and moved back to Vermont. Her contract with Fox ended in 1964 and she later began acting occasionally in films like Wild in the Streets (1968) and Bloody Mama (1970) with Shelley Winters. She died from respiratory failure in 1992 at age 54; she had suffered from Lyme Disease for several years.

Allison shows her "secret place" to Norman.

Of course, the unsung star in Peyton Place is the town itself. Scenic and quaint from the outside, its secrets have attracted the interests of millions of readers and viewers. Carol Lynley played Allison in the 1961 sequel Return to Peyton Place, also based on a Grace Metalious novel. A popular prime-time TVs series followed in 1964 (click here to read our review of it). There was also a short-lived 1972-74 daytime drama and two made-for-TV movies: Murder in Peyton Place (1977) and Peyton Place: The Next Generation (1985).

Why all the interest in this small New England town? Perhaps, Constance sums it up best when talking to Mike Rossi in the first film: "In Peyton Place, two people talking is a conspiracy. A meeting is an assignation. And getting to know one another is a scandal."

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Gravetapping

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Mystery Scene Reviews: Issue No. 143 Posted: 09 Mar 2016 04:03 PM PST The latest issue of Mystery Scene Magazine—No. 143—at a newsstand near you. The issue is packed (as usual). It features an in-depth article about Margaret Millar, an interview with T. J. MacGregor, and a nice article about Netflix’s Jessica Jones. Issue No. 143 also includes three book reviews I wrote. The titles: Where it Hurts by Reed Farrel Coleman, Out of the Blues by Trudy Nan Boyce, and The Good Goodbye by Carla Buckley. Where it Hurts is a powerful hardboiled neo-noir, Out of the Blues is a promising first novel police procedural, and The Good Goodbye is an entertaining psychological suspense novel. The reviews are available online at Mystery Scene’s website—click the book titles above. Mystery Scene is available at many newsstands, including Barnes & Noble, and available for order at MS’s website.

Forgotten Books: A Diet of Treacle by Lawrence Block

Back in the late Fifties and early Sixties paperback original novels about the Beat generation appeared regularly. Sex, drugs, jazz, weirdness. Today few of them bear rereading. Certainly Vin Packer's take on the subject holds up very well but some of the bigger names who took a tour through Kerouac-land ended up looking and sounding silly. They were writing tour guides without having ever been there.

A Diet of Treacle by Lawrence Block on the other hand has the feel of first-hand observation. Set in Greenwich Village in 1960, peopled by faux-beat losers of various kind and a cop out of Malcom Braly, the drug scene, the crime scene and the scene of hardscrabble drifting life in the big bad city crackles with authenticity.

There are three prime players. Joe is a cipher of sort, not a good guy or a bad guy, one of those people who just sort of take up space. His friend Shank, an angry street hustler, suports them both by selling pot. The third person, and by far the most interesting, is Anita, a young, attractive woman engaged to a square engineer while still living under the auspices of an overly pious grandmother.

When the main heroin dealer in the area is busted, Shank decides to quit selling pot and go into the junk business, at first unbeknownest to Anita and Joe, with whom he is sharing a shabby little apartment.

The transformation of Anita from the good girl to the lover of a drifter like Joe to somebdy inadvertently involved in murder is what gives the book its power. Block is too good a writer to try to explain away her changes with melodramatic motivatons. She remains somewhat mysterious throughout the book, both to the reader and to herself. At one point, even though she considers marrying Joe, she wonders if she even loves him. At another, she begins to feel oppressed by his lifestyle of hanging out in beat dives (Block has a beat poet read a "poem" that manages to be both short and interminable) and letting Shank dicate much of his life.

Block is always good with his female characters and Anita, sweet, warm, confused, ultimately as adrift as Joe himself, is a fine, endearing creation.

The party scenes are spot on. Cheap wine, portentuous and pretentious conversations, sex sex sex and unending tributes to the powers of pot. Everybody yakking so much about how good pot makes them feel it starts sounding like a revival meeting with hemp substituting for God. Very wittily observed.

The plot kicks in full tilt in the the third act and it's breathtaking. The hard ass cop, whom we meet early on, reappears and what had been minor cat-and-mouse becomes explosive confrontation.

Of all the hardboiled writers working today, Block for me remains the most believable in dealing with crime and criminals. He's able to write about them and their milieu without tricking them up or romaniticising them. And, as he demonstrates here, he was doing it as far back as 1961.

From Max Allan Collins

Antiques Fate

March 8th, 2016 by Max Allan Collins

[Nate here — Before we get to this week’s (pre-written) update, I thought I’d copy over a short post my dad made on his facebook page on Sunday.]
I have been home for five days. Barb is great, loving and supportive but keeping me in line. I face several months of rehab, mostly because my right hand is weak and sluggish. Can’t type much or even write my name. Not great for a writer/keyboard player. Outlook is good if I put in the work. Which I will. But I can’t properly thank you wonderful people for the love and support.
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Hardcover:    
E-Book:     

On the very same day that Pinnacle is publishing the hardcover edition of THE BIG SHOWDOWN, Kensington is releasing the hardcover of the new Trash ‘n’ Treasures mystery, ANTIQUES FATE, by Barbara Allan (Barb and me). This coincidence is made at least a little odder by Pinnacle and Kensington being two imprints of the same publisher.
FATE plays off “fete,” as the setting is not Serenity, Iowa, but Old York, Iowa…a quaint fictional village somewhat based on the Amana Colonies. The difference is that the Amanas have a German history, which they maintain to some degree, while New London is Brit-oriented, maintaining that slant to an almost absurd degree.
Barb and I both are big fans of all sorts of British TV mysteries, from MORSE to LEWIS, FOYLE’S WAR to SHERLOCK, MISS MARPLE to POIROT, GEORGE GENTLY to MIDSOMER MURDERS…among others. The picturesque hamlets of MARPLE and MIDSOMER inspired the Old York setting, and we had a great time playing off a type of mystery that we both enjoy.
We also found that readers responded well to ANTIQUES CON, with its New York setting (hence Old York, this time around). As much as fans enjoy visiting Serenity, we began to realize the series had been around long enough that a little variety was in order. So we decided to do another non-Serenity novel, and will probably do so again.
By the way, it’s very funny. It really is.
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Here’s a lovely MURDER NEVER KNOCKS review from the great Bill Crider.
And this nice KNOCKS review from Crime Fiction Lover.
M.A.C.

Tags: Antiques Con, Antiques Fate, Barbara Allan, Mike Hammer, Murder Never Knocks, Reviews, Spillane, Trash 'n' Treasures
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