pattinase

How I Came To Write This Book: Alison Gaylin

2012-03-13T07:00:00.002-04:00

How I Came to Write This Book

AND SHE WAS

by Alison Gaylin

I often get asked, ‘What comes first for you – character or plot?’ Usually, it’s a little of both. (With TRASHED, for instance, my reluctant tabloid reporter and the series of Hollywood slayings pretty much popped into my head hand-in-hand.) But with AND SHE WAS, it was neither. A few years ago, I came across an article about a man with hyperthymesia – perfect autobiographical memory. There are only a handful of known cases of hyperthymesia in the world, and it involves recalling every single day of your life, from start to finish, with all five senses. I read that article, and I thought, “Oh my God. How awful,” and thus began the two-to-three year obsession that culminated in this book.

The aspect of this syndrome that struck me as both fascinating and tragic was not so much the ability to remember everything (which granted, is great for a detective), but the inability to forget anything. The idea of experiences – good and bad – remaining just as alive in your mind as the day they happened… I’m not sure I’d be able to live with that. And so I had to build a character around it. Originally, Brenna was a videographer who sets out to solve her sister’s long-ago disappearance after hearing a voice she recalls as that of her abductor, but I found that character ineffectual, and too removed from the action. So I made Brenna a private detective, specializing in locating missing persons. The germ of the plot came from one of my earliest traumatic experiences: When I was four years old, I wandered off from a neighborhood party, taking a younger girl with me. We got lost pretty fast. A woman came out of her house, scolded me, and took the little girl in with her, to safety, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. I guess it was my first rejection, and so, of course, I had to create a plot around it.

This was definitely my hardest book to write. It involves three different mysteries, the oldest of which is 28 years old, and the newest of which happened just a few days ago. I wrote and wrote and rewrote and reorganized, again and again. I have a computer file of cut scenes that is over 200 pages long. And even after I’d delivered what I thought was a pretty good first draft, it was called to my attention that the timeline was off – not a mistake you want to make in a book about a character with perfect memory.

All in all, though, I have to say the experience of writing AND SHE WAS was both exhausting -- and deeply fulfilling. And it is one that both the copy editor and myself are not likely to forget for a very long time.

Alison Gaylin is the Edgar-nominated author of TRASH, YOU KILL ME, HIDE YOUR EYES and HEARTLESS.

Interesting Article about Dan Marlowe in LA REVIEW OF BOOKS

2012-03-12T18:30:00.002-04:00

Right here. http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/19055952081/the-wrong-marlowe

This publication is distinguishing itself by publishing articles across the board. Check out this fine piece.

Who is Your Favorite Heroine in TV, Books or Movies?

2012-03-12T07:00:00.004-04:00

Midway to April 2's, flash fiction challenge A DAY AT THE ZOO. (You don't have to call it that. I'm not) If you haven't said you're in, well, get in. The more, the furrier.

Five brilliant British films from the sixties on TCM tonight.

Your Favorite Heroine

I am going with Helen Mirren's Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. That show and Mirren showed what happened to a female police chief over time. Sure, Buffy is fun at 18, but this is what happens to her by 55. Kicking ass is not so endearing after a certain age. You need a more sedate approach.

Jane Tennison had to deal with sexism before Lizbeth Salander came along. She rose in the ranks but the job took its toll, making her a lonely alcoholic by the last series.

Only an actress of Mirren's caliber could pull this off. Great writing too.
Too bad they didn't give the US version a chance to find its mojo.

So what woman do you want to save your ass or catch the bad guy who put it in jeopardy.

Sunday Night Music: Chris Isaak

2012-03-11T20:35:00.000-04:00

Changing the Ending

2012-03-11T07:56:00.000-04:00

In a book I am listening to by Carolyn Parkhurst (THE NOBODIES ALBUM), her protagonist is a writer who with her eighth book decides to change the endings of her first seven books.

I think this would be a great exercise for writers-go back to an early story and change the ending and maybe we can do it sometime.

But it made me think: in what novel/movie would you change the ending ?

Saturday Night Music: Estelle

2012-03-10T18:02:00.001-05:00

Gosh, it's Ray Banks and me. If you have it in you to vote one more time, go here and do it.

Friday Night Music, Sarah Vaughan

2012-03-09T20:16:00.001-05:00

The Summing Up, March 9, 2012

2012-03-09T18:36:00.006-05:00

Patti Abbott, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, P.D. James
Sergio Angelini, Darkness at Pemberly, T.H. White
Yvette Banek, Ravished, Amanda Quick
Joe Barone, The Snack Thief. Andrea Camilleri
Brian Busby, A Beat in View, Margare Millar
Bill Crider, The Mammoth Books of New World Science Fiction: Short Novels from the Sixties, Isaac Asimov
Scott Cupp, The Licking Valley Cooper Hunter's Club, Brian A Hopkins
Martin Edwards, Some Must Watch, Ethel Lina White
Elisabeth Grace Foley, Hay-Wire, B. M. Bauer
Ed Gorman, The Executioner, John D. MacDonald
Jerry House, Plays for Earth and Air, Lord Dunsany
Randy Johnson, The Far Frontier, William Rotsler
George Kelley, A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
Margot Kinberg, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Peter Hoeg
B.V. Lawson, The President's Mystery Plot, ed. Fulton Oursler, based on an idea by F.D. R.
Evan Lewis, The Score, Richard Stark
Steve Lewis, The Mouse in the Mountain, Norbert Davis
Todd Mason, The Fanciest Dive, Christopher Byron
Linda McLaughlin, Lost Horizon, James Hilton
J.F. Norris, Ten Little Wizards, Michael Kurland
David Rachels, The Name of the Game is Death, Dan J. Marlowe
James Reasoner, Texas Shall Be Free, H. Bedford Jones
Gerard Saylor, The Guns of Heaven, Pete Hamill
Ron Scheer, With Hoops of Steel, Florence Finch Kelly
Kerrie Smith, The Best Man to Die, Ruth Rendell
Kevin Tipple, Death Will Get You Sober, Elizabeth Zelvin
Zybahn, "Block that Metaphor," Robert Bloch

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, March 9, 2012

2012-03-09T08:00:00.008-05:00

Thanks to Cullen Gallagher for taking a chance of a novice's attempt at a western. You can find it on FIRES ON THE PLAIN. Along with two other great yarns.

Dedicated to Joseph Reading, who read westerns religiously--"but not the fancy ones."

My review of A SEPARATION in up at CRIMESPREE CINEMA.

John D. MacDonald, it is. Friday, April 14th is the date. Everyone who chances by is welcom e to do a review. If you don't have a blog I will be happy to post it. Just let me know.
I am claiming APRIL EVIL since I have had it on my shelf for ten years at least. I don't know if we should coordinate books or not, but I hate being chairmany so if we have multiple reviews, we have multiple reviews. I hope this turns out even half as well as the Westlake one. And speaking of John D. MacDonald, Ed has used his amazing psychic powers to come up with this.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad series, the Sam McCann series, numerous westerns and other good stuff. You can find him here.

The Executioners by John D. MacDonald

I usually read a John D. novel every month or so. There are eight or nine I never get tired of simply because they're so well done.

Last night I picked up The Executioners (Cape Fear) for bedtime reading and read to page 102 before turning out the light. Yes, a few of his flaws on are on display, especially cutesy-poo man-woman dialogue but mostly in first half of the first act. But except for that this is a virtually perfect suspense novel. MacDonald wisely hews to the Hitchcock rule--suspense comes from knowing that the bomb is under the chair. MacDonald plants the bomb in the first chapter and then slowly lets the wick burn lower and lower. Several lesser incidents anticipate the final explosion.

Cady isn't Robert Mitchum's Cady but he could be his cousin. The scene where the family buries the dog Cady kills is as fresh and moving as it was the first time I read it. The wife is a tough woman, not the Polly Bergen version. And protagonist Sam, while not a typical MacDonald tough guy, is not the cipher he seems to be in the movie. JDM gives him real depth here.

The Executioners would be written very differently today. It would be angrier, bloodier, more brutal in terms of Cady's psychology (Mitchum got it exactly). But for me The Executioners bears re-reading because it's one of the best stories told by one of the best storytellers of my time on the planet.

Next week, March 16th, Todd will be the toastmaster. I will leave a link to his site.

AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN, P.D. James. (Patti Abbott)

Although James is certainly not a forgotten writer, especially with A DEATH AT PEMBERLY out as I write this, I think this is one of her least read novels since it didn't feature Adam Dagleish. It was the first James' book I read though and I liked it very much. The very young female detective, Cordelia Gray, was something new to me. And she was just about my age.

Her first case (after the suicide of her elderly mentor in a detective agency) involved the death of Cambridge dropout, Mark Callender, who died hanging by the neck with a smudge of lipstick on his mouth. Cordelia is hired to prove this was no suicide. Or, if it was, what sparked it. She finds out that and more.

Now if you look at the reviews this novel receives on Good Reads, it is clearly not a favorite of James' fans. And reading it forty years later is probably not seeing it at its best. It's a period piece in a way.

It sparked a lot of discussion at the time. Women were not a integral part of police forces, of courtrooms, of army units, and certainly not PIs. Cordelia Gray was the forerunner of the female PIs written about in the forty years since. Because Cordelia was portrayed as feminine, naive and inexperienced rather than like the ballsy women Grafton, Paretsky and Muller wrote about a bit later, she seems as much a relic as Mrs. Marple today. But at the time, it felt right. At the time, it was a step forward. You have only to look at the female policeman on LIFE ON MARS to see what they were up against. (Not to take my world view from TV, but it's a quick example)

Cordelia only appears in one more novel, THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN. Too bad. I would have liked to see what happened to her.

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Elisabeth Grace Foley
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
Linda McLaughlin
J.F. Norris
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
Zybahn

My Life at the Theater: Freud's Last Session

2012-03-08T18:07:00.003-05:00

We saw this at the Century Theater in Detroit in November. It was a two-person play about a possible meeting between Freud and C.S. Lewis in the late thirties in London where they mostly debated the existence of God.

It was well done although perhaps a bit static and didactic. But certainly well worth the small price we paid for it.

Greg Shepard from Prologue Books

2012-03-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

Made it to the final four in the Spinetingler ebook contest, but I am likely to go down to Neil Smith. If you want to keep MONKEY JUSTICE afloat, vote here.

The Evolution of Prologue Books, Greg Shepard

When I was a teenager, I didn’t have a bookstore in my town. So the only place I ran across new books was in the wire and spinner racks in the corner drug store and Sprouse-Reitz (too young yet to be visiting the liquor stores). We didn’t even have a used bookstore. For that I had to talk my dad into driving all the way over to Sacramento to Beer’s Books, a dusty little den where my allowance went a little further. But that didn’t happen too often.

We all know that when you’re a kid, if you don’t have something, you make do. So I poured over these drug store spinner racks. I was a science fiction reader then, so all those great John D. MacDonald and Carter Brown and Frank Kane and Brett Halliday and Mickey Spillane books were just a tease to me. They seemed to promise so much—a forbidden world of adult problems, adult concerns….and sex. Tempting, but…..

Science fiction was escape. This mystery stuff looked scary real. At the time, I kept to the safe stuff. Even the mysteries I read were safe: Phyllis A. Whitney, Conan Doyle, E. Phillips Oppenheim. But I still remember those paperback covers. Dell had all the best covers, dark and alluring. Signet was a close second. Later I discovered that Gold Medal had the best writers. Maybe they just didn’t have the best distributor in my town. That may have been the case. I don’t remember seeing them at the drug store. When I think of those spinner racks, I always think of Dell Books.

Eventually, I found out what I had been missing when I didn’t buy the hot, new Johnny Liddell mystery but kept to the latest Ace Double Science Fiction instead. By this time, sf (we never called it sci-fi) had discovered sex, too, so that wasn’t the big deal. But all the time, I had been right—these forbidden fruit books really were pretty damn dark: cynical, subversive, not always delivering a happy ending, sometimes taking the hero down at the end in a spray of lead. Most of the time the main character was just a screwed up mess.

First I discovered Cornell Woolrich because Ace started reprinting them and I was a big Ace Books collector back then. Weird, twisted stories they were: nightmarish. Then came the hardboiled period. I read all the Raymond Chandler novels. And Dashiell Hammett. And James Cain.

I started reading Jim Thompson and David Goodis in the mid-80’s when I discovered the Black Box Thrillers from England. And quickly graduated to W. R. Burnett and Horace McCoy, Peter Rabe and Gil Brewer, Vin Packer, Fletcher Flora, Harry Whittington, Charles Williams. Dark stuff, tortured heroes, crimes gone wrong, thwarted desires, lots of drinking, lots of smoking. I had found my heroes. And bought up every old mystery paperback I could find, everything I had said no to back in my youth.

Eventually I was able to translate that love affair into a reprint publishing house, Stark House Press. And even more eventually, I was able to team up with Ben LeRoy and help get these authors into the modern ebook format via a new website, Prologue Books. It’s been a long trip from a town without a bookstore to today’s internet-saturated world where everything is available. Yes, it’s all available, but Prologue just made it a whole lot easier. It’s almost like having a new bookstore in town…..

Greg Shepard

Stark House Press
Prologue Books

Wednesday Night Music: A. A. Bondy

2012-03-07T18:49:00.000-05:00

Fiction Forms

2012-03-07T14:00:00.004-05:00

Reading a short story a day, I am often taken aback by how a good novelist doesn't always write a good short story. And you can see why; he/she needs another 175 pages to develop the ideas.

Most short story writers go for a moment more than a quick solving of a murder case or the story of a life. Likewise, a good short story writer writing a novel often seems to be at a loss at what details are needed-how to keep the excitement level up over the course of an entire book

Who does both well? I don't always like Joyce Carol Oates's novels and stories-but I think her talents are great in both forms. Who else?

First Wednesday Book Review Club: THE ODDS, Stewart O'Nan

2012-03-07T07:00:00.002-05:00

Another brilliant novel by the master.

A middle-aged couple, headed for divorce, decides to spend their final weekend together (Valentine's Day) at Niagara Falls, where they spent their first one.

They also decide to take the money left in the bank after some disastrous decisions and see if they can solve some of their troubles at the casino tables. This is not a travelogue of Niagara Falls but one that winds through their past a bit. They seldom leave the hotel, restaurants and casino in this book.

Sad, lovely, romantic, despairing, hopeful--all of these in this portrait of a marriage and what can go wrong and right with it. Just great stuff. There is no better contemporary writer (ahem, well maybe one) for me.

Check out other reviews at Barrie Summy's place.

Tuesday Night Music: Regina Spektor

2012-03-06T19:00:00.000-05:00

What Would Elmore Do?

2012-03-06T14:00:00.006-05:00

I learned this morning, MONKEY JUSTICE reached the elite eight in a contest for best ebook of 2011 on Spinetingler. I fear and dread contests (why can't we all win) but if you liked MONKEY JUSTICE and wish to vote for it--here it is.

http://www.spinetinglermag.com

It is Super Tuesday after all
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Adverbs are pretty much out of favor in fiction writing, but here is where it trips me up.

She smiled.
She smiled slightly.
She smiled broadly.
She smiled ironically.
She smiled maliciously.
She smiled hesitantly.

Now these are very different smiles. And of course, to avoid the adverb, I could say something like "Her smile was a slight one." Or spend several sentences getting that across.

But how is making it an adjective any better? And is embedding the sort of smile it was in a lot more words to avoid an adverb a good choice. Is the occasional adverb really so bad? Doesn't it cut to the chase sometimes?

What would Elmore do? What would Joe Konrath do?

Forgotten Movies: ACCIDENT

2012-03-06T07:19:00.003-05:00

Dirk Bogarde was a real favorite of mine. And when you throw Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey into the mix...well, it's gonna be interesting.

In this film, a professor, feeling at odds with his middle-class, middle-aged life, becomes involved in the lives of his students. And one, in particular. This became a cautionary story for me when marrying a professor.

That panicky air British films of this era have always make my heart pound. Was it the music?

For more forgotten movies, see Todd Mason.

The Best TV Drama of the Last 25 years.

2012-03-05T15:11:00.003-05:00

I was going to discuss this soon, but this site is doing it for me with greater minds than mine.

http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/the-best-tv-drama-of-the-last-25-years.html

Today is THE SOPRANOS V. SIX FEET UNDER. (Wow, I must say Tony et al have sort of faded for me)

The site will go on with head to head choices for several weeks.

My choice for the best TV drama ever is Friday Night Lights, which didn't have crime as a crutch to lean on. Just pure Texas football and the greatest cast, writing, and direction I have ever seen.

Thanks to Jason Pinter for pointing this out.

Your Favorite Gary Cooper Movie

2012-03-05T06:52:00.001-05:00

Check out a new website and publishing venture: Prologue. Hundreds of older genre books are being converted to ebooks by Prologue. Plus it will function as a website with articles and information about forgotten books and authors. More than 250 books are currently being made available for e-readers.

"I envision Prologue Books not simply an e-book publisher for out-of-print titles, but as a living record of the crime, science fiction, and fantasy genres,” said Ben LeRoy, publisher of Tyrus Books who is spearheading the project along with Greg Shepard.
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Cooper has to be one of the most versatile actors Hollywood produced. He was credible in comedies, westerns, romances and serious dramas. If Cary Grant is my favorite golden era actor, Cooper comes in a close second.

I choose BALL OF FIRE as my favorite Cooper movie. In BALL OF FIRE, Cooper plays one of seven professors studying how common people speak. They hire Barabara Stanwyck for the job. She becomes a Snow White to the seven men. Just charming and directed by Howard Hawkes. Which Cooper film do you like best. IMDB has the whole list.

Sunday Night Humor: Louis C.K.

2012-03-04T20:00:00.001-05:00

Hard to find a PG rated one. Love his show.

A Question?

2012-03-04T08:02:00.006-05:00

What is the difference between speculative fiction and science fiction?
A discussion by Joyce Carol Oates of Margaret Atwood's latest book of essays obfuscates rather than explains it for the lay person. (Or at least me).

If it's set in the future but does not employ aliens as a plot device, is that enough to make it speculative?

****I just read a story from STORIES, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, an anthology, which purports to be composed of imaginative and speculative stories. The first story I read, "Unwell" chosen by me because I had just put a book by her on reserve at the library, was by Carolyn Parkhurst. It was about a woman who subverts every chance her sister has at happiness through very ordinary and if I might say so, familiar means.

I don't see how this story "reinvigorates, redefines and expands" the boundaries of imaginative fiction. It is a very ordinary story on any terms. Gaiman's statement that "we wanted to read stories that used a lightening-flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as something we have never seen at all" would not apply here for me at all.

So I guess I also need a definition of imaginative fiction.

Saturday Night Music: Alissa Weilerstein

2012-03-03T18:00:00.001-05:00

The Things We Carry

2012-03-03T07:32:00.000-05:00

Check out the second story, an excerpt from the Cash Laramie series with a Nik Morton penned episode, on FIRES ON THE PLAIN.

(Not our hallway)

We recently redid our front hallway and the job necessitated taking down a lot of stuff and storing it for two weeks because it was a dusty dirty job. When the time came to restore order, it seemed like a good time to sort through the accessories, artwork, books, and plants and discard some, bring some new things into the room, change the look. Update the dining room on one side of the hall and living room on the other. Perhaps have a more minimalist look.

I was very surprised to find how many items, we disagreed on. Paintings I liked, Phil was tired of. Plants he liked were dull and messy to me. He was sick of a quilt I hung in the dining room and found no charm in my magic ball that changes colors. He was tired of the vases across the fireplace, I thought a lot of the books could go upstairs or better still to a charity. He wanted to bring back a ceramic piece we had over the fireplace a few years back. None of this amounted to a fight (okay, maybe the quilt did) but we seemed to have very different ideas of what to change.

Would this be true in your house? Do you and your housemate differ on how the rooms should look. Most of you men could probably care less, but would you let your wife pick the paint color and hang the paintings without any input from you?

Is redecorating as combative as putting the lights on a Christmas tree used to be?

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, March 2, 2012

2012-03-02T17:01:00.000-05:00

A review of Chico and Rita, right here at Crimespree Cinema Magazine.

At the suggestion of a reader, I am going to try and do this differently. I will post the author and titles on the original post late in the day. That way all the information will appear together. Hope it works okay.

On March 16th, we can either take a week off or someone else can do the duties. Thanks.

Friday's Forgotten Books, March 2, 2012

2012-03-02T08:28:00.008-05:00

Timothy Hallinan is the Edgar- and Macavity-nominated author of the Poke Rafferty Bangkok Thrillers and the Junior Bender Mysteries. His next Poke Rafferty book, The Fear Artist, will come out in July.

Gitana, Dominic Martell

Gitana is the third and final book in an unhappily short series (the others are Lying Crying Dying and The Republic of Night) by Dominic Martell. The hero, Pasqual Rose, lives a life on the margins in Barcelona, working at a small bar in a dicey neighborhood. This isn't the Barcelona of Gaudi or even Woody Allen, it's a much tougher town, populated by Gypsies, skinheads, and the occasional slumming tourist, a maze of ancient alleyways, dark enough to cloak the worst of misdeeds.

Pascual is shielding an enormous secret: a more than a decade ago, as a young, impressionable man, he fell in with the Palestinian cause and committed acts of terror in its name before he recoiled from what he'd become and fled into hiding. He's ridden with guilt and hopelessly seeking some kind of absolution—but he's still got the reflexes and instincts developed by years spent looking over his shoulder. When an American man comes into the bar and calls him by name, alarms go off in Pascual's head; and when the American is murdered shortly afterward, Pascual knows that someone or something is sniffing him out.

And then there's Sara, who sings in the bar where Pasqual works, and whom he's fallen in love with, and there's Serrano, the cop who knows part of Pasqual's story, and there's Campos, the journalist who may know nearly all of it and wants to write a book. And back behind all of it, cranking on clockwork Pascual can only guess at, is someone who wants him dead and who doesn't care about collateral damage. And there's also the secret in Sara's past, that Pascual can't even guess at.

Gitana is beautifully plotted and written. Martell obviously knows Barcelona inside out, because I've rarely read a book with a stronger and more persuasive sense of place. The triumph of the book for me, though, is characterization—there isn't a character in the book, who doesn't leap off the page, who doesn't seem to possess a genuine subconscious. I read the book for the skill with which it's written and the spell of the setting, but I loved it because of the people in its pages, Dominic Martell, who also writes crackerjack Chicago thrillers as Sam Reaves, is (I think) a criminally underrated writer, and I'm delighted to see the Pascual trilogy gradually becoming available in ebook form. The first one, Lying Crying Dying is available now here on Amazon.

Ed Gorman is the author of the new Dev Conrad novel, BLINDSIDE.

Forgotten Books: BLACKMAILER by George Axelrod

BLACKMAILER by George Axelrod
There were few cooler guys on TV in the Fifties than George Axelrod. I didn't see him that often--he did a few talk shows; a few arts shows--but I always thought Now that's the kind of guy I wish I could be. Hip but accessible.

Not only had Axelrod produced such fine B'way and movie hits as "The Seven Year Itch" and "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?," he'd adapted such novels as "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to the screen.

And on TV he was slick and and funny and serious about his craft.

Oh, and one more thing. He was the author of a genuine Gold Medal novel.

I bought BLACKMAILER a few years after it appeared...say forty-five years ago. Now you can get a Hard Case edition and even after all this time it holds up well, albeit as a tribute to a time long past but fondly remembered by some portions of my generation.

What Axelrod did here was take the elements of the standard hardboiled crime novel--good bad girls and bad bad men, the prospect of lots of cash--and mix them up with talent agents and movie stars. And relate all this in a voice that is both literate and a bit larky at times--and works surprisingly well, even in the scenes of violence. There's a faux Hemingway (who was God at that time), a faux Marilyn Monroe (who was Goddess at that time) and enough double-crossing to make you cross-eyed.

This is one of those kick-back novels. A beer or two, a night with nothing to do, a devout desire for pure escape. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Axelrod is one of those seminal figures of the fifties and early sixties (along with people such as David Suskind) who made talk show appearances lively and always at least a bit controversial. Intellectually controversial that is...as opposed to today with its Snookis and Kardashians.

Sergio Angelini, The Mugger, Ed McBain

Yvette Banek, Cat and Mouse, Christianna Brand

Joe Barone, Cast a Blue Shadow, P.L. Gaus

Bill Crider, I'll Cry When I Kill You, Peter Israel

Scott Cupp, Ballroom of the Skies, John D. Macdonald

Martin Edwards, Dead Man's Watch, G.D.H. and Margaret Cole

Ed Gorman, Blackmailer, George Axelrod

Tim Hallinan, Gitano, Dominic Martell

Jerry House, Necropolis, Basil Copper

George Kelley, The Chalice of Death, Robert Silverberg

Randy Johnson, The Caballero's Way, O. Henry

Rob Kitchin, Incompetence, Rob Grant

B. V. Lawson, Murder Ink, Revised, Dilys Winn

Evan Lewis, A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs

Steve Lewis, The Language of Cannibals, George C. Chesbro

Todd Mason, The American Folk Scene, ed. De Turk and Paulin, Boby Dylan: Don't Look Back (Pennebaker), Dangerously Funny, Bianculli

J.F. Norris, The Hollow Skin, Virginia Swain

David Rachel, Blue Spring, Taiyo Matsomoto

James Reasoner, Bowie Knife, H. Bedford Jones

Richard Robinson, Playgrounds of the Mind, Larry Niven

Gerard Saylor, Wolves Eat Dogs, Martin Cruz Smith

Ron Scheer, The Fate of a Fool, Emma Ghent Curtis

Kerrie Smith, Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios

Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, The Clock Strikes Thirteen, Herbert Brean

TomCat, The McCone Files, Marcia Muller

Zybahn, The Erasers, Alain Robbe-Grillet

My Life at the Theater: Doubt

2012-03-01T19:15:00.001-05:00

We saw DOUBT at the Performance Network in Ann Arbor in 2008, an intimate venue for a play like this one. I thought it was very well done and left some room for DOUBT, more than the eventual film with Streep and Seymour Hoffman did. DOUBT questions whether a priest has been abusing children at a Catholic School. A nun goes toe-to-toe with him. It really was a riveting play.

How Long Did You Know Your Spouse Before Marrying?

2012-03-01T14:00:00.000-05:00

I am often taken aback at how quickly people got married several generations ago compared to the time they seem to spend together before marriage today. I know of engagements that last years after relationships that lasted years.

We met the summer of '65, weeks after I graduated from high school and married in January of '67. No one told us this was a short engagement although they did remark we were awfully young.

How long did it take you to tie the knot if there is a knot? From the first date to the wedding--how long was it?

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS COLLECTION: Dan B. O'Shea

2012-03-01T08:00:00.003-05:00

How I came to write OLD SCHOOL,

Dan O'Shea

How did I come to write this collection? You got a lot of nerve asking Patti, ‘cause when you get down to it, it’s your own damn fault.

Up until a couple years ago, I’d never written any short fiction. None. Zip, zero, zilch. Hell, up until maybe five years ago, I hadn’t written any fiction at all, not really.

Always wanted to be a writer, only problem being I already was one. Had a pretty comfortable career freelancing, business and financial writing, mostly about taxes. Writing fiction on spec? Told myself I didn’t have time. Told myself I couldn’t blow hours I should be investing in paying work on fun and games.

Told myself all sorts of crap to justify pissing on my own dreams.

Shit happened. I got older. People I cared about died. It sunk in that anything they hadn’t gotten around to doing, any dreams they’d skipped because they needed another paycheck, those died with them.

So I made the time and I wrote.

But I wasn’t weaned in this online writing world I’ve discovered since. I didn’t know about any of the e-zines, the flash fiction contests, none of that. My education concerning the market for fiction was what I saw on the shelves at the local Borders. All I saw there were novels. So I wrote one.

Fortunately, an agent liked it – Stacia Decker. So I signed with her, and she was the one that told me I should think about Twitter and blogs and Facebook. Well, OK, I knew about Facebook, but as far as I was concerned, that was just a way to recon any boys that might be sniffing around my teenage daughter.

And that’s how I met you, Patti.

I was just getting my feet wet in this new virtual world when you tossed out this flash fiction challenge. Write a story, a thousand words or less, something to do with Walmart.

A thousand words? That’s crazy. I had this novel mindset. It was all I knew. But I gave it a shot.

Here’s what I learned.

You can tell a hell of a story in a thousand words, but you have to break some bad habits. Gotta turn the verbosity meter all the way down. Gotta have a damn clear idea, and then get to the point in a straight line. Because that wiggle room you have when you’ve got 100K words to play with? That’s all gone.

That first story, Black Friday? People liked it. Hell, I liked it. Then you and Steve Weddle went and pulled that Discount Noir anthology together and it got included in there. That was pretty cool.

Duets: Alison and John

2012-02-29T17:26:00.000-05:00

FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE: A Day at the Zoo

2012-02-29T08:00:00.001-05:00

I am really excited that in a few weeks, I will be able to take Kevin to the zoo again. With that thought in mind, I thought a new flash fiction challenge might be fun and would also force me to write a story I have had in mind for a few weeks.

The challenge is this: write a story that is set in a zoo. The zoo can be incidental to the plot, but that's the setting.

I am thinking April 2, 2012. How about a story not longer than 1200 words?

I know there are more sites that take flash than ever so if I write alone, I write alone. Let me know.

Tuesday Night Music: Massive Attack

2012-02-28T18:49:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Movies, TROUBLE IN PARADISE

2012-02-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

Ernest Lubitsch made TROUBLE IN PARADISE in 1932 and it's nearly impossible to over-emphasize what a great movie this is. There is not a hair nor a line of out place. Marcel waves-- that's the word for the thirties hair styles, I think. Tried to think of it all day on Saturday when we saw this on a huge screen at the Detroit Film Theater.

What a treat.

Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins play two jewel thieves who chance on each other in Venice and are delighted at their shared profession. They are proud of it and their pride in being the best at their craft elevates everything that comes along.

Down the road they come upon Kay Francis, the heiress to a purse company. The two join forces to swindle her but trouble in paradise ensues.

This is so witty, charming, clever, and fun, I can't think where Hollywood has gone so wrong in 80 years. Lubitsch was able to take the tricks he learned in advancing a story in the silent days with the ability to now include banter, wit and sophistication. This is a pre-code film and that makes it even better.

I know we have actors good enough to bring this off today because none of these actors are anything special. I know we have writers who could do justice to a film like this. So I have to say that it's Hollywood itself that settles too easily now for teen romances that don't have a witty line or a clever plot to offer. Such a shame.

See this if you can. Lovely. And on a big screen it holds my interest so much more than on the small one.

Todd Mason will have more links later this morning.

Monday Night Music: Heartless Bastards

2012-02-27T19:37:00.001-05:00

Male Society

2012-02-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

Male Society.

Phil is teaching a class on utopias and dystopias in the University's Honors College. He has 18 women and two men in the class. This configuration is not unusual in the Honors College. Women here seen to be willing to work harder in general.

He asked them last week, what would an all male society look like. I'll tell you their thoughts after you tell me yours.

What attributes would you list?

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS COLLECTION: Chris Rhatigan

2012-02-27T07:00:00.001-05:00

How I Came to Write This Collection: Chris Rhatigan, WATCH YOU DROWN

In May 2010, I sent a short story to Christopher Grant at A TWIST OF NOIR. He wrote back a few short hours later saying the piece was exactly the kind of thing he was looking for. It was the first time I'd been published—and I was thrilled. Earning the support of a writer and editor who I respected was awesome.

From there, I became immersed in the online crime fiction community. I published stories at a lot of different sites that I dug, places like YELLOW MAMA and PULP METAL MAGAZINE and SHOTGUN HONEY. Pretty quickly, I built up a nice cache of stories, and I considered releasing a collection.

But I wanted to do it right. There were a lot of ebooks coming out. Some were fantastic. Others were terrible. And a good number were decent, but maybe not ready for prime time.

Obviously, I wanted mine to be in that first category.

After talking with a few trusted sources, I decided to keep my collection 1) short, 2) in one genre, and 3) only stories that I really believed in. I even went back and polished already published stories.

I took my leanest crime/noir stories and put them together. Found an order that made sense. Some of these stories are published, some are unpublished. I sent the collection out to those trusted sources and got some excellent suggestions. Then I sent it over to Jason Michel with Pulp Metal Fiction, who made all the formatting and cover art happen.

So what category will my ebook belong in? Well, the reviews have been good so far!

Chris Rhatigan is the editor of ALL DUE RESPECT. WATCH YOU DROWN is available at Amazon and Amazon UK for 99 cents/63 pence. If you dig short fiction, check out his blog, Death by Killing.

Am I a Book Banner?

2012-02-26T14:38:00.005-05:00

What do you think?

I walked into my library today and on the shelf found Quentin Rowan Markam's Assassin of Secrets. I debated what to do, not believing that the librarians could not have heard any of the brouhaha about it. But they had not. When I informed the librarian, I felt like a book banner. She looked at me as I was the crazy lady who is always at the computer by the window playing bingo. And I felt strange.

But should this book be on the shelf?

And then another odd thing happened, the librarian checked on Amazon, looked up, and said to me, "It's a very valuable book. There's a copy for $250."

"Yes," I said, "but that's because Mulholland pulled most of the copies. And because some people like to collect such things."

I am not sure that book is not back on the shelf as I write this. Should it be? And if it is, shouldn't there be a warning that every word "even the thes and the ands" are a lie. (Thanks Mary McCarthy for a good line.) I am not a thief.

What do you think? Should libraries put this book on the shelf and allow people to believe Markam wrote it?

Or should it be burned?

Girls in Their Summer Dresses, Irwin Shaw

2012-02-26T13:00:00.002-05:00

To my mind, this is one of the great short stories. I have probably read it a dozen times over the years.

A husband cannot stop looking at other women when he and his wife are out for a Sunday stroll. And she can't help noticing that instead of listening to her plans for the day, (which includes seeing a baseball game, he is looking at women. Relentlessly, as he always has.

When pushed, he lists all the reasons he looks at women. And it's a comprehensive list-an addiction for him.

Although he claims to have been faithful for the five years of their marriage, the lust in his heart is as lethal as an affair(s) would have been.

What short story sticks with you?

FOR ANYONE WHO HAS MISSED IT, CULLEN GALLAGHER'S NEW WESTERN-THEMED ZINE IS UP. FIRE ON THE PLAINS WITH A FIRST STORY BY JAKE HINKSON.

Saturday Night Music: Azure Ray

2012-02-25T18:56:00.000-05:00

THE SUMMING UP, Feburary 24, 2012

2012-02-24T18:29:00.001-05:00

Check out my review of CHRONICLE.

THE SUMMING UP, Feburary 24, 2012

Patti Abbott, The Summing Up, W. Somerset Maugham
Sergio Angelini, The Empty Hours, Ed McBain
Yvette Banek, The Singing Sands, Josephine Tey
Joe Barone, One True Sentence, Craig McDonald
Brian Busby, The Woman Who Couldn't Die, Arthur Stringer
Bill Crider, Horror Times Ten, Alden H. Norton, ed.
Scott Cupp, A Political Fable, Robert Coover
Martin Edwards, The Murder of Sleep, Milward Kennedy
Elizabeth Foxwell, Keep it Quiet, Richard Hull
Ed Gorman, The Honest Dealer, Frank Gruber
Jerry House, Dog in the Sky, Norman Corwin
Randy Johnson, Miami Mayhem, Marvin Albert
George Kelley. The Star Hunter, Edmond Hamilton, The Alien, Raymond F. Jones
B.V. Lawson, The Adventures of Romney Pringle. R. Austin Freeman
Evan Lewis, The Honest Dealer, Frank Gruber
Steve Lewis/Ray O'Leary, Bones and Silence, Reginald Hill
Todd Mason, Women Should Be Allowed, Wilma Shore
J.V. Norris, The Leprechaun Murders, Adrian Reynolds
Richard Pangburn, Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lisa Barackman
David Rachels, Power Trip, Don Tracy
James Reasoner, Strictly for the Boys, Harry Whittington
Richard Robinson, Islands in the Sky, Arthur C. Clarke
Gerard Saylor, Lost, Michael Robotham
Ron Scheer, The Magic of Blood, Dagoberto Gilb
Kerrie Smith, Harmful Intent, Robin Cook
Kevin Tipple, Houston Homicide, Bill Crider and Clyde Wilson
TomCat, The Sleeping Bachus, Hilary St. George Saunders

Friday's Forgotten Books, February, 24, 2012

2012-02-24T09:00:00.002-05:00

Last week's tribute to the books of Donald Westlake seemed to have been enjoyed by writers and readers and several people have suggested we do it again. Here are some tentative choices for another round. Of course, the author must have quite a large number of books for it to work out. Whose books would you like to write/read about?

Agatha Christie
John D. MacDonald
Georges Simenon
Nicholas Freeling
Margaret Millar
Ruth Rendell (although she is still alive. Dead might be better for our purposes if not hers).
Ross Macdonald
Reginald Hill (also wrote under Patrick Ruell)
Patricia Highsmith (almost enough)

Who else? I think reviews from writers with only one character like Sue Grafton might be tedious to read. That might be true of a few here. I am thinking Simenon might work. He has many standalones as well as the Maigrets. Millar has about twenty some novels although some might be difficult to get your hands on. John D. has both Travis and standalones. Ross is mostly Archers. Parker, mostly Spenser. Rendell would be a good choice in many ways because she has a series and standalones written under two names. I am thinking of early April. What say you?

Ed Gorman is the author of the Sam McCain series and the Dev Conrad series as well as countless westerns, anthologies and other good stuff. You can find him here.

The Honest Dealer by Frank Gruber

The Honest Dealer

Dick Lochte wrote a guest piece for the Rap Sheet awhile back that I found mighty pleasing in my dotage. Here are some quotes from his choice for a Forgotten Book.

"OK, I’m not sure you have to read The Honest Dealer. If Frank Gruber were still alive, I doubt that even he would consider his 1947 book a necessity. But every now and then, after working my way through a couple of dozen contemporary crime novels, with their elaborate back stories and casts of thousands and plots that call attention to social and/or political ills, I like to treat myself to the kind of mystery that initially lured me to this genre--a yarn written for the sole purpose of providing sheer, unpretentious reading pleasure.

"The Honest Dealer does that in spades. The literary equivalent of a classic B-movie of the 1940s, it immediately draws you in, moves at a breathless pace, has the requisite moments of suspense and humor, and ends with a surprise villain, neatly thwarted. There are a lot of books from the ’30s and ’40s that meet those requirements, but, for my money, Dealer is one that does it best.

(more)

"I wonder what Gruber would think of some of today’s most popular series heroes--sociopaths, alcoholics, whiners, bitter loners, paranoiacs, and worse. Would he go with the market flow and come up with his version of the depressed detective? I’d like to think he’d pawn his typewriter and buy a horse."

Ed here: The horse reference is to a plot element.

I happened to read this book awhile back myself and I think Dick does a fine job of ennumerating its many fine if slight virtues, the biggest of which being that it's just a hell of a lot of fun to read.

As somebody who receives a moderate share of review copies I know what Dick means by the all-too-modern novel. I not only read them, I also write them. But there is so much hype attendant on the Serious ones--publicists and reviewers vying for the grandest superilative--that I often pick up a simple well-told story for a respite from all the Seriousness.

Thank God there are among the younger writers people who are serious about their writing but are a true unpretentious pleasure to read. To name a few Megan Abbott, Jason Starr, Duane Swierczynski, Tom Piccirilli, Allan Guthrie. They speak in their own voices, share their observations of our sometimes forlorn luckless species and yet never forget to amuse, bemuse, shock, outrage and comfort while demanding that we keep flipping those pages.

Damned good storytellers.

As was, in a less ambitious way, Frank Gruber.

Patti Abbott, THE SUMMING UP, W. Somerset Maugham.

Who could not like a book with the line, "Though I have loved a good many times, I have never experienced the bliss of requited love. I have most loved people who care little or nothing for me and when people have loved me, I have been embarrassed." (the last bit saves it from being too maudlin).

Or "In my twenties, the critics said I was brutal, in my thirties, they said I was flippant, in my forties they said I was cynical, in my fifties they said I was competent and now in my sixties they said I am superficial."

I loved all of Maugham's books way back when (especially CAKES AND ALE) but this is my favorite. Originally published in 1938, this is not quite a memoir, not quite a book on writing, this is in fact, a summing up. If you want to read an erudite book that looks at the writing (and reading) life more than the writing craft, this is an excellent one. In the self-deprecating way of the quotes above, you are introduced to a very wise man. Self-deprecation and modesty are such great traits. Too bad they are not valued on this side of the pond.

I hope you can find a copy with bigger print than mine.

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Elizabeth Foxwell
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Ray O'Leary
Todd Mason
J.V. Norris
Richard Pangburn
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
TomCat

My Life at the Theater-SPRING AWAKENING

2012-02-23T19:11:00.000-05:00

Based on Frank Wedekind's play of the same name, Spring Awakening depicts a dozen young people making their way through the thrilling, complicated and mysterious time of sexual awakening.

This production won a bunch of awards and was on Broadway from 2007-2009. We caught it near the end of the run.

1984s Favorite Crime Writers

2012-02-23T07:00:00.003-05:00

The Armchair Detective

Quarterly
The one and only. The late and lamented. The standard by which all other non-fiction mags are judged. This quarterly was around forever (or at least since 1967). It began as a mimeographed newsletter by Allen J. Hubin, spent a few years under the sponsorship of the University of California, and eventually found a home with Otto Penzler, as part of his Mysterious Press. The journal of record for the entire genre. A bit stodgy at times, and it was usually out of date by the time it finally came out, but back issues are well worth hunting down. It's still recommended, and it is still missed.(From THE THRILLING DETECTIVE SITE)

In 1984, a reader's survey by THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE listed these authors as their favorite in order of preference:

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
2. Agatha Christie
3. Raymond Chandler
4. Dorothy L Sayers
5. Rex Stout
6. Dashiell Hammett
7. Dick Francis
8. John Dickson Carr
9. Ellery Queen
10. Robert B,. Parker
11. Ross Macdonald
12. Edmund Crispin
13. John D. MacDonald
14. P.D. James
15. Ngaio Marsh
16. Ruth Rendell
17. Ed McBain
18. Josephine Tey
19. Emma Lathen
20. Elmore Leonard

With a couple exceptions, it holds up pretty well thirty years later. But who would you add; who would you take away?

Duets: Tony and Stevie

2012-02-22T16:14:00.000-05:00

My Oscar Picks

2012-02-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

As a person that sees more than 75 movies at the theater per year, I've paid for the right to name my favorites (on my blog at least). These are not the ones I think will win. But the ones that I enjoyed most. Or the ones that surprised me.

Best Picture. MONEYBALL. I did not expect to either understand or like it. After all, it dealt with sports and money-two of my least knowledgeable areas. The movie was able to make both understandable. The acting was great. Those locker rooms felt right. Brad Pitt had his own story within it. It will never win-I think it may have one of the poorest chances, in fact.

Best Actor-Brad Pitt. He made TREE OF LIFE tolerable and he was splendid in MONEYBALL. I am not a Brad Pitt fan, but this was his year. That French fellow can wait. And DESCENDANTS was not George at his best. He doesn't play schlub as well as he plays debonair.

Best Actress-Viola Davis. Oh, Streep was great in IRON LADY, but I disliked the movie too much to pick her. Viola was never flashy in THE HELP. She was quiet, careful. I think if Streep has a weakness it would be at doing a role like this one. A role where an accent or attitude didn't dominate. Maybe I have forgotten such a part, but I can't think of one.

Best Supporting Actor-I have only seen three of the performances. Jonah Hill was very good, but I would go with Plummer whose role was pivotal. He was beautiful and brave as a man who gets to be himself for about five minutes.

Best Supporting Actress. Octavia Spencer. If Davis was the quiet heart of THE HELP, Octavia was its angry voice. She just stole every scene she was in. I did not expect to like the movie as much as I did. And I wouldn't mind seeing it win BEST PICTURE. My only gripe with both the book and the movie is that a white woman saves the black women. It would have been so much more effective to have them save themselves. Or at least have a black woman return to the town and write their stories.

Best Director-Scorsese for Hugo. It was a lovely film and I wouldn't mind if this won Best Picture either. The director of MONEYBALL wasn't nominated. Ridiculous that movies but not their directors should be nominated. Or a director (Mallick) but not his film.

Anyone out there have a favorite? What to you think of the nominations? Do you even watch the show?

Tuesday Night Music: The Turtles

2012-02-21T16:00:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Movies: THE SWIMMER

2012-02-21T06:44:00.000-05:00

I have talked about this movie before in some context but here it comes again.
In 1968, Frank Perry took a great John Cheever story and made a terrific film. It is the story of a man, living in suburban Connecticut, who comes up with the idea he can swim from pool to pool in his neighborhood, finally arriving home. The element of time in this movie makes it especially interesting. The time of year, the state of the swimmer, the time of life, changes that occur as he makes his swim. Only Burt Lancaster could look so fetching in his late fifties. An amazing little film. One of my favorite small films for sure.

I bet Todd Mason has some other links for you.

SPEED CHRONICLES NY Launch

2012-02-20T16:00:00.002-05:00

Hey, if you're in the NY area, stop by St. Mark's Bookshop and see Megan and other writers from THE SPEED CHRONICLES. St. Mark's recently was saved from disappearing. Show up and show your support.

https://www.facebook.com/events/319412248109716/

The St. Mark's Bookshop Reading Series, Now at St. Mark's Bookshop

Start: 7:00 pm

St. Mark's Bookshop presents:An evening with Akashic Books featuring editor Joseph Mattson and contributor Megan Abbott plus Ishrat Syed, contributor to Mumbai Noir. TUESDAY, February 21th at 7PM The reading will take place at:St. Marks Bookshop31 Third Avenue (at 9th Street)New York, NY 10003 subway: 6 to Astor Place, N/R to 8th Street, L to 14th St/3rd Avenuethis is a free event for more information please visit the shop, call (212)260-7853 or email stmarksbooks@gmail.comAn evening with Akashic Books featuring editor Joseph Mattson and contributor Megan Abbott plus Ishrat Syed, contributor to Mumbai Noir. Following the international success of the Noir Series, The Speed Chronicles marks the launch of a new drug-based sister series - THE SPEED CHRONICLES! "The perfect stocking stuffer for your uncle in AA."--New York Observer "Just reading the table of contents for this fucker makes me want to hop in my time machine, zoom back to 1966, and find those two dubious physicians who used to write me scripts for Dexedrine, even though I was too tall and skinny to live already. Mainline this book now!"--James Ellroy

What was the most recent piece of music you bought?

2012-02-20T07:00:00.004-05:00

I removed word verification. Let's see how that works.

Mine was the soundtrack from the dance movie Pina, but I know most people don't buy entire CDs anymore. I downloaded music on my MP3 when I got it, and four years later the same tunes are on there and I never play it. The energy involved in downloading a whole new repertoire seems too great. So I still buy CDs. And friends burn me ones they think I will like. (Thanks, Kathy).

Now that you can usually listen to samples from all the songs on a CD on Amazon, I don't buy as many duds as I used to.

Anyway, what was the last piece of music you bought?

Sunday Night Humor

2012-02-19T16:52:00.000-05:00

Jin Miyake: Lilies of the Valley

2012-02-18T19:09:00.002-05:00

An Idiot Abroad

2012-02-18T09:06:00.000-05:00

(Someone's bucket list)

An Idiot Abroad is a British show, which I noticed on Fleur's blog, is an amusing and interesting show on the Science channel. The idea is that a list of 100 things that would appear on many bucket lists takes our guide to various places and challenges. It's basically a travel show played for laughs.

Do you have a bucket list--things you want to do before you die? I hope some of you are more daring than I am.

I have almost no sense of adventure in me. Or at least adventure that demands physical or dare- devil acts. I am working on a list but so far I am stuck. How about you? I could say I would like to learn to play the piano but I know that isn't going to happen. I would think there has to be some sense I might do it to put it on the list. Some chance I would at least try to make it happen.

Okay, I thought of one. Drive the car. You can see where I am coming from.

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, February 17, 2012-Donald Westlake Day

2012-02-17T17:37:00.015-05:00

Just a few more...

Originally I had thought of getting everyone's title beforehand so we'd not have repeats, but then I thought it would be more fun just to see how many titles we could cover. We only have two repeats out of all the reviews.

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, February 17, 2012-

Patti Abbott, MEMORY
Sergio Angelini, KINDS OF LOVE, KINDS OF DEATH
Yvette Banek, KAHAWA
Jack Bates, SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY
Bill Crider, CAMPUS DOLL
Scott Cupp, TOMORROW'S CRIMES
Cullen Gallagher, THE JUGGER
Ed Gorman, THE COMEDY IS FINISHED
Naomi Johnson, HIGH ADVENTURE
Randy Johnson, JIMMY, THE KID
Nick Jones, JIMMY, THE KID
George Kelley, SLAYGROUND
Rob Kitchin, NOBODY'S PERFECT
B.V. Lawson, A GOOD STORY
Evan Lewis, THE PARKER TRILOGY
Todd Mason, ENOUGH and the film, ORDO
Jeff Meyerson, DANCING AZTECS
J.F. Norris, A JADE IN ARIES
Anita Page, TRUST ME ON THIS
Eric Peterson, DANCING AZTECS
Deb Pfeifer, WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN
David Rachels, PLUNDER SQUAD
James Reasoner, GANGWAY (with Brian Garfield)
Trent Reynolds, MONEY FOR NOTHING
Kerrie Smith, THE HOT ROCK
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, GOD SAVE THE MARK
John Weagley, GOOD BEHAVIOR

Martin Edwards: A Collection of Reviews by Ross Macdonald
Jerry House: Uncollected short stories of John D. MacDonald
Ron Scheer: Gwendolen Overton, The Heritage of Unrest
Richard Pangburn: Stephen Dobyns' SARATOGA BACKTALK
Karyn Reeves: Cakes and Ale, W. Somerset Maugham

DONALD E. WESTLAKE DAY on Friday's Forgotten Books

2012-02-17T08:00:00.006-05:00

Join us today in celebrating the publication of Donald E. Westlake's final book, THE COMEDY IS FINISHED by Hard Case Crime.

Mr. Westlake was born in 1933 and died in 2009. He published more than 100 books under several names and won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of American three times as well as many other awards. He is certainly one of the pivotal writers in crime fiction.

Thanks to Naomi Johnson for this link to an interview with Westlake from 1973.

Jeff Meyerson

Donald E. Westlake, Dancing Aztecs (M. Evans, 1976)

As a New Yorker I am sensitive to how my home town is portrayed in fiction. If you're going to set a book here make sure to get it right. This is something you never have to worry about with Donald Westlake - think of the Dortmunder series - and that is certainly the case here, in what might be the quintessential New York City mystery by the late Grand Master. It is also, to my mind, his comic masterpiece.

The Dancing Aztec of the title is a thousand year old gold statue of a dancing priest worth $1 million, shipped to New York with a dozen or so others and, naturally, lost among the copies. Hustler Jerry Manelli has to quickly find where all the statues were delivered and find the real one before one of the unsuspecting recipients discovers he or she has the valuable one. This necessitates a raucous whirlwind around New York, which can serve as an accurate travelogue of New York in the 1970's, along with (as Bill Pronzini once put it in another review) hoodlums, con men, “a yam-fed Descalzan beauty,” union thugs, street thugs, a Harlem mortician, a Wall Street financier, a drunken activist, a college professor, “a visitor from another planet” and dozens more.

I remember discussing it with Bill at a long-ago Bouchercon and agreeing that no one does black street dialect like Westlake. If you can read this one without laughing out loud repeatedly you are made of stone. Highly recommended.

Donald Westlake’s Trust Me On This (Mysterious Press, 1988)

Reviewed by Anita Page

Reporter Sara Joslyn, driving down a deserted road on the way to her new job, passes what looks like a body hanging out of a car. She makes a U-turn, because she is, after all, a reporter, and discovers that the person halfway out of the car is better than dead—he’s been murdered. First day on the job and she’s going to walk in with a story about a man with a bullet in his brain.

Poor Sara. She fantasizes accolades when she presents her discovery to her new editor, Jack Ingersoll, but instead gets: “On what series is he a regular?”

As you may have guessed, this isn’t The New York Times. It’s the Weekly Galaxy, a supermarket tabloid with a hunger for celebs and a very relaxed attitude toward truth in journalism. Forget the body, Jack tells Sara, and assigns her instead to a piece on the beer and potato chip diet.

Sara will eventually do some sleuthing, and Westlake pulls off a nice suspenseful climax, but the murder is an afterthought. We’re here to hang out in a newsroom where editors pace their squaricles—taped lines on the floor delineating walls and doors—trying to stay alive and earn their enormous salaries by pitching stories like “Jogging Causes Nymphomania” and “Desperate Aliens Search for Rogue Planet Earth.”

The characters are an appealing mix of evil, lunatic and charming: the despot publisher whose office is an elevator; the three perpetually drunk Australians known as the Down Under Trio; Sara and Jack, whose initial antipathy guarantees that they’ll end up together.

And then there are the wildly comic scenes that read like something out of a Marx brothers movie. Here’s a glimpse of the Down Under Trio in the Veterans’ Bar & Grill:

“The sight of a fairly respectable-looking, neatly dressed in suit and tie, fifty-one-year-old Australian leaping about the bar, up onto chairs and back down onto the floor, suitcoat tail flying, hand firmly holding drink as both hands pretended to be tiny kangaroo paws boxing, the whole while honking, was so captivating that everybody had to do it, beginning with the retirees and finishing with the widows.”

In the end, the murder is solved, of course, and Jack and Sara go off into the sunset, but you’ll be glad to know you can meet up with them again in Westlake’s Baby, Would I Lie?

Part of this review ran previously at Women of Mystery.

Deb Pfeifer was a technical writer in the financial and software industries for almost 20 years. After a few years as a stay-at-home mom, I went back to work in the public school system. I now work in a classroom with autistic students. It is very challenging, but also very rewarding, work. I love to read across all genres, but mysteries are my favorite.

WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN - Donald Westlake

With the frequent appearance of those latest technological marvels, the cell phone and the fax machine, Donald Westlake's WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN? places itself firmly in the mid-1990s. What I found interesting, reading the book some 16 years after its publication, is not so much the story's rather naive reliance on things like fax machines or its Ocean's Elevenish Vegas heist plot or its rogues gallery of Dortmunder and his associates, but Westlake's far-sighted view of media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump, upon whom Max Fairbanks, the villain of the piece, is clearly based.

Amoral, assured, wealthy beyond measure, with plenty of politicians in his pocket, Max Fairbanks is also posessed of a petty vindictiveness that, the reader knows with pleasure, will be his undoing. It is this pettiness that compels Fairbanks take Dortmunder's "lucky ring" (left to Dortmunder's girlfriend May by her late uncle) when Dortmunder is being arrested for burglarizing Fairbanks's house. (A house that, in all fairness to Dortmunder, Max shouldn't have been in either.) The theft of the ring sets the plot in motion. Dortmunder only wants to get his ring back, but his ever-expanding circle of associates have other ideas: If Dortmunder is going to break into Fairbanks's various residences anyway, why shouldn't they come along and see what else is available? So while Dortmunder makes several unsuccessful attempts to retrieve his ring, his "colleagues" stage ever-more successful thefts of Fairbanks's property.

Eventually (thanks again to the marvelous fax machine), Dortmunder tracks Fairbanks to a flashy hotel and casino in Vegas, and Dortmunder must leave his comfort zone of New York and head west--with "friends" in tow, of course. Dortmunder's attempts to blend in with the Vegas crowds by wearing bright bemuda shorts and shirts is one of the book's funniest scenes. Meanwhile, the friends execute an elaborate plan to steal millions from the casino and an NYPD detective takes a suspicious look into the previous robberies of Fairbanks's homes, which, to the cop's eyes, appear to be inside jobs.

It will be no spoiler for those familiar with Westlake's work to say that by novel's end Westlake has masterfully pulled all these plot points together: The good are rewarded, the bad are punished, and Dortmunder gets back his lucky ring, although--considering the "luck" it gave Max Fairbanks--Dortmunder's not sure he's going to wear it again.

MEMORY, Donald Westlake, Patti Abbott

The story goes that Westlake's agent advised him against pursuing publication of this novel because it would derail his reputation as a crime writer. What a loss.

MEMORY is a classic mid-20th century American novel. I think it would stand quite credibly with novels like THE MOVIEGOER and STONER.

The only crime in the novel occurs on page one when Paul Cole is badly beaten by the husband of a woman he's slept with while on the road with a touring show.

The beating affects his memory. Each day, his past becomes murkier and the necessity of supporting himself more difficult. His situation takes him to strange and unpredictable places. We feel sorry for this man although we suspect from that first page that we wouldn't have liked the first Paul Cole.

One of the many charms of the book is the way that Westlake allows the reader to take this journey with Cole. We put our foot down right behind his as he suffers this debilitating condition. Nearly every action, Cole takes, we can imagine taking too.

Nothing untoward happens; this is a very realistic book. And when the end comes, it is entirely fitting and right for the story. Heartbreaking yet never maudlin. This is the work of a master.

I am so happy that Hard Case Crime rescued this novel from oblivion.

And for the new one. Here's Ed.

THE COMEDY IS FINISHED by Donald E. Westlake

"The rediscovered Donald E. Westlake novel, THE COMEDY IS FINISHED, is getting some great reviews. Regular readers of these updates know that I had the manuscript for the novel in my basement (actually a drawer in a cabinet in my basement, with other Westlake materials). Don and I had explored revising the novel for publication under both our names (or possibly a joint pseudonym) after he had difficulty finding a publisher for an unfunny Westlake novel about a Bob Hope-style comedian. The book didn’t really need any work, but he was sick of looking at it, and I had some ideas about streamlining, and addressing some complaints editors had expressed about the political content. But when the similarly plotted film “King of Comedy” came out, Don called me and scrapped the project." Max Allan Collins from http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/

Yes, thanks to Max and Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime we're now able to read what may well be the last original Donald Westlake to see print.

Comedy deals with the comedian Koo Davis (think Bob Hope) being kidnapped just after taping another one of his uninspired and frequently self-congratulatory TV shows by a small group of mismatched hippie would-be revolutionaries.

The novel cuts back and forth between Koo using his captivity to relive his life and his captors arguing among themselves about how to best use the comedian as a bargaining chip with the powers that be. Westlake (and the readers) have a good time with Koo. Westlake avoids caricature and gives us a man who no longer understands the entertainment world--not even hanging out with generals and sports stars gives him much cache anymore--and must now face what a lousy father and husband he's been. He even wonders if he's "worth" kidnapping.

The captors are headed up by a secretive young man named Peter who is constantly being prodded by Mark, a sociopath who is dangerous even to the group itself. The others include a wistful theorist named Larry and two women, Liz, deeply troubled and confused and Joyce who held the studio job that secured the kidnapping.

Westlake makes all the charactersindividuals and it is their sniping, arguing even fighting that make the novel a real page turner.

These are the children of the faux Revolution as well as the Revolution of hippie Los Angeles with all the bravado and naivete that marked their fury. It's interesting to contrast their portraits here with an earlier novel Westlake wrote, Murder Among Children as by Tucker Coe. This appeared at the start of the Flower Power days and his take on hippies was much more benign.

Westlake was frequently a social critic in his novels and he is no less so here. He captures the late 70s perfectly, the waning times of Up Against The Wall Motherfucker as disco music played in the background. The kidnappers here are stranded in time--the cops were now killing Black Panthers in cold blood and getting away with it. The Revolution, such as it was, was long over.

While there are similarities between The Comedy is Finished and King of Comedy, King is entertaining and admirable but cold; Westlake's book is hot with fear, remorse, lust and violence. The reader is constantly speculating on how it'll end and who'll still be alive on the last page. The tight structure--we basically have the house the hippies are ensconced in and the scenes with the lawmen--embellishes the suspense and heightens the twists.

A fine novel in all respects. And all thanks to Max Collins and Charles Ardai for giving it to us.

Sergio Angelini
Yvette Banek
Jack Bates
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Cullen Gallagher
Naomi Johnson
Randy Johnson
Nick JonesGeorge Kelley
Rob Kitchin
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Eric Peterson
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Trent Reynolds
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
John Weagley

You can find more FFB reviews of other authors at Jerry House, Martin Edwards, Ron Scheer, Richard Pangburn.

My Life at the Theater-ART

2012-02-16T20:00:00.000-05:00

We saw ART in New York at the Royale Theater in 1998. It was a big hit and starred Alan Alda, Victor Garber, and Alfred Molina. Yasmina Reza, the playwright went on to write other plays including THE GOD OF CARNAGE. ART was a meatier play than CARNAGE IMHO.

Ghost Stories

2012-02-16T08:23:00.000-05:00

In a recent issue of THE NEW YORKER, in a review of a new collection of M.R. James' stories, Anthony Lane quotes Virginia Woolf as saying, "it is pleasant to to be afraid when we are conscious that we are in no kind of danger." This was a quote from a longer essay by Woolf entitled " The Supernatural in Fiction."

This quote explains to me why some people are able to read and watch ghost or horror stories without feeling threatened. Part of their brain tells them that they are safe. They have a certain detachment from the goings on.

It is not like this for me. If the story is well done, I cannot tell myself that because my entire brain believes I am in danger like the people in the story.

How is it for you? Are you able to step outside the story? Can you watch or read it without feeling threatened?

Duets-Jo Stafford and Ella Fitzgerald

2012-02-15T16:03:00.000-05:00

How I Came To Write This Story" Loren Eaton

2012-02-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

"King Flounder" Loren Eaton, GRIMM TALES

If you’d told me five years ago that I’d publish a crime story based off of a Grimm’s fairy tale, I’d have laughed. For some reason, I never read many fairy tales as a child, and speculative fiction replaced crime fiction in my reading stack soon after graduating from college. Back then, I didn’t see myself getting much exposure to either in the future. But a funny thing happened: I found Patti’s blog, Peter Rozovsky’s Detectives Beyond Borders blog and the fairy-tales-retold anthology Black Swan, White Raven. Suddenly, I had new (and old-become-new) reading material. Then John Kenyon of Things I'd Rather Be Doing issued a call for what would eventually become the Untreed Reads anthology Grimm Tales. How could I miss the opportunity?

Even though I possessed scant knowledge of fairy tales beyond the Disney-fied versions, I knew one I wanted to adapt -- “The Fisherman and His Wife.” In the story, a henpecked husband keeps asking a magical flounder for more and more blessings at the command of his greedy wife. If you haven’t read it, let’s just say its ending feels about as bleak as anything in noir. I’d also recently watched The Godfather and knew I wanted to plunk a semi-likeable Mafioso down in the Florida Keys, a place not too far geographically speaking from where I live. I once fished the salt flats around Key West and knew that flounder sometimes made it that far north. And the ending, well, I always liked that bit where Michael Corleone flagrantly plugs Sollozzo and McCluskey in an Italian restaurant. Hopefully, I captured some of that bravado in the conclusion of “King Flounder.”

Anyway, I suppose that’s how I came to write this story!

Tuesday Night Music: Billie Holiday

2012-02-14T20:00:00.000-05:00

Research

2012-02-14T15:00:00.000-05:00

There is an excellent article in the New York Times today on how Eugenides (THE MARRIAGE PLOT) researched the work of yeast geneticists so thoroughly even a yeast geneticist was amazed. (Always read the Science section).

With short stories, you can't throw yourself in quite so far although I read quite a few articles and book chapters to understand work with primates for Monkey Justice. Right now I am trying to understand the concept of the angry ghosts that the Vietnamese believe haunt their country for a story on a vet. It is hard to know where the research should stop and the writing begin sometimes. Even for readers, a book can become an information dump if you're not careful.

What say you writers? Do you get tangled up with the need to relate all you have learned in a piece of fiction? And readers, do you get frustrated with too much information?

Forgotten Movies:Portrait of Jennie

2012-02-14T06:58:00.001-05:00

Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotton stole my heart as a kid with the film adaptation of Robert Nathan's, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE. I am a sucker for any film that plays with time.

Cotton plays an artist looking for the perfect subject and he finds it with Jennie. The only trouble is she has changed each time they meet. This is a haunting movie if ever there was one.

Black and white, the final scene is in glorious technicolor.

A perfect Valentine movie. Nathan's novel is fine, too.

Unless he's taking Valentine's Day off, you should find more forgotten flicks at Todd's place.

Jennie.

Who's Your Favorite Actress In Westerns?

2012-02-13T07:49:00.000-05:00

Almost every actress between 1930-60 made a Western. But who brings the most credibility to the role?

Joan Crawford looks like she could take out anyone in Johnny Guitar but I'm picking a more traditional role. Like Jean Arthur in SHANE or THE PLAINSMAN perhaps.

What actress played your favorite schoolmarm, wife, saloon girl, or Annie Oakley?

Sunday Night Humor: Portlandia

2012-02-12T20:00:00.000-05:00

Some of the skits go on too long, but I find this show awfully funny.

Pina

2012-02-12T08:34:00.000-05:00

If you like dance at all, Pina 3D is a magnificent way to spend a couple of hours. To see the dancers' faces, to see the depth of bodies on the stage, to travel to all sorts of places with them is extraordinary. And the music is just exquisite.

Philippina "Pina" Bausch ^[1](27 July 1940 – 30 June 2009) was a German performer of modern dance, choreographer, dance teacher and ballet director. With her unique style, a blend of movements, sounds and prominent stage sets, and with her elaborate cooperation with performers during the composition of a piece (a style now known as Tanztheater), she became a leading influence since the 1970s in the world of modern dance. ^[2]

^{Pina died unexpectedly just days before Wim Wenders began shooting this film.}

^{Any dance fans out there?}

Saturday Night Music, THE WHO

2012-02-11T16:51:00.000-05:00

Our Neighborhood Murder

2012-02-11T07:14:00.002-05:00

I want to add a warning here that this is not a news blog and some of these details are unsubstantiated.

And you have to ask why the Jane Bashara murder, which took place on Middlesex, the street made famous in the Jeffrey Eugenides book of that title, gets so many local, state and national headlines when Detroit, not a mile away has murders every day and gets none. Maybe because only a Charles Willeford, Elmore Leonard or Joe Lansdale could write this.

Interesting details include: Bashara had an S & M club in the basement of a local bar; he is also featured on various S & M websites; he took a very large insurance policy out on his wife just months ago; the hitman (Bashara's handyman) who confessed to the crime appears to be of limited intelligence and has been picked up by surveillance cameras taking a bus home after the murder; the deserted Mercedes has her handbag still in it-wallet too; Bashara is reported to have signed autographs as a local greasy spoon yesterday; Bashara had a long-term mistress and was making plans to introduce another woman to their relationship.

There is more, much more. Any good murders in your neck of the woods lately?

Friday Night Music:

2012-02-10T21:51:00.001-05:00

The Summing Up, Friday, February 9. 2012

2012-02-10T18:08:00.002-05:00

The Woman in Black is up at Crimespree Cinema.

The Summing Up, Friday, February 9. 2012

Patti Abbott, Sideswipe, Charles Willeford
Serge Angelini, The Terror, Edgar Wallace
Yvette Banek, Misdemeanor Man, Dylan Schaffer
Brian Busby, I Hate You to Death, Keith Edgar
Bill Crider, Starburst, Alfred Bester
Scott Cupp, To Walk the Night, William Sloane, The Last Dragonslayer, Jasper Fforde
Martin Edwards, Murder in the Maze, J.J. Connington
Ed Gorman, Savages, Bill Pronzini
Jerry House, Brief Candles, Manning Cole
Randy Johnson, QB I Ellery Queen
George Kelley, The Miscellaneous Writing of Clark Ashton Smith. ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger
Margot Kinberg, Bad Debts, Peter Temple
B.V. Lawson, Detective Fiction: Crime and Compromise, Dick Allen & David Cracko
Steve Lewis/Dan Stumpf, Underdog, W. R. Burnett
Evan Lewis, Lazarus#7, Richard Sale
Todd Mason, Storyteller, Kate Wilhelm; Creating Short Fiction, Damon Knight
J.F. Norris, Post Mortem, Guy CullingfordEric Peterson, The Man with the Iron Badge, Lee Goldberg
David Rachels, The Moon in the Gutter, David Goodis
James Reasoner, The Murder Brain, Brant House (G.T. Fleming-Roberts)
Richard Robinson, Death in the Middle Watch, Leo Bruce
Gerard Saylor, Concrete Blonde, Michael Connelly
Ron Scheer, Arabesques, Anton Shammas
Kerrie Smith, The Poisoned Chocolates Case, Anthony Berkeley
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, Tangled Trails, William MacLeod Raine
TomCat, A Lantern for the Blind, Bertus Aafjes
James Winter, Like Love and Ten Plus One, Ed McBain

Friday's Forgotten Books, February 10, 2012

2012-02-10T06:00:00.005-05:00

Next week is Donald Westlake week on forgotten books, so be there or be square.

Ed Gorman writes the Sam McCann series and the Dev Conrad series. You can find his stories in ebooks from the TOP SUSPENSE GROUP too along with Bill Crider and James Reasoner.

Savages by Bill Pronzini

SAVAGES by Bill Pronzini

F. Paul Wilson once noted that private eye fiction offers the reader a snapshot of a certain time and place. We read Raymond Chandler not only for his fine prose but also for his portraits of Hollywood in the Thirties and Forties. Ross Macdonald showed us a very different Los Angeles due to the differences in time and temperament. And if you want to know what it was like on the angry lower-class streets of Depression Hollywoodland, you could do worse than read a lesser writer named John K. Butler, whose hardboiled cab driver functioned as a private eye without a license.

Today the definitive takes on San Francisco and environs are the Nameless novels and stories by Bill Pronzini. The influence here, if there is a singuar one, would be Hammett and not Chandler. Nameless is working class, competent and only occasionally up for doing the kind of favors that the more romantic Marlowe did so often. Nameless, like the Contintental Op, is a professional not a dashing knight.

A few decades from now the Nameless books will give readers a fascinating look at the past thirty-forty years of life in San Francisco. The social upheavels, the econmically and culturally stratified society, the endless experiments in modern living.

And you can find all this and much more in the Nameless novel SAVAGES. Pronzini tells three stories here. He goes back to work for a wealthy client he never much liked only after she convinces him that there's at least a possibility that her sister was murdered by her husband, a man Nameless couldn't turn anything sinister about when he first investigated him. Nameless not only comes to suspect the husband but several other people who were in the life of the dead woman. He draws these characters with clear and deserved contempt.

The second story deals with an arsonist pursued by Jake Runyon, the partner in Nameless' agency. The trail leads him to a small town where the feel is that of a western town of a hundred years ago. Pronzini, writer of many fine westerns, seems especially at home here with the good lawman and the bad lawman and the townspeople eager to get stampeded into believing any piece of gossip they hear. Interesting that he mixes this sensibility with that of young people into drugs, violence and MTV ennui.

The third story concerns Nameless' woman Kerry and the aftermath of her surgery for breast cancer. She's been pronounced all right but nobody who's had cancer ever quite believes that. Pronzini is especially adept at dealing realistically and unsentimentally with the subject.

Thus we encounter three kinds of savages here--those of the city elite--those of rural blue collar life--and those of the human body, the cancer cells that destroy without fear or favor.

Another excellent entry in one of the most consistently excellent series of the past forty years.

Sideswipe, Charles Willeford- The Hoke Mosley series by Willeford is one of my favorite in crimedom. Somehow he is able to combine great humor, an interesting story and fantastic characters without missing a beat.

Sideswipe is the third book in the series and in this one, Hoke is coming off a nervous breakdown, two daughters who want to quit high school, and a very pregnant, unmarried partner who needs his help. A move away from Miami to a position in hotel management seems like a good idea until a psychopathic career criminal named Troy Louden comes to stay there, bringing along his makeshift gang. This brings Hoke out of his retirement. If you need a laugh, Willeford will supply it.

Serge Angelini
Yvette Banek
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp and
Martin Edwards
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Steve Lewis/ Dan Stumpf
Evan Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Eric Peterson
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
TomCat
James Winter

My Life at the Theater, THE WOMAN IN BLACK

2012-02-09T18:55:00.000-05:00

We saw this at the Fortune Theater in London in 1995. It has already been on stage for 12 years and is still on stage now. It was genuinely scary and I don't know how they pulled it off with just two actors. The movie version nearly ruined it for me.

Woody Allen

2012-02-09T07:19:00.000-05:00

In the Brian Kellow biography of Pauline Kael, film critic of THE NEW YORKER for many years, Kael is quoted as saying, "Allen's obsession with repressive good taste 'is what keeps him from making great movies.'"

I see what she means. Every Woody Allen movie is preoccupied with beautiful New York, London or Paris apartments. With clothes, city scenes and music that you can't forget. Does this keep him from making a great movie? Has he made a great movie--this quote was from the seventies.

Wednesday Night Music: Doc Watson and David Grisham

2012-02-08T17:08:00.000-05:00

Friday Night Lights

2012-02-08T06:58:00.001-05:00

My recent incarceration led me to watching Friday Night Lights. I'd seen some of it before but not most of it.

In trying to dissect what makes this such a great show, I came up with a few opinions.

Compelling story lines.
Complex characters-no one is all good or bad.
Great location shooting. The show looks like it's set in the real world. Lots of outdoor scenes make it vibrate with life.

Scenes are short, dramatic, and end before you get bored with them.
The viewer is trusted to infer what he/she will from the story. No didacticism.
Scenes are shot in odd and compelling ways. We seldom look the characters right in the face. We get profiles, different lighting, people in the background and foreground, odd angles.
Each character gets appropriate dialog for their age and social stratum.
The music is excellent.
Great casting.
Heart.

I think FNL has to be one of the best dramas TV has produced. I am not a football fan either. Any fans out there?

Tuesday Night Music: Daniel Johnston, Devil Town

2012-02-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Movies: BEING THERE

2012-02-07T07:10:00.005-05:00

It is almost impossible to believe that Peter Sellers has been dead 32 years or that this movie is 33 years old. It seems like yesterday....

This is certainly an odd duck of a movie but it worked for me.
Chance (Sellers) is a gardener who has never left the home of his employer. When the employer dies and no provision has been made for Chance, he goes out into the world.

His simplicity is mistaken for profundity by everyone he meets. He becomes the confidante of politicos in D.C. and offers them advice that seems to be insightful and inspired. Helped by Jack Warden, Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas, this had a weird and wonderful script from Jerzy Kosinski and was directed by Hal Ashby.

Sellers made this film the year before he died. A nice legacy for us. For more forgotten movies, see Todd Mason.

Your Favorite Voice

2012-02-06T08:13:00.003-05:00

Whose voice can you listen to endlessly? Who can make even the dullest song thrilling to hear?

I am voting for K.D. Lang. And as much as I loved the silky smoothness of her voice, my second choice would be Leonard Cohen (back a few years) who has a very different sort of voice.

You Watch the Superbowl, I'll Watch Soul Train Flash Mob Tribute

2012-02-05T18:50:00.001-05:00

R.I.P. Don Cornelius

Sunday Night Humor: THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW

2012-02-05T18:30:00.000-05:00

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

2012-02-05T09:00:00.002-05:00

How do you define Western?

I am reading the biography of Pauline Kael (movie reviewer for THE NEW YORKER for many years) and it relates how she got behind this film despite loathing Westerns. I think it was more about Robert Altman and perhaps Warren Beatty than the film itself.

I never thought of this film as a western and I wondered if you who love and know westerns consider this to be one. And if you do (or don't) what you think of it.

Is this any more of a western than M*A*S*H was a war movie or is it Altman exploring eras or something like it through film.

As for me, I remember being impressed at the time (I was like 20) but I don't remember it all that well.

My latest movie review, A DANGEROUS METHOD, is on Crimespree.

Saturday Night Music: Keren Ann

2012-02-04T18:21:00.001-05:00

One of my very favorites.

"How I Came to Write This Story" Kaye George

2012-02-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS STORY, Kaye George

My Hansel and Gretel take-off appears in GRIMM TALES, edited by John Kenyon, which is a super thrill for me. I call the tale "Henry, Gina, and the Gingerbread House" since I like serial commas and since I wanted to update and Americanize the children's names.

The names gave me a starting point. Henry was kind of a hanger-back, a bit timid. Gina was the brash, brazen one, and the leader. Now I needed a wicked stepmother and a witch. For some reason, I decided to leave the father out.

Let me back up a bit. Figuring out where my ideas come from is a complex process, as it must be for every writer. Things just swirl around in my primordial ooze of a brain and things come flinging out--characters, settings, plots, whole dialogues. It takes a bit of effort to reach back and tell where everything had its genesis. Here's a stab at it.

A few Thanksgivings ago, all of our (grown) kids informed us that they had plans for the holiday. The ones in Tennessee and Virginia weren't even going to be there if we decided to drop in. The ones in Austin did invite us, but as part of a big family affair for our son's in-laws. We like them, but didn't consider attendance mandatory, since we're not related to most of them. So Hubby and I put together a wine tour, something we'd been thinking about for awhile. We booked an B&B in Fredericksburg and headed west out of Austin, stopping at vineyards along the way. Central Texas has a LOT of vineyards. Some were ho-hum and a couple got our notice. After two days of wineries, though, we were wined out, so we shopped Fredericksburg. Or I did. Hubby gamely tagged along. I got a lot of Christmas shopping done and had a ball. There's a chocolate shop there that charges over a dollar for a turtle (chocolate, pecans, and gooey caramel) and it's worth every penny.

Fast forward a couple years to me deciding I want to put together a proposal for a cozy. I found an agent who regularly sells to Berkley Prime Crime who liked my writing. I wrote up three chapters for her and was her candidate for a Berkley write-for-hire project. The agent loved it. The editor said it wasn't quite what she had in mind. So I decided to write up a proposal for an original cozy series.

Fredericksburg popped up as a perfect place for a cozy. I think of cozies as sweet, so, of course, remembered the candy shop. I did a lot of research for the project, visiting candy shops, asking to see their kitchens, buy and eating chocolate. Hard work! Meanwhile, that agent left the agency and the other agent there seemed less that thrilled with my writing. Turned me down flat on the proposal. End of desire for a cozy series, at least for the present time.

But a Gingerbread House! That could be a candy shop. My research would get used! I hadn't eaten all that chocolate for nothing. The witch was the near-sighted owner of the Gingerbread House, a candy shop. There was an oven in the corner of the kitchen where she planned to cook the children, and a storage closet where she kept Hansel for fattening. The evil step-mother was, well, an evil person--fun to write. As a result of her parenting, the kids are no angels. It worked out well.

As near as I can tell, that's how I came to write this story.

The Summing Up, Friday, February 2, 2012

2012-02-03T18:00:00.003-05:00

The Summing Up, Friday, February 2, 2012

Patti Abbott, LOST IN THE CITY, Edward P. Jones
Sergio Angelini, SEE THEM DIE, Ed McBain
Joe Barone, A TOUCH OF FROST, R.D. Wingfield
Brian Busby, AN AIR THAT KILLS, Margaret Millar
Casual Debris, COME SEVEN, ed. Henry Morrison
Bill Crider, A NIGHT FOR SCREAMING, Harry Whittington
Martin Edwards, THE DIVISION BELL MYSTERY, Ellen Wilkinson
Cullen Gallagher, EVERYBODY'S SOMEBODY'S FOOL, Ed Gorman
Ed Gorman, WALPURGIS III, Mike Resnick
Jerry House, THE FLOOD, John Creasey
Randy Johnson, DRUM BEAT: DOMINQUE, Stephen Marlowe
George Kelley, AGATHA CHRISTIE: MURDER IN THE MAKING< ed. John Curran
Margot Kinberg, DEATH OF A CAD, M.C. Beaton
B.V. Lawson, THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
Evan Lewis, THE ROGUE, Richard Sale
Steve Lewis, THE SEVENTH SENSE, T.J. MacGregor
Todd Mason, SCIENCE FICTION FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE SCIENCE FICTION, ed. Terry Carr
THE LIGHT FANTASTIC, ed. Harry Harrison
J.F. Norris, THE MOON MURDERS, Nigel Morland
Eric Peterson, THE MOUSE IN THE MOUNTAIN, Norbert Davis
David Rachels, LAW IN EVERYDAY JAPAN; SEX, SUMO, SUICIDE AND STATUTES, Mark West
James Reasoner, BORDER ROUNDUP, Allan R. Bosworth
Richard Robinson, SANDS OF MARS, Arthur C. Clarke
Gerard Saylor, COMPANY K, William March
Ron Scheer, A CASE OF EXPLODING MANGOES, Mohammed Hanif
Kerrie Smith, ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN, Ruth Rendell
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT, Fredric Brown
TomCat, MURDER POINTS A FINGER, David Alexander

Friday's Forgotten Books, February 3, 2012

2012-02-03T09:00:00.036-05:00

February 17th is Donald Westlake Day to celebrate the publication of his last book, THE COMEDY IS FINISHED, by Hard Case Crime. If you don't regularly review but would like to do a Westlake novel for this occasion, just let me know and I will link to your blog or publish it here.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Sam McCain series and the Dev Conrad series along with many other books. The latest BAD MOON RISING is right here.

WALPURGIS III, Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick is one of science fiction/fantasy's great storytellers. I've been reading him for thirty years and I have to say he gets more accomplished and polished every time out. In addition to being a fine writer he's a fine idea man. I'd compare him to Max Allan Collins and Bob Randisi in crime fiction. The three of them have more good ideas before breakfast than I have in a week of Sundays. True. Alas.

Resnick's fiction is generally robust in its narrative but almost always thoughtful. He can take the tropes of action fiction and instill in them the themes of more reflective work. One of my favorite examples of this is his novel Walpuris 111. In form it's a thriller. An assassin named Sable is hired to kill Conrad Bland a man who has turned genocide into an ugly art form. He has practiced his talents throughout the Republic of planets and is thus sought by everyone.

The planet Jericho lands on has been settled by Satanists (planets can be settled by every kind of group) who protect Bland because they believe him to be the Dark Messiah (he will of course murder all of the before he eventually leaves). This is where Resnick shows his true mastery.

Jericho, the most successful killer in the galaxy, is pitted against John Sable, the police chief of the city where Bland resides. Sable is straight out of Joseph Conrad, a man who has become accustomed to enforcing the political agenda of his planet. He has long felt conflicted about his duties and his own morality. Now that he is faced with the assassin he begins to wonder--does Bland deserve to live? Is Jericho just a killer or a savior?

The cat-and-mouse of killer and cop drives the book but it is the moral dilemma that enriches the book. Mike Resnick always gives his readers a terrific story and many times, as here, he takes on themes that have bedeviled mankind for its entire history.
A knock-out read and chilling look at evil.

Patti Abbott

Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones

I am thinking a lot about short stories just now because I agreed to read 365 stories this year. And as I rummaged through the endless story collections I own, I found this one.

LOST IN THE CITY was published in 1992. The stories take place in Washington D.C. but not the one we usually think about. These are stories about people who drive a cab, clean houses, take drugs, get killed. They are as dark as any story you will read although Jones always remembers to buttress his grimness with irony, humor, gentleness. These are at heart stories about people who are making ends meet.

This collection won the Pen-Hemmingway Award but not enough money to make Jones' feel he could give up his day job.

Ten years go by and then he publishes THE KNOWN WORLD, which wins a slew of prizes. It's about a black slave-owner. His next work, AUNT HAGGAR'S CHILDREN, is his third book and another collection which harkens back on minor characters in his first book. For a good article on Jones, go here. But if you want to see a natural writer at work, someone who knows just what detail to include, how to write dialog and how to weave a plot, how to say something in a story, look no further. He's your guy.

Sergio Angelini,
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Casual Debris
Cullen Gallagher
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Eric Peterson
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
TomCat

My Life at the Theater-Fiddler on the Roof

2012-02-02T18:27:00.000-05:00

We saw Fiddler at Stratford Shakespeare Festival on July 4, 2000.

This was a different interpretation than the ones with Topol or Harvey Feinstein.

Brett Carver played Teyve as a religious, simple and subdued man. His reading of the part was brilliant for me.

Rao's in Harlem

2012-02-02T14:27:00.002-05:00

Megan wrote a piece on her work place, this restaurant, and the mob in East Harlem for the New York Times.

Memory as a Subject in Novels

2012-02-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

I have read three novels of later that use memory, or lack there of, as the primary element in a crime novel. In TURN OF MIND (Alice LaPlante), Alzheimer's affects the protagonist. In MEMORY (Westlake), a man is assaulted by his lover's husband and finds his memory diminishing day by day. In BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP (Watson), a disturbance has also occurred and leads the protagonist to try and catalog her owm back story.

What other novels use memory as an important element? Or is it a new thing like recovered memories of abuse was in the nineties?

I wonder if the ubiquitous diagnosis of Alzheimers has made this the current trend.

First Wednesdays Book Review: Austentatious by Alyssa Goodnight

2012-02-01T08:33:00.001-05:00

Austentatious, by Alyssa Goodnight

As much as some of us might contend that genre is an arbitrary slot to fit books into--and that all books are basically a story--that's not really true IMHO. If the main thrust of a story is a crime or criminals, we might correctly call it crime fiction even if the writer is Tolstoy. If the main circumstances are set in a hard-scrabble town beset by troubles with cattle rustlers in 1870, we might call it a Western.

If the conflict is between two planets hurling toward each other in outer space, that would certainly be science fiction to me. And if the protagonist is mostly looking for a companion, that is romance in my book.

Now the argument that there is no genre might work better for me if people read outside their preferred setting more often. And some readers do. But a heck of a lot of people only read what is classified as literary fiction-and I find it very hard to persuade them that they might like Started Early, Took My Dog, for instance. Likewise it is hard to convince me to try fantasy, science fiction, or in the case today, chick lit or romance. Although I can be persuaded to watch a movie like FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, I probably would never read the book.

Looking over the books I have read in the last fifteen years or so, I see only one book that might be classified as a romance and that is THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. It was one of those arm-twisting cases too.

I have also read no science fiction or fantasy over these years. Am I missing something? Of course.

I just finished AUSTENTATIOUS by Alyssa Goodlight for Barrie Summy's monthly review group. It was clever, well-written, enjoyable, and light-hearted. I liked the use of Austen and Austin, TX in it. I like that music figured into it. It felt real, populated with real people despite its magical elements. Let me tell you a bit about it.

The Austin setting was perfect for the story. Nic James, a newly minted engineer, is browsing in a shop in weird South Austin (been there and this brought that street back to me) and comes across a vintage journal. The journal is tucked between a set of Austen novels so it seems fortuitous to our Austen lover. (I never met an engineer who liked Austen but I suppose there are some). She takes the journal home and once she enters her first thoughts into the journal, those words are magically changed to push her in the direction any good Austen heroine will take--look for romance.

Fairy Jane as Nic calls her steers Nic right onto the path of a perfect romantic figure, Sean, a musician from Scotland. Austin and music are certainly a perfect fit. I pictured Hugh Grant in his younger days. The path of this romance changes Nic in the ways Elizabeth Bennet was changed by her love for Mr. Darcy. And that's a good thing for them both. The corset comes off or is at least loosened.

Alyssa Goodnight says that Jane took over the book at some point and isn't that how the best stories get told. I think anyone who likes a well-written romance will enjoy this book and maybe a few of the rest of you too.

Disclosure: this book was sent to me by the publisher in the hope I would like it enough to review it.

For more looks at books, visit Barrie Summy right here.

Tuesday Night Movie Music

2012-01-31T17:00:00.001-05:00

This is a brief discussion of how they created the sound track for THE DESCENDANTS. Having no experience with Hawaiian music-other than the idea it was all about doing a hula, I was very much taken with what real Hawaiian music was like.

Anyone out there a fan of this sort of music?

Forgotten Movies: Rich Man, Poor Man

2012-01-31T08:00:00.000-05:00

RICH MAN, POOR MAN was one of the great miniseries from the mid 70s. A great villain, Falconetti (William Smith), is seen here and it launched the career of Nick Nolte, bad boy with a heart of gold.
This is the saga of the Jordache family, from the end of the war through the 1960s.
Peter Strauss is Rudy Jordache and Nick Nolte, his brother, Tom. Susan Blakely played the girl they both loved.

Based on the book by Irwin Shaw this was water cooler TV in 1976 for a couple of months.
I am not sure if I would have chosen Nolte as the actor from RMPM to parlay his role into a great acting career, but women loved him. Peter Strauss and Blakely seem to have largely disappeared except for occasional guest appearances on network TV. For more forgotten movies, see Todd Mason.

Sunday Night Humor

2012-01-29T19:16:00.000-05:00

Arsenic and Old Lace

Satruday Night Music: Rosemary Clooney

2012-01-28T19:19:00.000-05:00

THE SUMMING UP, FRIDAY, January 20, 2012

2012-01-27T22:07:00.000-05:00

THE SUMMING UP, FRIDAY, January 20, 2012

Sergio Angelini A CLUBBABLE WOMAN (1970) by Reginald Hill

Yvette Banek Hag's Nook (1933) by John Dickson Carr

Brian Busby A Bullet for My Lady by Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]

Bill Crider Destinies Edited by Jim Baen

Martin Edwards The Bleston Mystery by Robert Milward Kennedy (Milward Kennedy and A.G. Macdonell)

Jerry House The Angry Planet (1945) and The Red Journey Back (1954, also published as SOS from Mars) by John Keir Cross

Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen Consequences of Sin by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

Cullen Gallagher Whisper His Sin by Vin Packer

Ed Gorman: A House In Naples by Peter Rabe

Randy Johnson See Them Die by Ed McBain

George Kelley TAMA OF THE LIGHT COUNTRY & TAMA, PRINCESS OF MERCURY By Ray Cummings

Margot Kinberg Bad Move by Linwood Barclay

Rob Kitchin The Dead Detective by William Heffernan

B.V. Lawson The Grey Flannel Shroud by Henry Slesar

Evan Lewis: Spartan Planet by A. Bertram Chandler

Steve Lewis hosting Marcia Muller: Paint the Town Black by David Alexander

Brian Lindenmuth: Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet

Todd Mason: Bob Shaw: MESSAGES FOUND IN AN OXYGEN BOTTLE and Terry Carr: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2012/01/ffb-bob-shaw-messages-found-in-oxygen.html

J.F. Norris: Do Not Disturb by Helen McCloy

Eric Peterson: Zeppelins West By Joe R. Landsale

Thomas Pluck: Fast One by Paul Cain

David Rachels: Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy

James Reasoner: The Bamboo Bomb by James Dark (J.E. MacDonnell)

Karyn Reeves: Loving by Henry Green http://apenguinaweek.blogspot.com/2012/01/penguin-no-958-loving-by-henry-green.html

Richard Robinson: Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle

Gerard Saylor: Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Ron Scheer: William Lacey Amy, The Blue Wolf

Kerrie Smith COLOUR SCHEME, Ngaio Marsh

Kevin Tipple: The Maya Stone Murders by M. K. Shuman

TomCat: Manly Wade Wellman's Find My Killer

Thanks to Todd!!!!

Re: Our Radio Discussion of a Few Days Past

2012-01-27T18:42:00.011-05:00

The Internet Archive http://archive.org is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. It is a huge resource of OTR (Old Time Radio) & other materials. You'll find Westerns, Mysteries, & Lux Radio Theatre recordings to name a few. All able to be downloaded or listened to from the site. It's worth listening top & viewing

F. Thorsen
owner, Chronicles of Crime, your mystery bookshop, Victoria, BC, Canada

Thanks so much to F. Thorsen for this valuable information!

The link doesn't work but if you put www.archive.org in google, you should find it.

Friday's Forgotten Books, January 27, 2012

2012-01-27T08:00:00.008-05:00

My review of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is up at Crimespree Cinema.

Since I can't turn my head, the SUMMING UP will come as permitted.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Sam McCann mysteries as well as those about political consultant, Dev Conrad. He also edits anthologies and writes westerns. You can find him here.

Ed Gorman: A House In Naples by Peter Rabe

Whenever I read Peter Rabe at his best--or hell, even when he's mediocore--I realize how bogus a lot of hardboiled fiction is. Raymond Chandler likely learned about crime from the pulps and B-movies. As did many pulp writers.

Today we tart things up in a way previous hardboiled writers didn't and that gives it a semblance of reality anyway. Or we parody it and that makes us feel superior to it. Nothing wrong with these approaches, either. They're entertaining, amusing, fun.

Maybe it was because Rabe approached his writing as mainstream instead of genre. While he honors the tropes set down by W.R. Burnett and his imitators Rabe's crime novels are idiosyncratic, sometimes to a fault. In a few books he wanders, gets lost, and it's always because he wants to tell us something fascinating but not germane to the story. I actually enjoy his side trips but they do damage a couple of his books.

A House in Naples is about two people who are pretty much despicable, deserters at the end of the big war who run a black market operation. They aren't much better morally than Graham Greene's Harry Lime. Charley and Joe they are, friends in greed. They are living in Naples and living well. But Charley doesn't have his papers and could get extradited. Uncle Sam is not looking favorably on deserters these days.

As the book opens Charley is wounded and recognized for who and what he is. He ends stealing the papers from a dying drunk and then ends up dragging the body into the Tiber to cover his tracks. But by this time his wound has taken his toll. He is barely concious when he looks up and sees a beautiful girl staring down at him from the bridge above. He falls in love. Rabe gives this unlikely moment an ethereal power that few others could have pulled off. You buy it.

The book is a fast, sure read and the ending is a shocker. But the characters and Rabe's observations on post-war Europe are the source of the book's rich bleakness. The bleakness is very much like the realist filmmakers who appeared in Italy right after the war.

Rabe uses The Girl to contrast Charley and Joe. In some respects she's almost a religious figure, a woman who can evoke good or evil in everyone she meets. She evokes what's in you already.

For some reason A House in Naples isn't mentioned as often as Rabe's other most successful novels. But its harsh poetry and exciting action will keep it in memory long after you're

Serge Angellini
Yvette Banek
Brian Busby
Bill Crider
Martin Edwards
Jerry House
Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen
Cullen Gallagher
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
Rob Kitchin
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Marcia Muller
Brian Lindenmuth
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Eric Peterson
Thomas Pluck
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
TomCat

My Life at the Theater-THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE

2012-01-26T17:27:00.003-05:00

We saw this one in London in 1995. This was not the playbill.

It starred Miriam Margoyles as Sister George, a beloved soap opera character who is about to meet her end. She is also losing her young lover (Serena Evans). The play was written by Frank Marcus and he writes in the bill of the difficulty in mounting a play about lesbians on its first run in the sixties. The word lesbians was never mentioned.

This was not meant to be a tragedy though. It was a black comedy about the irony of a beloved soap opera character being a monster in real life. Sister George is offered a voice over of a cow in recompense. A bit mean that. There is also a film version of this story.

My memory of it is vague--as is so often the case.

Did John Boy Walton Influence Your Desire to Write?

2012-01-26T07:58:00.000-05:00

Here is a great interview about the pervasive influence of THE WALTONS on American culture. Nigel Bird's brother made this radio show in the UK.

I doubt I missed an episode of THE WALTONS when it first played. One reason was it was one of the few shows that took the desire to be a writer (or a musician, or a doctor, or a aviator) seriously.

The show managed to be authentic without being sentimental to me. Nostalgic yes, but not saccharine. It did deal with issues of the time and often in subtle ways. Family values yes, but not inhumane attitudes to others. It was tolerant of others as Elizabeth tells us in this interview.

Closing the Book, Then Opening it Again

2012-01-25T15:28:00.003-05:00

I just finished MEMORY by Donald Westlake for our FFB Westlake Day and I felt like reading it again. Anything I pick up next can never measure up.

Boy, did he ever get it right from first word to last. What was the last book you felt like doing that with? A book where you wanted to experience those words again immediately?

Nostalgia Index

2012-01-25T07:22:00.001-05:00

If 10 indicates you are consumed with memories of the past, and zero represents the past is dead to you, where would you put yourself on the scale and what in particular ties you to the past? Or doesn't.

I'd say 6.5. And it would be memories of old movies, books and TV shows rather than people or places.

Phil picks 3. I'd better not leave the room.

Tuesday Night Music: Tears for Fears

2012-01-24T17:00:00.000-05:00

Classic Connivers

2012-01-24T14:32:00.000-05:00

In Downton Abbey, O'Brien and Thomas conspire and connive to turn various characters against each other. I both love and loathe connivers. In life, they make me nervous, of course, but in a rather tepid episode of DA, they liven things up. Of course, they always stand in the way of true love.

In Julius Caesar, Cassius convinces Brutus to participate in a conspiracy. I think there are probably connivers in most of Shakespeare's plays.

In crime fiction, are there any famous connivers? Surely there must be.

Forgotten Movies: Will Penny

2012-01-24T07:27:00.003-05:00

Will Penny (Charleston Heston) plays a man hired to police another man's land. Joan Hackett plays a woman squatting in the cabin he's provided with. Great cast, great scenery in a classic Western. Loved Hackett. She died too young.

Sorry to be brief, but still wrestling with this cold. For more forgotten movies, check with Todd Mason.