“‘I haven’t heard any thank-you-Pierre’s for putting your mug on our newscasts last night,’ the TV entrepreneur was saying at brunch the next morning. We were at his ‘special’ table at Farmers Market on Fairfax, within shouting distance of a group of usually rowdy and frequently funny writers who seemed to enjoy sending insults his way.”That’s private eye Leo Bloodworth telling us about his (very) Geraldo Rivera-like client in Dick Lochte's lovely story “Devil Dog,” one of the offerings in Robert J. Randisi’s fine new anthology, Hollywood and Crime: Original Crime Stories Set During the History of Hollywood, published by Pegasus Books.
Lochte, an ace reviewer and crime novelist (Bloodworth first appeared in the memorable Sleeping Dog, 1985) knows the Farmers Market writing scene well. He was one of the original members of the Suicide Club, a group of authors who met monthly on Saturday mornings in the Market, right in front of a Cajun restaurant, where he could ingest his native po-boy sandwiches. I was a member; so were John Shannon and the much-missed (do they have e-mail in Heaven?) Bruce Cook. Work by other Suicide Clubbers (the title comes from a Robert Louis Stevenson story cycle) Gary Phillips and Gar Anthony Haywood is also included in Randisi’s book.
What I call SOS (Sons of Suicide, but others find that a bit creepy--and as my wife says, "Why are you naming it after a scouring pad?") is going to meet on January 26. Send me an e-mail message at dickadler@gmail.com and I’ll give you the details.
By the way, in the photograph above--taken in our lemon grove during my 70th birthday party--you’ll see Dick Lochte at the bottom, far right. Shannon and his companion, the swell dame Charlotte Riley, can be seen just to Lochte’s right.
(Photograph by Dan Adler)
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