Before the children start showing up at my doorstep, ready to clean me out of every sugary substance I’ve amassed for this holiday, let me pull together a few crime-fiction news items I have not yet mentioned.
• We now know which books are in the running to be named the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Book of the Year. Per author-blogger Declan Burke, here are the nominees:
-- The Twelfth Department, by William Ryan (Pan Macmillan/Mantle)
-- The Convictions of John Delahunt, by Andrew Hughes
(Doubleday Ireland)
-- The Doll’s House, by Louise Phillips (Hachette Ireland)
-- Inquest, by Paul Carson (Century)
-- The Stranger You Know, by Jane Casey (Ebury Press)
-- Irregulars, by Kevin McCarthy (New Island Books)
I’m particularly pleased to see Irregulars as a finalist. I very much enjoyed McCarthy’s previous novel, 2010’s Peeler, which introduced early 20th-century Irish cop Sean O’Keefe. I have only recently been pouring through Irregulars, Peeler’s sequel--and what a dynamite read it is; more on that later. The winner of this prize, which is part of the annual Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards competition, will be announced on Tuesday, November 26. Online voting for these awards is open from October 31 to November 21. Click here to
participate.
• Congratulations to Atticka Locke, who has won the 2013 Ernest J. Gaines Award for her novel The Cutting Season (2012).
• Today is your last opportunity to participate in The Rap Sheet’s survey to determine which were the best of Alistair MacLean’s more than two dozen adventure thrillers. Click here to make your preferences known. You can vote for
one or more books. Results will be announced early next week.
• Michael Connelly’s Web site brings the news that Amazon Studios has “given the green light for the production” of Bosch, “based on [his] best-selling Harry Bosch book series and written by Emmy-nominated Eric Overmyer (The
Wire, Treme) and Michael Connelly ...” The character of Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch
will be played by Titus Welliver, who I first remember from the 2001
CBS-TV crime drama Big Apple, but who later showed up in a memorable role on Deadwood (along with Big Apple’s Kim Dickens).
Asked how Amazon will offer a prospective Bosch series, Connelly explains: “We are producing the show for Amazon Studios, which means that when it is released it will be streamed off Amazon’s instant video service. This means you can watch it on your computer or digital device as well as on your television if you have it set up with an Amazon connection. Sometime early next year--probably in March--this pilot will be available for free viewing and comment. However, like HBO or Netflix or any cable provider, Amazon streaming is a subscription service provided under Amazon Prime. If Bosch goes to series a membership in Amazon Prime will be needed to watch it at some point.”
• Meanwhile, HBO-TV has released a new trailer for True Detective, its eight-episode, Louisiana-set crime drama starring
Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, and Michelle Monaghan. The show will
premiere on January 12, 2014. The trailer, which you can watch here, gives me hope that True Detective
will be better than the usual, predictable small-screen drama. Fingers crossed.
• Flavorwire has posted the first trailer I’ve seen for the Kickstarter-funded Veronica Mars movie. That film is due out next spring.
• And Omnimystery News says
“Netflix has announced that it has reached a deal with CBS to stream all 8
seasons of Dexter to its members in the U.S.”
• This is a potentially interesting shift of gears: “After making his name on crime dramas set in his native Boston,” /Film explains, “Dennis Lehane is getting his next bit of inspiration from outside the country. The Shutter Island author has been tapped to write Sony’s English-language remake of A Prophet (aka Un prophète), Jacques Audiard‘s acclaimed French crime drama.”
• Mike Ripley’s Top Notch Thrillers imprint is releasing new editions of two installments from TV writer James Mitchell’s five-book spin-off series based on Edward Woodward’s 1967-1972 series, Callan. On that program, Woodward (later to make a name for himself in The
Equalizer) played “a reluctant professional killer for a shadowy branch
of the British Government’s intelligence services known as ‘the Section.’” The
Callan novels returning to print (and also debuting as e-books) are A Magnum for Schneider (aka Red File for Callan) and Russian Roulette. Nick Jones offers more information about the Callan novels in his blog, Existential Ennui.
• I confess, I didn’t know much about Robert Siodmak until I read Jake Hinkson’s profile in Criminal Element of this man he calls film noir’s greatest director.
• A tip of the hat to Kristopher Zgorski’s blog, BOLO Books, which recently celebrated its first
blogiversary.
• Finally, I am sorry to hear that doctor-turned-novelist Michael Palmer
has perished at 71 years of age. According to his middle son, Daniel, he died
yesterday “of complications from a heart attack and stroke.” The Gumshoe Site’s
Jiro Kimura recalls that Palmer
“began writing while he was practicing internal medicine, starting [with] The Sisterhood (Bantam, 1982). ... He wrote 18 medical thrillers and the last two, Oath of Office (2012) and Political Suicide (2013), featured Dr. Lou Welcome, a physician in Washington, D.C.” Palmer’s 20th novel, Resistant, is scheduled for publication (by St. Martin’s Press) on May 20 of next year. I don’t think I ever met Palmer, but Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim, who says he was introduced to the author “at the very first ITW [International Thriller Writers] Thrillerfest held in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2006,” remembers Palmer as “a very nice guy, plus multi-talented” and “a real gentleman.”
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Happy Halloween, Everyone
Let’s start off the morning with some spook-tacular links.
Author Jeri Westerson has put together a revised history of this holiday. “Some,” she explains, “would have you believe that [Halloween is] Satanic in origin. Nothing could be further from the truth!” After taking all of that in, click over to Flavorwire for a look at 10 “Real-Life Haunted Houses Around the World,” three of which, I’m proud to say, I have already been privileged to tour. Addicting Info, meanwhile, tallies up “10 Haunted Places that Aren’t So Famous,” including the Miami Biltmore Hotel (at which I have dined) and Canada’s Banff Springs Hotel (where I once stayed). Flavorwire is back with a list of “20 Cemeteries You Need to Visit Before You Die”--because, I guess, you might only be visiting one afterward.
In case you want some spinetingling reading material to get you through this holiday, go to The Huffington Post for its picks of “10 Novels that Will Scare the Hell Out of You.” Joseph D’Lacey, author of the eco-horror novel Meat, selects his own top 10 works of horror fiction for The Guardian. Oline Cogdill suggests a few more such books in the Mystery Scene blog, while Blogging for a Good Book recommends Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology. Finally, Criminal Element has posted a full story from its Girl Trouble e-book compilation, totally appropriate to this day: “Her Haunted House,” by Brendan DuBois.
It’s been 75 years now since a notorious October 30, 1938, radio broadcast established an intimate link between H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and Halloween. In 1957, the weekly TV anthology series Studio One dramatized the hysteria that reportedly resulted as listeners were taken in by Orson Welles’ 1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air transmission, believing that Martians had indeed invaded New Jersey. Click over to YouTube to watch that hour-long show, The Night America Trembled. Eighteen years later, in 1975, an ABC made-for-television flick revisited that controversy: The Night That America Panicked, all 90 minutes of which you can enjoy here. Just don’t get too swept up in the excitement surrounding that 1938 scare: Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow contend in Slate that “The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. ... [A]lmost nobody was fooled by Welles’ broadcast.”
READ MORE: “Mystery Melange, Halloween Edition,” by B.V. Lawson (In Reference to Murder); “Cool Flicks: I Put a Spell on You--Halloween Movie Fest,” by J.F. Norris (Pretty Sinister Books); “Halloween Was So Much Weirder Back Then: Creepy and Disturbing Vintage Halloween Photos” (Weird Tales).
Author Jeri Westerson has put together a revised history of this holiday. “Some,” she explains, “would have you believe that [Halloween is] Satanic in origin. Nothing could be further from the truth!” After taking all of that in, click over to Flavorwire for a look at 10 “Real-Life Haunted Houses Around the World,” three of which, I’m proud to say, I have already been privileged to tour. Addicting Info, meanwhile, tallies up “10 Haunted Places that Aren’t So Famous,” including the Miami Biltmore Hotel (at which I have dined) and Canada’s Banff Springs Hotel (where I once stayed). Flavorwire is back with a list of “20 Cemeteries You Need to Visit Before You Die”--because, I guess, you might only be visiting one afterward.
In case you want some spinetingling reading material to get you through this holiday, go to The Huffington Post for its picks of “10 Novels that Will Scare the Hell Out of You.” Joseph D’Lacey, author of the eco-horror novel Meat, selects his own top 10 works of horror fiction for The Guardian. Oline Cogdill suggests a few more such books in the Mystery Scene blog, while Blogging for a Good Book recommends Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology. Finally, Criminal Element has posted a full story from its Girl Trouble e-book compilation, totally appropriate to this day: “Her Haunted House,” by Brendan DuBois.
It’s been 75 years now since a notorious October 30, 1938, radio broadcast established an intimate link between H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and Halloween. In 1957, the weekly TV anthology series Studio One dramatized the hysteria that reportedly resulted as listeners were taken in by Orson Welles’ 1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air transmission, believing that Martians had indeed invaded New Jersey. Click over to YouTube to watch that hour-long show, The Night America Trembled. Eighteen years later, in 1975, an ABC made-for-television flick revisited that controversy: The Night That America Panicked, all 90 minutes of which you can enjoy here. Just don’t get too swept up in the excitement surrounding that 1938 scare: Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow contend in Slate that “The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. ... [A]lmost nobody was fooled by Welles’ broadcast.”
READ MORE: “Mystery Melange, Halloween Edition,” by B.V. Lawson (In Reference to Murder); “Cool Flicks: I Put a Spell on You--Halloween Movie Fest,” by J.F. Norris (Pretty Sinister Books); “Halloween Was So Much Weirder Back Then: Creepy and Disturbing Vintage Halloween Photos” (Weird Tales).
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Novelist Solves Decades-Old Crime?
The 1931 murder of Julia Wallace has been one of Britain’s most notorious crimes--at least until now, if the findings of novelist P.D. James are correct. Though, given James’ experience in thinking about death 
and murder through 20 novels, one would think she’d be in the know.
According to The Guardian, James isn’t the first novelist to be fascinated by the case “which Raymond Chandler described as the ‘the nonpareil of all murder mysteries’. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that it ‘provides for the detective novelist an unrivalled field for speculation’.”
READ MORE: “P.D. James and the Wallace Case--a Classic Murder Mystery” and “P.D. James and True Crime Writing--a Few More Thoughts,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “Inside Job: 10 Crime Writers Turned Detective” (The Guardian).
and murder through 20 novels, one would think she’d be in the know.According to The Guardian, James isn’t the first novelist to be fascinated by the case “which Raymond Chandler described as the ‘the nonpareil of all murder mysteries’. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that it ‘provides for the detective novelist an unrivalled field for speculation’.”
Writing in the Sunday Times magazine, James claimed that the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool, which “compares only to the Ripper murders in 1888 in the amount of writing, both fiction and non-fiction, which it has created”, was misunderstood from the beginning by the police, the judge and jury.The Guardian goes on to detail the available clues that convinced James her positing was correct.
Her 1982 novel, The Skull Beneath the Skin, the fictional murder of Lady Ralston, is thought to parallel the Wallace case, and she refers to it directly in the detective chief-inspector Dalgliesh novel, The Murder Room (2003).
The case is “essentially tragic and has psychological subtleties to which it would take a Balzac to do justice,” James wrote. She builds a picture of Wallace as a man worn down by failure and disappointment who eventually cracked: “Perhaps when he struck the first tremendous blow that killed her, and the 10 afterwards delivered with such force, it was years of striving and constant disappointment that he was obliterating.”Back in 2002, Patricia Cornwell put forth a similarly forceful theory with regards to the true identity of Jack the Ripper, a theory she outlined closely in her non-fiction book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed.
READ MORE: “P.D. James and the Wallace Case--a Classic Murder Mystery” and “P.D. James and True Crime Writing--a Few More Thoughts,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’); “Inside Job: 10 Crime Writers Turned Detective” (The Guardian).
Retreading Chandler’s Gumshoe
I may finally have to give up on America’s television industry. I was a big boob-tube watcher in my youth, but over the last decade, I’ve found little to enjoy on the small
screen. It has gotten to the point where I use my TV set primarily to watch DVDs. This fall, I added only two shows to my regular viewing schedule--The Blacklist (which I really enjoy, even though co-star Megan Boone is no match for the sinisterly charismatic James Spader) and The Michael J. Fox Show (for purely sentimental reasons). I don’t see a great deal of creativity or originality coming from the TV networks or--with the notable exception of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom--the cable channels. And news that ABC is hoping to introduce a new series about Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s renowned private eye, is unlikely to change things.
“The project ...,” reports Deadline Hollywood, “is described as a smart, sexy, and stylish update of Chandler’s character which follows the investigations of wisecracking, edgy, and rugged private detective Philip Marlowe as he navigates the morally complicated world of today’s Los Angeles--where the bright California sun casts long and dangerous shadows ... and where true love can be more difficult to find than justice. [Castle creator-showrunner Andrew] Marlowe is writing the script with his wife, Castle writer/consulting producer Terri Edda Miller, through their MilMar Pictures.”
This marks the third time ABC-TV has endeavored to reanimate the ghost of Philip Marlowe for its own ratings benefit. In 1959, Philip Carey starred in a short-lived, half-hour drama based on Chandler’s P.I. In 2007, the network again got excited about Marlowe, thanks to a pilot starring Irish actor Jason O’Mara. However, that project was eventually dropped, and O’Mara went on to star in U.S. version of Life on Mars. Aside from the Carey show, the only other successful effort at bringing Marlowe to TV screens came in 1983, when British network ITV launched Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, a period detective serial starring Powers Booth. It ran for two seasons, with each of its 11 episodes based on a different Chandler short story.
American television has done a demonstrably poor job of resurrecting classic series. Ironside, Charlie’s Angels, Knight Rider, The Night Stalker, The Bionic Woman--they’ve all come and gone before most viewers even knew they were on. And plans to reintroduce The Rockford Files (with the un-tough Dermot Mulroney trying to fill James Garner’s shoes) died early, thank goodness. Yet we’ve recently heard of plans to reboot Remington Steele as a comedy-drama for NBC, and CBS wants to revive Murder, She Wrote with The Help’s Octavia Spencer as a self-published mystery novelist fascinated by true crimes.
Handing Philip Marlowe over to the folks behind Castle might ensure that a pilot film is at least made. But I have to say, Castle is altogether too cute and formulaic for my taste. I can’t see Raymond Chandler being happy that its developers have been selected to bring his iconic Los Angeles gumshoe back to the screen.
(Hat tip to Shotsmag Confidential.)
READ MORE: “Voice Without a Face: Finding a Face for Philip Marlowe,” by David Vineyard (Mystery*File).
“The project ...,” reports Deadline Hollywood, “is described as a smart, sexy, and stylish update of Chandler’s character which follows the investigations of wisecracking, edgy, and rugged private detective Philip Marlowe as he navigates the morally complicated world of today’s Los Angeles--where the bright California sun casts long and dangerous shadows ... and where true love can be more difficult to find than justice. [Castle creator-showrunner Andrew] Marlowe is writing the script with his wife, Castle writer/consulting producer Terri Edda Miller, through their MilMar Pictures.”
This marks the third time ABC-TV has endeavored to reanimate the ghost of Philip Marlowe for its own ratings benefit. In 1959, Philip Carey starred in a short-lived, half-hour drama based on Chandler’s P.I. In 2007, the network again got excited about Marlowe, thanks to a pilot starring Irish actor Jason O’Mara. However, that project was eventually dropped, and O’Mara went on to star in U.S. version of Life on Mars. Aside from the Carey show, the only other successful effort at bringing Marlowe to TV screens came in 1983, when British network ITV launched Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, a period detective serial starring Powers Booth. It ran for two seasons, with each of its 11 episodes based on a different Chandler short story.
American television has done a demonstrably poor job of resurrecting classic series. Ironside, Charlie’s Angels, Knight Rider, The Night Stalker, The Bionic Woman--they’ve all come and gone before most viewers even knew they were on. And plans to reintroduce The Rockford Files (with the un-tough Dermot Mulroney trying to fill James Garner’s shoes) died early, thank goodness. Yet we’ve recently heard of plans to reboot Remington Steele as a comedy-drama for NBC, and CBS wants to revive Murder, She Wrote with The Help’s Octavia Spencer as a self-published mystery novelist fascinated by true crimes.
Handing Philip Marlowe over to the folks behind Castle might ensure that a pilot film is at least made. But I have to say, Castle is altogether too cute and formulaic for my taste. I can’t see Raymond Chandler being happy that its developers have been selected to bring his iconic Los Angeles gumshoe back to the screen.
(Hat tip to Shotsmag Confidential.)
READ MORE: “Voice Without a Face: Finding a Face for Philip Marlowe,” by David Vineyard (Mystery*File).
Remembering JFK in Fiction
New York commuters read about Kennedy’s murder.
Next month will bring the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas. As most everyone reading this post knows already, the 35th president of the United States was shot to death during a motorcade excursion through the “Big D” not long after noon on November 22, 1963; also wounded by sniper fire in Kennedy’s vehicle was Texas Governor John Connolly. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine who’d defected to the Soviet Union before returning to the States, was eventually found guilty of the crime, though he himself died (at the hands of a gun-wielding Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby) two days after Kennedy.
To commemorate that tragic anniversary, I’m devoting my Kirkus Reviews column this week to crime and thriller novels focused around Kennedy. Included are works by Max Allan Collins, David Poyer, Francine Mathews, Charles McCarry, and others. You’ll find my full piece here.
READ MORE: “The U.S. President and Detective Fiction: Hail to the Chief,” by Janet Rudolph (Mystery Fanfare); “The Story Behind the Story: ‘A Fine and Dangerous Season,’ by Keith Raffel” (The Rap Sheet); “The Presidential Bond,” by Ali Karim (The Rap Sheet); “The Best Novels About JFK’s Death,” by Patrick Wensink (Esquire).
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Dolled Up and Daggered
During a notably glitzy event held this evening at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) announced the winners of its three remaining 2013 Dagger awards. Also named were the recipients of the 2013 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards. Thanks to correspondent Ali Karim (who was on the scene in his best bib and tucker), we have the full list of winners.
Film footage from tonight’s ceremony will be broadcast in the UK on ITV3 beginning at 9 p.m. on Sunday, October 27.
Congratulations to all of the contenders for this year’s prizes.
CWA Goldsboro Gold
Dagger:
Dead Lions, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
Dead Lions, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
Also nominated: Rubbernecker, by Belinda Bauer (Bantam/Transworld);
The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes (HarperCollins); and Rage Against the
Dying, by Becky Masterman (Orion)
CWA John Creasey
Dagger:
Norwegian by Night, by Derek B. Miller (Faber and Faber)
Norwegian by Night, by Derek B. Miller (Faber and Faber)
Also nominated: Something You Are, by Hanna Jameson (Head of
Zeus); The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, by Malcolm Mackay (Mantle);
and Shadow of the Rock, by Thomas Mogford (Bloomsbury)
CWA Ian Fleming Steel
Dagger:
Ghostman, by Roger Hobbs (Transworld)
Ghostman, by Roger Hobbs (Transworld)
Also nominated: Ratlines, by Stuart Neville (Random House); The
Sentinel, by Mark Oldfield (Head of Zeus); and Capital Punishment, by Robert Wilson (Orion)
The Film Dagger: Skyfall
Also nominated: Jack Reacher; Killing Them Softly; Looper;
and Seven Psychopaths
The TV Dagger: Broadchurch
Also nominated: Luther; Top of the Lake; The Fall; and Bletchley
Circle
The International TV Dagger: The Killing 3
Also nominated: Homeland; Boardwalk Empire; and Arne Dahl
The Best Supporting Actor Dagger: Andrew Buchan for
Broadchurch
Also nominated: Paul McGann for A Mother’s Son; Mandy
Patinkin for Homeland; Warren Brown for Luther; and Roger Allam for
Endeavour
The Best Supporting Actress Dagger:
Amelia Bullmore for Scott & Bailey
Amelia Bullmore for Scott & Bailey
Also nominated: Pauline Quirke for Broadchurch; Holly
Hunter for Top of the Lake; Jodie Whittaker for Broadchurch; and Ruth
Wilson for Luther
The Best Actor Dagger: David Tennant for Broadchurch
Also nominated: Damien Lewis for Homeland; Idris Elba for
Luther; Jason Isaacs for Case Histories; and Paddy Considine for The Suspicions
of Mr. Whicher: The Murder in Angel Lane
The Best Actress Dagger: Olivia Colman for Broadchurch
Also nominated: Sofie Grabol for The Killing 3; Claire Danes
for Homeland; Gillian Anderson for The Fall; and Lesley Sharp for Scott &
Bailey
CWA Hall of Fame--“Living Legends”: Martina Cole and Wilbur
Smith
Also nominated: Nicci French, Harlan Coben, Patricia
Cornwell, and Frederick Forsyth
Crime Thriller Book Club: The Necessary Death of Lewis
Winter, by Malcolm Mackay (Pan Books)
Also nominated: Trust Your Eyes, by Linwood Barclay (Orion);
Dare Me, by Megan Abbott (Picador); Bryant and May and the Invisible Code, by
Christopher Fowler (Transworld); City of Devils, by Diana Bretherick (Orion);
and The Scent of Death, by Andrew Taylor (Harper Collins)
Film footage from tonight’s ceremony will be broadcast in the UK on ITV3 beginning at 9 p.m. on Sunday, October 27.
Congratulations to all of the contenders for this year’s prizes.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
The End of Harrison Affair
I was sorry to read last night, in The HMSS Weblog, that actor, singer, and Olympic skier (?) Noel Harrison has died at age 79.
In The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967), he co-starred as British secret agent Mark Slate; Stefanie Powers played American U.N.C.L.E. agent April Dancer in that Man from U.N.C.L.E. spin-off. “After Girl ended,” the Weblog’s Bill Koenig notes, “Harrison ended up in one more notable spy television story: the only three-part episode of Mission: Impossible, [1970’s] ‘The Falcon.’ Harrison played the childlike member of a royal family of a country who’s being used as a dupe by an ambitious general (John Vernon). The story is even more complicated than the typical M:I tale and features a number of cliffhangers along the way.”
“Let us all light a candle to speed him on his way--he deserves to fly with the angels,” Powers wrote in a Twitter post after the news of Harrison’s demise was announced.
In The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967), he co-starred as British secret agent Mark Slate; Stefanie Powers played American U.N.C.L.E. agent April Dancer in that Man from U.N.C.L.E. spin-off. “After Girl ended,” the Weblog’s Bill Koenig notes, “Harrison ended up in one more notable spy television story: the only three-part episode of Mission: Impossible, [1970’s] ‘The Falcon.’ Harrison played the childlike member of a royal family of a country who’s being used as a dupe by an ambitious general (John Vernon). The story is even more complicated than the typical M:I tale and features a number of cliffhangers along the way.”
“Let us all light a candle to speed him on his way--he deserves to fly with the angels,” Powers wrote in a Twitter post after the news of Harrison’s demise was announced.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Pierce’s Picks: “Shadow of the Alchemist”
A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.
Shadow of the Alchemist, by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur):
There’s no mystery about why I enjoy Jeri Westerson’s Crispin Guest yarns: they’re historical whodunits--or “Medieval Noirs,” to adopt her term. And though I don’t usually go in for honor-bound knights and elusive holy grails and such, this author’s combination of strongly fashioned characters,
sword-clashing action, circuitous plotting, and incidental humor long ago won me over. In Shadow of the Alchemist, her sixth entry in this series (following last year’s Blood Lance), we find a storied French alchemist, Nicholas
Flamel, venturing over to London in the year 1387 to engage in escapades of a
notably clandestine nature. Flamel’s wife and youthful apprentice soon go
missing, though, and the alchemist seeks out disgraced knight--and renowned
“tracker”--Crispin Guest to find them. It sounds like a domestic matter; Flamel hints that the pair have absconded together for immoral purposes. And Guest, like
his private-eye counterparts of the later 20th century, would prefer to stay
away from such sordid matters. Yet, after one of the pair suddenly turns up quite
dead, and Flamel is instructed that he’ll have to turn over knowledge of a
fabled “Philosopher’s Stone” (said to be capable of transforming base metal into
gold) if he’s ever to see the other alive once more, Guest’s involvement in the
case deepens. A murderer is at large, one who’s fond of leading our hero on
with obscure clues to forthcoming events. Westerson does a superior job of
incorporating into this treasure-hunt tale the political and social
complexities of Guest’s era, without hobbling her plot’s rollicking momentum.
Shadow of the Alchemist, by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur):
There’s no mystery about why I enjoy Jeri Westerson’s Crispin Guest yarns: they’re historical whodunits--or “Medieval Noirs,” to adopt her term. And though I don’t usually go in for honor-bound knights and elusive holy grails and such, this author’s combination of strongly fashioned characters,
sword-clashing action, circuitous plotting, and incidental humor long ago won me over. In Shadow of the Alchemist, her sixth entry in this series (following last year’s Blood Lance), we find a storied French alchemist, Nicholas
Flamel, venturing over to London in the year 1387 to engage in escapades of a
notably clandestine nature. Flamel’s wife and youthful apprentice soon go
missing, though, and the alchemist seeks out disgraced knight--and renowned
“tracker”--Crispin Guest to find them. It sounds like a domestic matter; Flamel hints that the pair have absconded together for immoral purposes. And Guest, like
his private-eye counterparts of the later 20th century, would prefer to stay
away from such sordid matters. Yet, after one of the pair suddenly turns up quite
dead, and Flamel is instructed that he’ll have to turn over knowledge of a
fabled “Philosopher’s Stone” (said to be capable of transforming base metal into
gold) if he’s ever to see the other alive once more, Guest’s involvement in the
case deepens. A murderer is at large, one who’s fond of leading our hero on
with obscure clues to forthcoming events. Westerson does a superior job of
incorporating into this treasure-hunt tale the political and social
complexities of Guest’s era, without hobbling her plot’s rollicking momentum.
* * *
Speaking of historical mysteries, you should also check out Edward Marston’s Five Dead Canaries (Allison & Busby UK), the third of his World War I-set “Home Front Detective” novels. Here we find Inspector Harvey Marnion and Sergeant Joe Keedy (introduced in 2011’s A Bespoke Murder) on the hunt for whoever killed a group of munitionettes, or “canary girls,” determinedly independent women who worked in Britain’s munitions factories. The year is 1916, and Scotland Yard’s suspicions fall immediately on German spies. But Marnion and Keedy aren’t sure that easy answer is the right one. Their investigation will illuminate a variety of societal changes and ills, and leave them racing against the restrictions of time in order to save other “canaries” from being brutally plucked off.
Workin’ on the MacLean Gang
You now have just 10 days left to participate in The Rap Sheet’s poll to determine which were the best of Alistair MacLean’s more than two dozen adventure thrillers. This survey will remain active until November 1. You can vote for one or more books.
Click here to make your preferences known. At last check, the poll’s top five vote-getters were The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra, Breakheart Pass, and Puppet on a Chain.
Click here to make your preferences known. At last check, the poll’s top five vote-getters were The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra, Breakheart Pass, and Puppet on a Chain.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Lauter’s Quiet Command
Ed Lauter, the New York-born actor who died late last week at age 74, was a fixture on American TV and movie screens over the last 40 years. He debuted on Broadway in 1968, but the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) lists his first TV gig in a small role on a 1971 episode of Mannix. He subsequently appeared in numerous series, including Longstreet, Ironside, Kojak, The Rockford Files, Nero Wolfe, Magnum, P.I., The A-Team, Cold Case, Miami Vice, NYPD Blue, The X-Files, Psych, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. 
Among his film credits were parts in Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot, the 1975 picture made from Alistair MacLean’s Breakheart Pass, Cujo, Lassiter, The Rocketeer, Mulholland Falls, and The Artist.
(Left) Lauter as Bud Delaney
“Whether he was an irascible authority figure, a brutal thug or a conniving con man,” the Associated Press remarked in its obituary, “Lauter’s presence made him all but impossible to miss in any film he was in. That was so even on those occasions when he was playing a character more bumbling than menacing, although menacing was clearly his forte.” In his own report of Lauter’s demise, Stephen Bowie of The Classic TV History Blog wrote: “Tall, sharp-chinned, and prematurely bald, Lauter sketched in a lot of thankless authority figures (as a fire chief, for instance, in several episodes of ER) but acquired a cult following through juicier turns as a gamut of bad guys, from the coolly sinister to the outright terrifying.”
Although Lauter is usually described as a “character actor,” the role for which I remember him best is as the star of Last Hours Before Morning, an unsuccessful 1975 pilot film for NBC-TV. He played Bud Delaney, a 1940s Los Angeles cop who was booted from the force “after being framed by a mysterious higher-up,” and took a job working as the house detective for a down-at-heels Hollywood hotel. Lauter brought to that role a world-weariness and rather reluctant brilliance that I recall even now--even though I haven’t seen Last Hours Before Morning since its premiere. A few years ago, I chose this teleflick as one of my favorite old TV pilots, and I’ve been hoping ever since to find the film in DVD format, so far without success. (If anyone knows how I can get my hands on a copy, don’t hesitate to tell me!)
Lauter’s publicist said the actor died of mesothelioma, a cancer generally associated with asbestos exposure.
(Hat tip to Don Herron at Up and Down These Mean Streets.)
READ MORE: “Ed Lauter Never Out of Character in Film, on TV,” by Susan King (Los Angeles Times).
Among his film credits were parts in Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot, the 1975 picture made from Alistair MacLean’s Breakheart Pass, Cujo, Lassiter, The Rocketeer, Mulholland Falls, and The Artist.(Left) Lauter as Bud Delaney
“Whether he was an irascible authority figure, a brutal thug or a conniving con man,” the Associated Press remarked in its obituary, “Lauter’s presence made him all but impossible to miss in any film he was in. That was so even on those occasions when he was playing a character more bumbling than menacing, although menacing was clearly his forte.” In his own report of Lauter’s demise, Stephen Bowie of The Classic TV History Blog wrote: “Tall, sharp-chinned, and prematurely bald, Lauter sketched in a lot of thankless authority figures (as a fire chief, for instance, in several episodes of ER) but acquired a cult following through juicier turns as a gamut of bad guys, from the coolly sinister to the outright terrifying.”
Although Lauter is usually described as a “character actor,” the role for which I remember him best is as the star of Last Hours Before Morning, an unsuccessful 1975 pilot film for NBC-TV. He played Bud Delaney, a 1940s Los Angeles cop who was booted from the force “after being framed by a mysterious higher-up,” and took a job working as the house detective for a down-at-heels Hollywood hotel. Lauter brought to that role a world-weariness and rather reluctant brilliance that I recall even now--even though I haven’t seen Last Hours Before Morning since its premiere. A few years ago, I chose this teleflick as one of my favorite old TV pilots, and I’ve been hoping ever since to find the film in DVD format, so far without success. (If anyone knows how I can get my hands on a copy, don’t hesitate to tell me!)
Lauter’s publicist said the actor died of mesothelioma, a cancer generally associated with asbestos exposure.
(Hat tip to Don Herron at Up and Down These Mean Streets.)
READ MORE: “Ed Lauter Never Out of Character in Film, on TV,” by Susan King (Los Angeles Times).
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Flamin’ Out
Don’t presume that I was in any way surprised by the news that NBC-TV has cancelled Ironside, Blair Underwood’s sorta/kinda remake of Raymond Burr’s classic series of that same name.
I wanted to like this new show--really, I did--but right away it turned me off. Underwood can be an excellent performer; however, he was definitely not Robert T. Ironside, at least not the perspicacious, sniper-damaged, and chili-loving former chief of detectives remembered fondly by viewers of the 1967-1975 series. He came off as too tough, too violent--nothing like the foul-mouthed, yet compassionate character Burr offered to viewers. (That’s one of the principal risks of trying to remake a familiar program: Producers want very much to capitalize on the original, but any “new” show is inevitably compared with--and commonly suffers by contrast with--whatever it’s trying to imitate.) Another strike against this reboot was the decision to move the action from San Francisco to New York City. Why bother? And the small team of plainclothes cops Underwood’s Ironside assembled never seemed very interesting or cohesive. The whole cast appeared to be going through the motions of making a gritty cop series, without actually delivering anything out of the ordinary.
The fourth and final episode of NBC’s second shot at Ironside will air this coming Wednesday, October 23, at 10 p.m. ET/PT. (A fifth installment has evidently been made, but there is no word of whether it will ever be broadcast.) Hmm. Four episodes? That’s only 194 fewer than were produced of Burr’s original crime drama.
I wanted to like this new show--really, I did--but right away it turned me off. Underwood can be an excellent performer; however, he was definitely not Robert T. Ironside, at least not the perspicacious, sniper-damaged, and chili-loving former chief of detectives remembered fondly by viewers of the 1967-1975 series. He came off as too tough, too violent--nothing like the foul-mouthed, yet compassionate character Burr offered to viewers. (That’s one of the principal risks of trying to remake a familiar program: Producers want very much to capitalize on the original, but any “new” show is inevitably compared with--and commonly suffers by contrast with--whatever it’s trying to imitate.) Another strike against this reboot was the decision to move the action from San Francisco to New York City. Why bother? And the small team of plainclothes cops Underwood’s Ironside assembled never seemed very interesting or cohesive. The whole cast appeared to be going through the motions of making a gritty cop series, without actually delivering anything out of the ordinary.
The fourth and final episode of NBC’s second shot at Ironside will air this coming Wednesday, October 23, at 10 p.m. ET/PT. (A fifth installment has evidently been made, but there is no word of whether it will ever be broadcast.) Hmm. Four episodes? That’s only 194 fewer than were produced of Burr’s original crime drama.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Just a Few Small Items
• Hardy congratulations are due New Zealand author Eleanor Catton,
who at 28, has become the youngest writer ever to win the Man Booker Prize. She’s received that commendation for her new, 832-page novel The Luminaries, which I had seen but did not realize until yesterday is a work of crime fiction. “A murder mystery set in and around [the Kiwi township of] Hokitika in the gold rush year of 1866, the novel uses astrological star charts as an organizing principle, rotating 12 characters born under 12 different star signs through a complex 12-month schema, while eight other characters move in and out of phase with them,” the New Zealand
Listener explained in a piece last summer. Blogger-journalist Craig Sisterson (who
I was honored to dine with recently) contacted me on Tuesday to inform me of
Catton’s Man Booker triumph and point me toward a post
he’d written about the author in early 2012. Naturally, The Luminaries is now hard to find in bookstores, but I’ll be adding it to my near-future reading list. You can find out more about Catton and her work here
and here.
• In Mystery Scene magazine’s blog, Oline Cogdill celebrates The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris’ third and still best-known work, which was released a quarter of a century ago this month. “At the time,” she remarks, “this was a ground-breaking novel, setting a high bar for the serial killer novel. And 25 years later, Silence of the Lambs still is the standard for the serial killer novel.”
• Critic Peter Guttridge reports, in a post for Shotsmag Confidential, on Walter Mosley’s recent visit to England’s Durham Book Festival, during which the author talked about resurrecting his character Easy Rawlins in Little Green.
• Dashiell Hammett--way out of his element.
• The Double O Section blog laments the failure of a 1973 CBS-TV pilot, Call to Danger, that “would have seen Peter Graves follow up his successful run on Mission: Impossible with another spy series. Had the show gone to series, it would have once again seen Graves as a team leader recruiting citizens to spy week after week.” Pseudonymous blogger Tanner offers the opening title sequence from that pilot film, and then says, “tell me this wouldn’t have been the best show ever. No! You’re wrong. It clearly would have been.” You can read all of Tanner’s post here. And I offered a bit more information about Call to Danger in my 2010 obituary of actor Graves.
• Finally, I mentioned a few days ago that James “Demon Dog” Ellroy is returning to the 1940s with four crime novels, beginning with Perfidia, which is to be released in the fall of 2014. Now, British crime-fiction scholar Steven Powell (Conversations with James Ellroy) brings us a few details--from the author himself--about his tale’s plot. In this post, Powell also recalls the start of Ellroy’s authorial career.
• In Mystery Scene magazine’s blog, Oline Cogdill celebrates The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris’ third and still best-known work, which was released a quarter of a century ago this month. “At the time,” she remarks, “this was a ground-breaking novel, setting a high bar for the serial killer novel. And 25 years later, Silence of the Lambs still is the standard for the serial killer novel.”
• Critic Peter Guttridge reports, in a post for Shotsmag Confidential, on Walter Mosley’s recent visit to England’s Durham Book Festival, during which the author talked about resurrecting his character Easy Rawlins in Little Green.
• Dashiell Hammett--way out of his element.
• The Double O Section blog laments the failure of a 1973 CBS-TV pilot, Call to Danger, that “would have seen Peter Graves follow up his successful run on Mission: Impossible with another spy series. Had the show gone to series, it would have once again seen Graves as a team leader recruiting citizens to spy week after week.” Pseudonymous blogger Tanner offers the opening title sequence from that pilot film, and then says, “tell me this wouldn’t have been the best show ever. No! You’re wrong. It clearly would have been.” You can read all of Tanner’s post here. And I offered a bit more information about Call to Danger in my 2010 obituary of actor Graves.
• Finally, I mentioned a few days ago that James “Demon Dog” Ellroy is returning to the 1940s with four crime novels, beginning with Perfidia, which is to be released in the fall of 2014. Now, British crime-fiction scholar Steven Powell (Conversations with James Ellroy) brings us a few details--from the author himself--about his tale’s plot. In this post, Powell also recalls the start of Ellroy’s authorial career.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Quinn’s Border Blues
I’d never so much as heard of Anthony Quinn when, in 2012, his American publisher sent me an advance copy of his debut novel, Disappeared. But it didn’t take me long to realize that this Northern Irish journalist turned author had something distinctive to offer crime fiction readers. Disappeared--which recounted Inspector Celcius Daly’s search for a vanished Alzheimer’s patient, while it deftly explored that patient’s ties to the long-ago slaying of an alleged political informer and the more recent torture murder of an ex-intelligence agent--earned a place on my list of 2012’s best crime-fiction works, and I later nominated it for a Strand Magazine Critics Award. Brimming with psychologically nuanced characters and the richly textured backdrop of rural Northern Ireland, it was one of those rare books I hadn’t known to request, but was overjoyed to have received.
Fears that Quinn might not have a strong sequel in him are being dashed this month with the release of Border Angels (Mysterious Press/Open Road). In it, we find Daly investigating a fiery roadside accident and a string of footprints--those of a bare-footed woman--that lead through the snow, away from the crash. This sets Quinn’s lonely, dogged, and congenitally honest cop off on the trail of a prostitution ring, and soon leads him deeper into a case involving misused public funds, the illicit trafficking of Eastern European women, and a surprisingly resourceful young Croatian, Lena Novak, who captivates our hero as she strikes back at the criminals who exploited her. Reviewing this book for his blog, At the Scene of the Crime, Patrick Ohl calls the quality of Quinn’s prose “simply superb,” and says that he brings the story’s setting--the “dark, unsettling, hostile world” of the Irish border--“vividly to life.”
Now just over a month shy of his 42nd birthday, Quinn tells me that he lives with his wife of 13 years, Clare, and their four children “on the farm I grew up on, next door to my parents,” in Dungannon, County Tyrone. A graduate of Queen’s University in the Northern Irish capital of Belfast, he once thought to become a Catholic priest, but abandoned that vocation in favor of journalism. He now splits his weeks between working as a reporter-editor for the Tyrone Times newspaper, and taking care of his children (“quite the handful,” he avers).
Last month, I arranged with Quinn’s publisher to interview him via e-mail. I rather deluged him with questions, and he responded both quickly and at length. A portion of our exchange was featured earlier today on the Kirkus Reviews Web site. But the larger part of it--covering his childhood, his developing interest in fiction writing, his impressions of the fragile peace on the Emerald Isle, and his interest in his homeland’s sometimes eerie environment--is posted below.
J. Kingston Pierce: You’ve said you learned to read and write early, at age 4. What were you like as a boy? And would anyone have expected then that you’d grow up to be a successful novelist?
Anthony Quinn: I was born an only child, until my twin-sister, Eileen, usurped me about seven minutes later. By the time I was 2, I had four younger siblings (including a further set of twins). In total,
I have six brothers and sisters. It was a happy, adventurous childhood. If I wasn’t reading, I was playing and helping on the farm, or building tree-huts in a wild glen nearby.Socially, however, I was painfully shy, mute almost. My twin sister and I invented our own language as toddlers, and stubbornly refused to abandon it as we grew older. Our younger sister, Rhoda, had to translate for our parents, who found our lingua franca incomprehensible. I remember a speech therapist telling my mother that it was such a lovely thing that my twin sister and I had between us, but she was going to have to put a stop to it. I was annoyed with her because she insisted her word for “tree” was correct and ours wrong. Even then, I knew that language belongs to the user. The way we speak, our vernacular, is something we absorb from our environment, and is an important part of our identity. Growing up isolated on a farm and surrounded by babies, it was only natural that we blended so many baby-words into our vocabulary. Their loss left me with a slightly rebellious attitude towards the English language. After all, it had usurped my first tongue, a language that belonged to my sister and me. It has also influenced my writing style to the extent that when I’m sculpting descriptive passages, I sometimes like to disregard the essential meanings of words for those fortuitous links that occur when a writer knocks phrases and sentences together. A friend of mine pointed out the following passage in Border Angels:
Even though his voice was quiet, he felt his words punch the cold air. He looked away. Branches of sloe berries hung their frozen heads along the hedgerows. The call of a pigeon wobbled from somewhere deep within the thorns.Surely, you meant “the call of a pigeon warbled,” he suggested. I smiled and disagreed. To my ear, “wobbled” was much more lively and rebellious than plain old correct “warbled.”
JKP: When did you first develop an interest in writing?
AQ: I could read and write before going to school, and have written most days since. I spent most of my adolescence and young adulthood writing poetry, and I shiver at the thought of it ever seeing the light of day. The poems were much too personal and dark, and I never tried to get them published. I was afraid readers would sue me for emotional harassment. My family and friends always knew I would one day become a novelist.
JKP: You engaged in a number of jobs--social work, counseling, organic farming, and more--before you moved into journalism. That surprises me a bit, since you graduated with an English degree from Queen’s University. Unless you’d intended to teach English, journalism would have seemed like a natural option for someone with your education. How many years after college was it that you finally took up the business of news reporting?
AQ: After graduating with an English degree, I dedicated myself to social work, principally in the mental health field. For years, I fought to keep the inner anxieties at bay by immersing myself in the problems of others. I also took up yoga and meditation, practiced them twice a day, and for a while it worked. The birth of our eldest child in 2004 coincided with our return to Northern Ireland and the start of my journalism career at the Tyrone Times. Unfortunately, our first-born was a poor sleeper, which meant that I could no longer rise at the crack of dawn and practice my yoga routine. An important prop was kicked away. Meanwhile, the journalism was helping my writing, the pressure of daily deadlines, the patient arrangement of facts into an acceptable form. It wasn’t long before I took to writing the book that would become Disappeared. In terms of answering my childhood callings, it felt like the final throw of the dice.
JKP: You still work for the weekly Tyrone Times (aka Tyrone Times and Dungannon Gazette) all these years later. What are your responsibilities for that periodical? And has your newspaper faced the same sorts of financial and mission challenges that have plagued so many others in the 21st century?
AQ: The Tyrone Times has faced similar challenges to other newspapers, although our circulation figures are one of the few to have stayed the same over the past seven years. The financial problems stem from rampant capitalism during the boom years, when larger newspaper groups bought up smaller ones at inflated prices, saddling them with a lot of debt. I still work as a reporter and acting editor, three days of the week; the other two, I look after our children. More and more of my work takes place online and through social media. As a journalist, the chance to connect with readers through new platforms can only be a good thing.
JKP: What do you think will be the future for newspapers?
AQ: There’ll always be newspapers, especially community-based newspapers such as the Tyrone Times, just as there will always be a demand for print books.
JKP: At what point in your career did you decide to take up fiction-writing? And what finally pushed you in that direction?
AQ: I could not have started writing Disappeared, a novel that is so deeply immersed in the Troubles, until I was 37, for the personal reasons I’ve outlined, and also for broader political and social reasons.
When I returned to my hometown to work at the Tyrone Times, I expected to be covering stories about agricultural shows, flower arranging, and parish events, with the odd burglary
or car accident thrown in, a good starting place for a career in
journalism, but one which might not sustain my interest for too long. However, I
soon found myself drawn back into the darkest corners of the Troubles. My first
big story was an interview with a father still searching for justice over the
death of his 9-year old son, who had been killed by a loyalist car bomb more
than 30 years before. The murderers had never been found, and to compound the
tragedy, clear evidence had emerged that the killers had been protected by
British security forces. It made the front page of the newspaper and seemed to
open the floodgates to a host of similar stories.Over the next few years, I found myself interviewing elderly men and women from both sides of the conflict in living rooms that felt like shrines to their lost sons and daughters, murdered by republicans or by loyalists and the shadowy security forces. Their grievances had not diminished in spite of the peace process. Their lips still quivered as they lit candles next to pictures of their loved ones.
What struck me from the outset was the fact that few of these emotive stories were making the headlines in the national or even the local press. They were widely ignored, a taboo subject, censored by a society that did not want to be reminded of its past. Lurking somewhere at the back of people’s minds was the superstitious fear that talking about the Troubles might somehow increase the chances of a return to violence.
Denial and silence might have been good coping strategies during the Troubles, but in peacetime, they struck me as dangerous and destructive. In the newsroom of the local paper, the phone kept ringing with people keen to break their silence, and I kept taking notes and writing up their stories.
One night a man came to my home and handed me a legal file containing British Intelligence information, the core of which were the transcripts of a British Army surveillance operation on a house in the days leading up to the murder of its elderly female occupant by loyalist paramilitaries. As well as a dug-in unit of SAS [Special Air Service] men observing the house, there was a secret camera camouflaged in the hedgerows relaying footage to a nearby police base. The [transcript] passages that had not been redacted made grim reading, right down to the description of the gunfire on the night of the murder and the instruction to soldiers to remain hidden in their positions. The murdered woman’s family claimed that loyalist paramilitaries had colluded with the police and the British Army, and from the evidence in the file, it was hard not to see the justification in their claims. However, in spite of repeated legal hearings, the family had yet to receive any form of justice or be told the truth about what really happened that night.
I could see the anger and hurt that lived on in these families, many of whom felt abandoned by Northern Ireland’s political parties. Their lives had been irredeemably rocked by tragedy. For many victims it is not their own silence that is hardest to bear, but the silence of the entire community.
These were the stories which jolted me into writing Disappeared.
JKP: I understand that you initially tried your hand at short stories, at least two of which were good enough to be short-listed for the New Irish Writing and Hennessy Award. How prolific were you as a short-story author? And did those briefer yarns also involve crime?
AQ: Now that I think of them, they were all about individuals snared by crime, although I didn’t set out to write them as traditional crime stories. I was very prolific in terms of the number I wrote, and then discarded. Only a small number survived the creative destruction that is the editing process.
JKP: Before Disappeared, had you tried producing other novels?
AQ: Apart from a false start a few months earlier, Disappeared was my first attempt at writing a novel. I think the discipline I developed practicing yoga helped carry me through to the end. I was fortunate that [Mysterious Press editor] Otto Penzler happened to read it and selected it for publication. I wrote Border Angels next, completing it in November 2010.
At the moment, I’m finishing my fourth novel, an historical thriller, but I’m still very much an apprentice.JKP: Why did you choose to write fiction in the crime and mystery genre? Had you long been an enthusiastic reader of such books?
AQ: My main obstacle to writing long fiction was the problem of form and structure. I find that the detective novel provides a lovely frame, like an old, much-loved piece of furniture, which one can strip back and upholster with whatever one likes. I’ve always loved reading crime and mystery fiction, right from childhood with Enid Blyton, Frank W. Dixon, Alfred Hitchcock, and Agatha Christie. Then I graduated onto Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, and John le Carré.
JKP: What sort of contribution were you hoping to make to the crime-fiction field with Disappeared?
AQ: I wanted to emulate what I admired so much in writers like Conrad and Greene, the intelligent prose, the powerful sense of atmosphere, and the strong narrative drive. Most importantly, I wanted to engage the reader with the politics and change that are going on in Northern Ireland. For me the best crime fiction gives an insight into a particular time or society in a way that history books can’t.
JKP: A principal theme in Disappeared is that Northern Ireland may have officially gotten past its decades of political and religious violence--its “Troubles”--but that doesn’t mean it’s a wholly peaceful place yet. And there are plenty of troublemakers trying, sometimes without success, to make new lives for themselves in a post-Troubles world. In what ways do you see this reality playing out?
AQ: Northern Ireland has changed beyond measure since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, but not in the essentials. We have the same political parties, same people, same history. For many ordinary civilians, the new political system has delivered a phony peace in the sense that it is based on ignoring the cruelties and injustices of the last 40 years.
I fervently hope that the current politicians won’t betray the population’s overwhelming desire for peace. However, the Northern Ireland Assembly is currently in as much a state of shutdown as the U.S. Congress, unable to decide on contentious issues such as the flying of Union flags on public buildings and the marching of loyalist bands through Catholic areas. Peace is still holding but in many pockets of Ireland, north and south, it’s a disputed peace, with tensions roiling the calm. Nowadays, riots and protests are organized at lightning speed on the streets of Belfast and Derry through social media and texting. It’s a different form of terror, relying on crowds of disaffected youths, rather than guns and bombs, but just as destructive of civil life with its impromptu roadblocks and stone-throwing mobs.
JKP: These tensions are evident along the border separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland?
AQ: The challenge facing Northern Ireland is how do you accommodate former terrorists, political activists, freedom-fighters, and sectarian troublemakers into a settled and easy civilian life? They just don’t disappear into suburbia. The border lands in Border Angels represents the fault line that runs through Northern Irish society, the cracks in the peaceful harmonious new society dreamed up in the Good Friday Agreement. The price we all have to pay is this wasteland where normal values are
inverted, where criminals and murderers appear to get away
scot-free. Swift political changes have driven former terrorists into power,
and to have this as a backdrop adds great dramatic tension and resonance to
your writing, especially when you set individuals on a personal struggle
between good and bad.JKP: This new novel has much to do with women being lured from Eastern Europe to Northern Ireland with phony promises, and then enslaved in brothels. How much of that really goes on in your homeland?
AQ: Northern Ireland has more than its share of trafficked women, and the subject has been extensively covered in the news media.
JKP: People-trafficking isn’t exactly a new topic in crime fiction. What do you think Border Angels brings to readers’ understanding of the subject that previous books, such as Stuart Neville’s Stolen Souls, didn’t? What was your goal with this plot?
AQ: Border Angels predates Stolen Souls in the sense that it was finished and submitted to publishers in 2010, a year before Stuart’s book was published. His decision to write about trafficked women was probably the same as mine--a desire to avoid writing about the Troubles by taking on a more international theme, one to which readers in other parts of the world could relate.
My goal was to demonstrate a society in flux, with not only the settling in of the peace process, but also a society adjusting to the arrival of large numbers of migrant workers and new forms of crime such as people-trafficking. As the borders in Europe dissolve, Northern Ireland has seen one brand of social unrest exchanged for another. Families from Eastern Europe have arrived to experience a new wave of discrimination and alienation.
JKP: Inspector Celcius Daly may be the protagonist in Border Angels, but its Lena Novak--a young Croatian spitfire who, after being forced into prostitution, manages to escape her brothel (under highly suspicious circumstances)--who’s the most memorable character in the book. I certainly understand Daly’s attraction to Lena in these pages. He’s a recently divorced man, feeling alone, not all that sociable; and here’s the sexy, surprisingly courageous Lena who seems capable of making him ignore every rule in the book as he endeavors to track her down. For the good of the case, of course. But did you worry at all that Lena might outshine Daly in Border Angels?
AQ: I agree that Lena’s story does take over the book. Her fugitive existence gives the plot its intensity and impetus, leaving Daly stumbling in her wake, as well as her enemies. But if Lena outshines Daly, it’s his own fault, and perhaps the reader’s, too. For parts of the book, she’s little more than a figment of his imagination.
JKP: I must ask whether you’ve given thought to resurrecting Lena in another novel somewhere down the road.
AQ: I’m always writing about the mysterious and unattainable Lena. She appears in all my books in her multiple forms. I am tempted, though, to reprise the specific incarnation that is Lena Novak in another Daly adventure.
JKP: And I won’t give away the ending of this new book, but I will say that elements of it reminded me of the 1942 Humphrey Bogart/Ingrid Bergman film Casablanca. Was that deliberate?
AQ: I’m flattered by the comparison, but ashamedly I have to confess to never having watched Casablanca, apart from a few odd clips of the movie. Perhaps it’s indelibly written into our collective subconscious and I tapped into it that way, or maybe the film itself springs from a deeper set of tropes, a universal narrative that also influenced Border Angels.
JKP: Your stories benefit tremendously from the environmental details you stitch into them. Daly’s cottage always seems damp, for instance. Other houses are broken down. Dark, gurgling bogs proliferate, while encroaching mists and great phalanxes of horseflies seem to plague the people of Northern Ireland. How deliberately do you shape the reader’s response to your yarns with these evocative, often claustrophobic details?
AQ: I take a guilty pleasure in drawing the reader’s attention to the strangeness of the border landscape, making them shudder at a gruesome-looking blackthorn tree, a rotting cottage, or a treacherous bog. One line of description can condense a host of different feelings. The Irish landscape I know and love has its own geography of moods, an interweave of darkness and light, which I find constantly mesmerizing. I’m not sure if my descriptions bear any resemblance to what is actually out there, or if anyone else notices what I see. Perhaps they are more a reflection of a region of my mind. The settings always come first for me, shaping the characters and plots. At heart, I’m a thwarted poet and my muse is Tyrone, its gurgling bogs, its frozen thickets of thorn trees, its mists swirling in from Lough Neagh.
Lough Neagh is the largest lake in Northern Ireland, and also the biggest in the whole United Kingdom.JKP: I’m impressed that the people in your tales are not cast in black-and-white. They all seem to have good and bad aspects, and they may lean either way at any given juncture. How conscious are you of making your characters full and credible in this respect?
AQ: It’s an author’s imperative to have interesting characters. After all, I have to spend a lot of time confined with their company. Writing is less a strain, less like a one-man-business when you create lively characters that are capable of doing something unexpected in a crisis.
JKP: Last year, in response to a set of questions posed to you by Irish author-blogger Declan Burke, you said that you were trying to find a publisher for a historical thriller called Blood-Dimmed Tide. This is the way you described its story line: “[Irish poet] W.B. Yeats and his assistant ghost-catcher are summonsed to Sligo by the restless spirit of a girl whose body is mysteriously washed ashore in a coffin from the previous century. They are led on a gripping journey through the ruins of Sligo’s abandoned estates and into its darkest, most haunted corners as the country descends into a bloody war of independence.” Are you still working to sell that novel?
AQ: Yes, it’s still up for grabs, although I’d like to give it a final polish before resubmitting it.
JKP: There seems to have been a great upsurge of crime and mystery fiction from Ireland and Northern Ireland over the last few years. Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, Brian McGilloway, Arlene Hunt, Stuart Neville, John Connolly, Jane Casey--all of those authors and more have come to worldwide attention. As have you. What is it about these two countries that have suddenly made them wellsprings of fine criminal yarns?
AQ: I think Irish writers and readers are becoming more comfortable with representations of the violence and moral ambiguities of our past. Writing and reading crime fiction is a form of escape, but it also gives us a deeper insight into the Troubles. Our politicians might lie and dissemble, while historical documents can be subjective and flawed, but at least fiction never pretends to be anything else.
JKP: What books in this genre have you most enjoyed lately?
AQ: Sadly, reading crime fiction is no longer the escape it used to be. In fact, it feels more like work. Consequently, my reading habits have changed, and I now read very little of that genre. To unwind I’m currently reading the Psalms in German. They’re a great antidote to all the darkness conjured up in my crime writing. However, I am looking forward to reading Ken Bruen’s White Trilogy, which I recently downloaded on my Kindle.
JKP: Finally, whenever I tell people I’m reading a new Anthony Quinn novel, they look at me in surprise and say, “Gee, I didn’t even know the actor was still alive.” Maybe this is something that only happens in the United States, though. Are you often confused with Anthony Quinn, the Mexican-American star of such motion pictures as Lawrence of Arabia, Zorba the Greek, and The Guns of Navarone? And have you, as a consequence, watched his movies?
AQ: My parents always told me that I was named after the saint and not the actor. Living in the shadow of either was always going to be difficult. I always enjoy watching Anthony Quinn’s films. My father is a big fan of The Guns of Navarone, my favorite is Zorba the Greek.
(Author photos © 2013 by John Paul Quinn)
Monday, October 14, 2013
Bullet Points: Columbus Day Edition
• Congratulations to Raven’s Head Press, a new independent publisher, on its launch and the debut of its first book, Gilbert Collins’ The Starkenden Quest, which was originally released back in 1925. “Plans are to reissue [works of] adventure, crime, and supernatural fiction that exemplify the kind of gripping and exciting stories
published in the long-gone pulp magazines and the vintage paperback imprints
like Dell Mapbacks and Gold Medal,” part-time bookseller J.F. Norris explains in his fine blog. He adds: “We are currently looking at books by Dorothy B. Hughes, Ramona Stewart, Lionel White, Hugh Wheeler (aka Patrick Quentin and Q Patrick), Samuel Taylor, and Walter Van Tillburg Clark. We are also in
negotiations to obtain exclusive American reprint rights for the reissue of the
books of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.” Norris, who contributed the
introduction to this new edition of Starkeden, is offering two free copies of the novel through a contest, but you’ll have to act fast to have a shot at winning one: entries will be accepted only through Wednesday of this week. Click here to participate.
• Meanwhile, critic and editor Mike Ripley tells me that Ostara Publishing is readying new editions of two novels featuring Margery Allingham’s aristocratic sleuth, Albert Campion. Both were penned by her husband, journalist-designer Philip Youngman Carter, after Allingham’s demise in 1966. Those books, as you’ll see from this post in the blog Tipping My Fedora, are Mr. Campion’s Farthing (1969) and Mr. Campion’s Falcon (1970). Learn more about Carter here.
• Do we really need a new version of Remington Steele, the 1982-1978 NBC-TV comedy-drama that launched Pierce Brosnan’s cinematic career? According to Deadline Hollywood, the program “is getting a next-generation reboot, this time as a half-hour comedy.” The reboot, we’re told, “follows Olivia Holt, the daughter of Remington Steele and Laura Holt, as she reopens the once-world-famous Remington Steele Detective Agency--only to fall into the same hilarious, action-packed, romantic entanglements of her parents.” Now, I was very fond of the original Remington Steele, primarily because I enjoyed watching lovely Stephanie Zimbalist--who played Los Angeles private eye Laura Holt--try to manage the unmanageable, fiction-come-to-life Steele (Brosnan), while also solving crimes every week. (I enjoyed, too, the show’s opening sequence, with music by Henry Mancini.) But hasn’t history already proved the sheer folly of trying to restart classic boob-tube shows? Aside from Battlestar Gallactica and Hawaii Five-O, such attempts have been disastrous. Need I mention Charlie’s Angels, Knight Rider, Ironside, or the worst idea of all, a non-James Garner resurrection of The Rockford Files? Perhaps it would be kindest to dump any “new” Remington Steele series--especially one with a stupid laugh track and shallow crime plots (for what else can you expect from a half-hour show?)--right off the bat. Before a cast is even hired or dollar one spent.
• Here’s a death I failed to mention: Henry F. (“Hank”) Simms, an Oklahoma native who went on to become a familiar announcer on many of producer Quinn Martin’s TV crime dramas (including The FBI, The Streets of San Francisco, and Barnaby Jones), died on August 7 of this year in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Bill Koenig, managing editor of The HMSS Weblog, alerted me to Simms’ passing and includes in this post more of the deceased’s biographical details, along with some clips of the voice work he did over the years. Simms was 90 years old. “I’m surprised [his death] hasn’t gotten more attention, but that’s how things go,” Koenig concludes. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has posted its own belated Simms obituary here.
• I was very sorry to hear that New York-born novelist Oscar Hijuelos--who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1989 novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love--died on Sunday at the youthful age of 62. In addition to Mambo Kings, I was also delighted with his 2002 work, A Simple Habana Melody, and have Beautiful Maria of My Soul (2010) on a shelf, still waiting to be enjoyed. More on Hijuelos here.
• When Dorchester Publishing severed ties with Charles Ardai’s Hard Case Crime line of paperback novels back in 2010, it also seemed to end Ardai’s parallel series of adventure tales featuring Gabriel Hunt, six of which had by then seen print. Hard Case went on to strike a deal with Titan Books that has greatly extended the line. But only now does word come--from James Reasoner, who wrote one of the Hunt installments (Hunt at the Well of Eternity)--that new editions of the Hunt titles “are on the way.” Unfortunately, those six reissued works won’t carry their original, pulpy covers, illustrated by Glen Orbik (and still to be appreciated in this post). However, Reasoner insists “the new covers are pretty snazzy, too.”
UPDATE: I e-mailed Charles Ardai earlier today to ask whether there might be more Gabriel Hunt stories in the future. His response:
• My own humble remarks about William Boyd’s Solo are included in this sampling of critical comments on that new James Bond novel.
• I haven’t yet got around to reading Kathleen Kent’s new Western thriller, The Outcasts. But author-blogger Erica Mailman has posted this interview with Kent that, although too damn short, nonetheless heightens my curiosity about the novel.
• Is the Republican Party flirting with suicide?
• The Crimespree Magazine blog offers a preview of Mob City, the “three-week television event,” due to begin on TNT on Wednesday, December 4. That drama is based on John Buntin’s 2009 non-fiction work, L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City. After last year’s Gangster Squad, some viewers might be leery of another tale rooted in Los Angeles’ criminal past, but the clip from Mob City certainly makes this new production look promising.
• And A Shroud of Thoughts writer Terence Towles Canote has put together an excellent backgrounder on Four Star Productions, which was once responsible for producing such classic small-screen series as Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Burke’s Law, The Rogues, Harry Guardino’s Monty Nash, The Rifleman, and The Big Valley.
• Meanwhile, critic and editor Mike Ripley tells me that Ostara Publishing is readying new editions of two novels featuring Margery Allingham’s aristocratic sleuth, Albert Campion. Both were penned by her husband, journalist-designer Philip Youngman Carter, after Allingham’s demise in 1966. Those books, as you’ll see from this post in the blog Tipping My Fedora, are Mr. Campion’s Farthing (1969) and Mr. Campion’s Falcon (1970). Learn more about Carter here.
• Do we really need a new version of Remington Steele, the 1982-1978 NBC-TV comedy-drama that launched Pierce Brosnan’s cinematic career? According to Deadline Hollywood, the program “is getting a next-generation reboot, this time as a half-hour comedy.” The reboot, we’re told, “follows Olivia Holt, the daughter of Remington Steele and Laura Holt, as she reopens the once-world-famous Remington Steele Detective Agency--only to fall into the same hilarious, action-packed, romantic entanglements of her parents.” Now, I was very fond of the original Remington Steele, primarily because I enjoyed watching lovely Stephanie Zimbalist--who played Los Angeles private eye Laura Holt--try to manage the unmanageable, fiction-come-to-life Steele (Brosnan), while also solving crimes every week. (I enjoyed, too, the show’s opening sequence, with music by Henry Mancini.) But hasn’t history already proved the sheer folly of trying to restart classic boob-tube shows? Aside from Battlestar Gallactica and Hawaii Five-O, such attempts have been disastrous. Need I mention Charlie’s Angels, Knight Rider, Ironside, or the worst idea of all, a non-James Garner resurrection of The Rockford Files? Perhaps it would be kindest to dump any “new” Remington Steele series--especially one with a stupid laugh track and shallow crime plots (for what else can you expect from a half-hour show?)--right off the bat. Before a cast is even hired or dollar one spent.
• Here’s a death I failed to mention: Henry F. (“Hank”) Simms, an Oklahoma native who went on to become a familiar announcer on many of producer Quinn Martin’s TV crime dramas (including The FBI, The Streets of San Francisco, and Barnaby Jones), died on August 7 of this year in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Bill Koenig, managing editor of The HMSS Weblog, alerted me to Simms’ passing and includes in this post more of the deceased’s biographical details, along with some clips of the voice work he did over the years. Simms was 90 years old. “I’m surprised [his death] hasn’t gotten more attention, but that’s how things go,” Koenig concludes. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has posted its own belated Simms obituary here.
• I was very sorry to hear that New York-born novelist Oscar Hijuelos--who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1989 novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love--died on Sunday at the youthful age of 62. In addition to Mambo Kings, I was also delighted with his 2002 work, A Simple Habana Melody, and have Beautiful Maria of My Soul (2010) on a shelf, still waiting to be enjoyed. More on Hijuelos here.
• When Dorchester Publishing severed ties with Charles Ardai’s Hard Case Crime line of paperback novels back in 2010, it also seemed to end Ardai’s parallel series of adventure tales featuring Gabriel Hunt, six of which had by then seen print. Hard Case went on to strike a deal with Titan Books that has greatly extended the line. But only now does word come--from James Reasoner, who wrote one of the Hunt installments (Hunt at the Well of Eternity)--that new editions of the Hunt titles “are on the way.” Unfortunately, those six reissued works won’t carry their original, pulpy covers, illustrated by Glen Orbik (and still to be appreciated in this post). However, Reasoner insists “the new covers are pretty snazzy, too.”
UPDATE: I e-mailed Charles Ardai earlier today to ask whether there might be more Gabriel Hunt stories in the future. His response:
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of more Hunt books. Certainly if the original six prove popular with readers in their reissued form we’ll have an incentive to do more. I have no shortage of plot ideas, if it comes to that. (And if I ever ran out, I know James and my other fellow Hunt-ers have even more fertile imaginations than I do.)• James Ellroy is returning to the 1940s with four crime novels, beginning with Perfidia, due out from Knopf in the fall of 2014.
It’s entirely a question of whether readers want more. It would be fun if they did.
• My own humble remarks about William Boyd’s Solo are included in this sampling of critical comments on that new James Bond novel.
• I haven’t yet got around to reading Kathleen Kent’s new Western thriller, The Outcasts. But author-blogger Erica Mailman has posted this interview with Kent that, although too damn short, nonetheless heightens my curiosity about the novel.
• Is the Republican Party flirting with suicide?
• The Crimespree Magazine blog offers a preview of Mob City, the “three-week television event,” due to begin on TNT on Wednesday, December 4. That drama is based on John Buntin’s 2009 non-fiction work, L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City. After last year’s Gangster Squad, some viewers might be leery of another tale rooted in Los Angeles’ criminal past, but the clip from Mob City certainly makes this new production look promising.
• And A Shroud of Thoughts writer Terence Towles Canote has put together an excellent backgrounder on Four Star Productions, which was once responsible for producing such classic small-screen series as Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Burke’s Law, The Rogues, Harry Guardino’s Monty Nash, The Rifleman, and The Big Valley.
Friday, October 11, 2013
The Book You Have to Read: “The Name of the Game Is Death,” by Dan J. Marlowe
(Editor’s note: This is the 130th entry in our ongoing series about great but forgotten books. Today’s tribute comes from Jed Power, a Hampton Beach, New Hampshire-based author and an “active” member of the Mystery Writers of America. He’s already produced two crime novels featuring Dan Marlowe, a Hampton Beach bartender named in honor of an old family friend, fictionist Dan J. Marlowe. The second installment in Power’s Marlowe series is Hampton Beach Homicide, 
now available in both trade paper and e-book versions from Dark Jetty Publishing. A third entry, Blood on Hampton Beach, is coming soon.)
“What’s My Game?”
The innings number nine,
In this favorite game of mine,
Three bases and home plate,
A pitcher who’s top-rate
That was the beginning of a very long poem Dan J. Marlowe helped me with for an elementary-school assignment. I guess the more correct description would be that I was helping him. I’m sure the poem received an A grade. Those lines have stuck in my head all these years later; the rest of them I’ve long forgotten. I’d give anything to locate the whole original work, but it seems to have ended up in the same unknown graveyard as my large baseball card collection from that time.
Dan was my father’s close friend; they’d grown up together and been childhood schoolmates. When I was a boy, he stayed with us at our home in Woburn, Massachusetts. I knew he was a writer and I saw him pounding away on his typewriter daily. I had no way of knowing, though, that at the time he was helping me with “What’s My Game?” he was also working on what he hoped would be his breakout novel, The Name of the Game Is Death (1962).
I remember that when I inquired about what kind of books Dan wrote, I was always answered--by both Dan and my father--with the generic term mysteries. The subject was then quickly dropped. This was probably in deference to my mother who, although she liked Dan, was an Irish-Catholic schoolteacher. She was a big reader and encouraged me in that same direction during my earliest years. I’m sure now, though, that she considered Dan’s work to be overly violent and racy. And for the time, maybe it was. I was too young then to find any of his work on my own; that would come in the future--and what a pleasant surprise it would be.
I found out in later years, that Dan had come to Woburn to escape the distractions he apparently encountered while living in New York City, of which there may have been many. He must have made a good decision, because the book he eventually produced there is one of the finest hard-boiled crime novels ever written.
The Name of the Game Is Death is the story of a bloody bank robbery in Phoenix, Arizona, and its aftermath. The tale is told in the first-person by a professional bank robber and killer with more than one name. I’ll use the handle “Chet Arnold” here. During the robbery, the youngest of the three robbers is killed. Arnold himself is badly wounded. The last of the trio is Bunny, a huge mute.
They’ve made a good haul, though--$178,000. Arnold realizes that he has to hole-up locally to recuperate from his bullet wound. He trusts Bunny and sends him on to Florida, as they’d planned, with the money. Bunny is assigned the task of mailing Arnold dough every week. But after the first few deliveries, the payments suddenly stop.
Arnold suspects a rip-off, but not by Bunny. He trusts the mute implicitly. As soon as he is well enough, he sets off for Florida on a cross-country ride that you just know can’t end well for anyone at the other end, anyone who’s taken his money.
Through the fate of victims Arnold encounters during his long trip, and flashbacks showing the particulars of his violent youth, the reader learns just how dangerous this man is. When Arnold arrives in Florida, he uses his other skill as a tree surgeon (of all things) as a front to conceal his real reason for showing up there.
Arnold isn’t completely devoid of decent qualities. He has a love of animals. Also, he has a strong sense of loyalty to those very few people he gets close to. In addition to his criminal accomplice, Bunny, he forms positive relationships in Florida with a local deputy sheriff/real-estate agent, Jed (yes, he named that character after me), and Hazel, a kindhearted bar owner. Arnold is a good man to have as a friend; otherwise, not so good.
Chet Arnold is a cold-blooded killer, and in Florida many folks find this out in the worst possible ways, as he searches for his dough and his friend Bunny. The bodies stack up. Still, the multidimensional Arnold remains a sympathetic character, because many of his victims seem deserving of violence. There are no innocent ones here.
The problematic sexual side of Arnold’s character is also explored in this novel, and it’s fascinating. However, that side of Arnold’s character may have been watered down in revised editions. So, if possible, read the original or an exact reprint of it.
What makes The Name of the Game Is Death stand out so far above other crime novels of its day is the skill Dan Marlowe brought to his typewriter. His plot, characterizations, and story depth are fantastic. There isn’t a slow page in the whole damn book. It’s a great read. And for any wannabe hard-boiled crime writer--this is the work you want to tear apart and dissect. Figure out how the hell the man did it.
To say anything more about Marlowe’s novel (and there are lots of good things I could say) might spoil the reader’s future enjoyment of the work. Let’s just end here with the dedication Stephen King included in his 2005 crime novel, The Colorado Kid:
READ MORE: “Playing With Fire: Dan J. Marlowe, Al Nussbaum, and Earl Drake,” by Josef Hoffmann (Mystery*File); “Mystery Man: Dan J. Marlowe,” by Charles Kelly (Allan Guthrie’s Noir Originals); “Whodrewit? Doorway to Death, by Dan Marlowe,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Killer Covers).
now available in both trade paper and e-book versions from Dark Jetty Publishing. A third entry, Blood on Hampton Beach, is coming soon.)“What’s My Game?”
The innings number nine,
In this favorite game of mine,
Three bases and home plate,
A pitcher who’s top-rate
That was the beginning of a very long poem Dan J. Marlowe helped me with for an elementary-school assignment. I guess the more correct description would be that I was helping him. I’m sure the poem received an A grade. Those lines have stuck in my head all these years later; the rest of them I’ve long forgotten. I’d give anything to locate the whole original work, but it seems to have ended up in the same unknown graveyard as my large baseball card collection from that time.
Dan was my father’s close friend; they’d grown up together and been childhood schoolmates. When I was a boy, he stayed with us at our home in Woburn, Massachusetts. I knew he was a writer and I saw him pounding away on his typewriter daily. I had no way of knowing, though, that at the time he was helping me with “What’s My Game?” he was also working on what he hoped would be his breakout novel, The Name of the Game Is Death (1962).
I remember that when I inquired about what kind of books Dan wrote, I was always answered--by both Dan and my father--with the generic term mysteries. The subject was then quickly dropped. This was probably in deference to my mother who, although she liked Dan, was an Irish-Catholic schoolteacher. She was a big reader and encouraged me in that same direction during my earliest years. I’m sure now, though, that she considered Dan’s work to be overly violent and racy. And for the time, maybe it was. I was too young then to find any of his work on my own; that would come in the future--and what a pleasant surprise it would be.
I found out in later years, that Dan had come to Woburn to escape the distractions he apparently encountered while living in New York City, of which there may have been many. He must have made a good decision, because the book he eventually produced there is one of the finest hard-boiled crime novels ever written.
The Name of the Game Is Death is the story of a bloody bank robbery in Phoenix, Arizona, and its aftermath. The tale is told in the first-person by a professional bank robber and killer with more than one name. I’ll use the handle “Chet Arnold” here. During the robbery, the youngest of the three robbers is killed. Arnold himself is badly wounded. The last of the trio is Bunny, a huge mute.
They’ve made a good haul, though--$178,000. Arnold realizes that he has to hole-up locally to recuperate from his bullet wound. He trusts Bunny and sends him on to Florida, as they’d planned, with the money. Bunny is assigned the task of mailing Arnold dough every week. But after the first few deliveries, the payments suddenly stop.
Arnold suspects a rip-off, but not by Bunny. He trusts the mute implicitly. As soon as he is well enough, he sets off for Florida on a cross-country ride that you just know can’t end well for anyone at the other end, anyone who’s taken his money.
Through the fate of victims Arnold encounters during his long trip, and flashbacks showing the particulars of his violent youth, the reader learns just how dangerous this man is. When Arnold arrives in Florida, he uses his other skill as a tree surgeon (of all things) as a front to conceal his real reason for showing up there.
Arnold isn’t completely devoid of decent qualities. He has a love of animals. Also, he has a strong sense of loyalty to those very few people he gets close to. In addition to his criminal accomplice, Bunny, he forms positive relationships in Florida with a local deputy sheriff/real-estate agent, Jed (yes, he named that character after me), and Hazel, a kindhearted bar owner. Arnold is a good man to have as a friend; otherwise, not so good.
Chet Arnold is a cold-blooded killer, and in Florida many folks find this out in the worst possible ways, as he searches for his dough and his friend Bunny. The bodies stack up. Still, the multidimensional Arnold remains a sympathetic character, because many of his victims seem deserving of violence. There are no innocent ones here.
The problematic sexual side of Arnold’s character is also explored in this novel, and it’s fascinating. However, that side of Arnold’s character may have been watered down in revised editions. So, if possible, read the original or an exact reprint of it.
What makes The Name of the Game Is Death stand out so far above other crime novels of its day is the skill Dan Marlowe brought to his typewriter. His plot, characterizations, and story depth are fantastic. There isn’t a slow page in the whole damn book. It’s a great read. And for any wannabe hard-boiled crime writer--this is the work you want to tear apart and dissect. Figure out how the hell the man did it.
To say anything more about Marlowe’s novel (and there are lots of good things I could say) might spoil the reader’s future enjoyment of the work. Let’s just end here with the dedication Stephen King included in his 2005 crime novel, The Colorado Kid:
With admiration, for Dan J. Marlowe, author of The Name of the Game Is Death: Hardest of the Hardboiled.To learn much more about Marlowe, I recommend you pick up the 2012 biography Gunshots in Another Room: The Forgotten Life of Dan J. Marlowe, by journalist Charles Kelly.
READ MORE: “Playing With Fire: Dan J. Marlowe, Al Nussbaum, and Earl Drake,” by Josef Hoffmann (Mystery*File); “Mystery Man: Dan J. Marlowe,” by Charles Kelly (Allan Guthrie’s Noir Originals); “Whodrewit? Doorway to Death, by Dan Marlowe,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Killer Covers).
Up for Some Adventure?
If you haven’t already voted in The Rap Sheet’s poll to determine which were the best of Alistair MacLean’s more than two dozen classic adventure thrillers, you can still participate by clicking here. The survey will remain active until November 1. At this point, the top five vote-getters are The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra, Breakheart Pass, and Puppet on a Chain.
Wednesday, October 09, 2013
Pierce’s Picks: “Solo”
A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.
Solo, by William Boyd (Harper):
Until recently, I hadn’t read a James Bond novel in a very long while. I think the last one was Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger (1959), which I re-read probably a decade ago. Prior to that, I’d picked up two or three of John Gardner’s Bond pastiches from the 1980s and ’90s (though not The Man from Barbarossa, which the author apparently thought was his best). However, I never quite got around to purchasing Raymond Benson’s 007 adventures, Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care
(which was set in 1967), or Jeffery Deaver’s hotly promoted Carte Blanche. There were just so many other promising books demanding my attention. Having enjoyed most of Fleming’s spy thrillers in my youth, I figured I had pretty much “done” Bond.
But then Ian Fleming Publications--which holds the Bond books copyright--commissioned UK novelist William Boyd to produce a new “official” 007 work. I was very fond of Boyd’s 2006 historical thriller, Restless, and while his other books have been hit-and-miss with me (I was especially disappointed in 2009’s Ordinary Thunderstorms), he can usually be counted on for deftly configured characters and some artistry in his use of the English language. I couldn’t very well ignore the possibilities of what he might be able to do with Fleming’s resourceful, randy master spy.
Solo is certainly not a disappointment. It doesn’t seek to imitate Fleming’s voice or to play it too safe with his protagonist. Neither, though, does it ignore the tropes and traditions of the famous espionage series. We find 007 in these pages reveling in the pleasures to be had from expertly engineered automobiles, finely tailored clothes, bracing cocktails, and lissome ladies. It’s not giving anything away to say that he doesn’t die at the end ... and he lives every page in between to the fullest. That he must also endure deceptions and hostilities is only to be expected. This is, after all, a Bond yarn.
The year is 1969. The half-Scottish, half-Swiss Commander Bond is residing in a spacious Chelsea flat that’s undergoing some remodeling, and ruminating over both his past and present. After celebrating his 45th birthday--alone, save for the posh libations in close attendance--and then becoming enamored of a woman named Bryce Fitzjohn, who’s not much younger than he, 007 is dispatched to the fictional west African nation of Zanzarim, where a civil war has resulted in considerable bloodshed, much to the regret of Her Majesty’s Government. It’s Bond’s job, posing as a journalist with a familiar French news agency, to locate the “tactical genius” who’s leading this rebellion and, presumably, take him out--although his assignment is unusually short of specifics.
Helping to acquaint him with conditions in Zanzarim and the freedom-seeking state of Dahum, is a comely young black woman named Blessing Ogilvy-Grant, the British Secret Service’s local head of station. She accompanies him, as his translator, into Dahum, where they find a remorseless mercenary named Kobus Breed, whose quirk of weeping copiously from one eye--the result of a terrible facial injury--does nothing to curb his penchant for violence. (He’s most fond, it seems, of stringing his adversaries up from fish hooks.) Bond manages to win Breed over a bit by employing his military experience from World War II at a crucial moment. But theirs is a temporary alliance; 007 soon finds a way to undermine the Dahumian force’s faith in its invulnerability, and in the process not only makes an enemy of Breed, but finds himself at the ugly end of an automatic pistol.
To give much more of the plot away would be a disservice to Boyd’s literary endeavors. I will add, though, that James Bond soon winds up in a Scottish hospital, where he decides to exact revenge on Breed & Co. In order to do so, 007 must “go solo,” despite all the Secret Service regulations prohibiting such activities. He jets off for Washington, D.C. (making this the first novel since Benson’s The Facts of Death to send Bond to the States), where he searches for answers to questions that were left unresolved at the end of his Dahum interlude--notably, why it is that an African charity seems to have grown exponentially in the wake of the Zanzarim civil war.
Although there’s ample gun play in these pages (and knife play, as well), readers expecting to find the sorts of whiz-bang gadgetry and cinematic fireworks in Solo that have become familiar from the Bond films might be disappointed. As in Fleming’s original books, this new story is lower on technology than human treachery, and author Boyd--while he succumbs in some ways to the demands of a formulaic thriller--demonstrates a preference for realism that inhibits his ability to cut loose with fantastical but too-convenient plot twists. This is spy fiction for adults who don’t demand a video-game pace in their storytelling. Solo is not perfect: there’s a secondary character here, for instance, who suffers with a lisp, but unaccountably fails to maintain that impediment throughout his dialogue; and Bond’s inability to recognize, for so long, that he’s endangering people he cares about merely by associating with them can be downright maddening. (Really, James, must you be that obtuse?)
Nonetheless, Solo is a consuming work, and William Boyd has made Bond his own. I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if Ian Fleming Publications begged him for a sequel.
are set to commence, an American ex-cop
and member of the Allied occupation forces, Captain Nathan Morgan, is called in
to help solve a string of killings in the city. When he, in turn, requests the
release from prison of a disgraced former German policeman--renowned for his
ability to track murderers--this tale really gets interesting. ... Also new is
George Pelecanos’ The Double (Little, Brown), a follow-up to
2011’s The Cut. Here we find combat veteran and stolen-property specialist Spero Lucas looking to recover pricey artwork--a task that will put him on a collision course with a sociopath whose goal is to humiliate his victims, and whose wont to continue his predations involves Lucas in the very sort of violence he claims to abhor. ... In Spider Woman’s Daughter (Harper), Anne Hillerman returns to the fictional world of Navajo tribal cops created by her late father, Tony Hillerman. After witnessing a shooting, Bernadette Manualito, Jim Chee’s wife and fellow police officer, insists on taking part in the investigation--only to turn up links to an older case involving Joe Leaphorn. ... And UK publisher Quercus has recently released Prayer, Philip Kerr’s first standalone novel in a decade (he’s best known for his Bernie Gunther series, including 2013’s A Man Without Breath). This thriller focuses on FBI Special Agent Gil Martins, whose purgatory in hurricane-ravaged Galveston, Texas, is disrupted by a probe of right-wing violence against prominent atheists--crimes that compel Martins to confront his own loss of religious faith.
READ MORE: “Book Bond Review: Solo Is the Thinking Man’s 007,” by John Cox (The Book Bond).
Solo, by William Boyd (Harper):
Until recently, I hadn’t read a James Bond novel in a very long while. I think the last one was Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger (1959), which I re-read probably a decade ago. Prior to that, I’d picked up two or three of John Gardner’s Bond pastiches from the 1980s and ’90s (though not The Man from Barbarossa, which the author apparently thought was his best). However, I never quite got around to purchasing Raymond Benson’s 007 adventures, Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care
(which was set in 1967), or Jeffery Deaver’s hotly promoted Carte Blanche. There were just so many other promising books demanding my attention. Having enjoyed most of Fleming’s spy thrillers in my youth, I figured I had pretty much “done” Bond.But then Ian Fleming Publications--which holds the Bond books copyright--commissioned UK novelist William Boyd to produce a new “official” 007 work. I was very fond of Boyd’s 2006 historical thriller, Restless, and while his other books have been hit-and-miss with me (I was especially disappointed in 2009’s Ordinary Thunderstorms), he can usually be counted on for deftly configured characters and some artistry in his use of the English language. I couldn’t very well ignore the possibilities of what he might be able to do with Fleming’s resourceful, randy master spy.
Solo is certainly not a disappointment. It doesn’t seek to imitate Fleming’s voice or to play it too safe with his protagonist. Neither, though, does it ignore the tropes and traditions of the famous espionage series. We find 007 in these pages reveling in the pleasures to be had from expertly engineered automobiles, finely tailored clothes, bracing cocktails, and lissome ladies. It’s not giving anything away to say that he doesn’t die at the end ... and he lives every page in between to the fullest. That he must also endure deceptions and hostilities is only to be expected. This is, after all, a Bond yarn.
The year is 1969. The half-Scottish, half-Swiss Commander Bond is residing in a spacious Chelsea flat that’s undergoing some remodeling, and ruminating over both his past and present. After celebrating his 45th birthday--alone, save for the posh libations in close attendance--and then becoming enamored of a woman named Bryce Fitzjohn, who’s not much younger than he, 007 is dispatched to the fictional west African nation of Zanzarim, where a civil war has resulted in considerable bloodshed, much to the regret of Her Majesty’s Government. It’s Bond’s job, posing as a journalist with a familiar French news agency, to locate the “tactical genius” who’s leading this rebellion and, presumably, take him out--although his assignment is unusually short of specifics.
Helping to acquaint him with conditions in Zanzarim and the freedom-seeking state of Dahum, is a comely young black woman named Blessing Ogilvy-Grant, the British Secret Service’s local head of station. She accompanies him, as his translator, into Dahum, where they find a remorseless mercenary named Kobus Breed, whose quirk of weeping copiously from one eye--the result of a terrible facial injury--does nothing to curb his penchant for violence. (He’s most fond, it seems, of stringing his adversaries up from fish hooks.) Bond manages to win Breed over a bit by employing his military experience from World War II at a crucial moment. But theirs is a temporary alliance; 007 soon finds a way to undermine the Dahumian force’s faith in its invulnerability, and in the process not only makes an enemy of Breed, but finds himself at the ugly end of an automatic pistol.
To give much more of the plot away would be a disservice to Boyd’s literary endeavors. I will add, though, that James Bond soon winds up in a Scottish hospital, where he decides to exact revenge on Breed & Co. In order to do so, 007 must “go solo,” despite all the Secret Service regulations prohibiting such activities. He jets off for Washington, D.C. (making this the first novel since Benson’s The Facts of Death to send Bond to the States), where he searches for answers to questions that were left unresolved at the end of his Dahum interlude--notably, why it is that an African charity seems to have grown exponentially in the wake of the Zanzarim civil war.
Although there’s ample gun play in these pages (and knife play, as well), readers expecting to find the sorts of whiz-bang gadgetry and cinematic fireworks in Solo that have become familiar from the Bond films might be disappointed. As in Fleming’s original books, this new story is lower on technology than human treachery, and author Boyd--while he succumbs in some ways to the demands of a formulaic thriller--demonstrates a preference for realism that inhibits his ability to cut loose with fantastical but too-convenient plot twists. This is spy fiction for adults who don’t demand a video-game pace in their storytelling. Solo is not perfect: there’s a secondary character here, for instance, who suffers with a lisp, but unaccountably fails to maintain that impediment throughout his dialogue; and Bond’s inability to recognize, for so long, that he’s endangering people he cares about merely by associating with them can be downright maddening. (Really, James, must you be that obtuse?)
Nonetheless, Solo is a consuming work, and William Boyd has made Bond his own. I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if Ian Fleming Publications begged him for a sequel.
* * *
With the holidays fast approaching, publishers are rolling out an abundance of crime novels. In addition to Solo, keep an eye peeled for Ruin Value (Mysterious Press/Open Road), by J.
Sydney Jones, a World War II-era mystery set in Nuremberg, Germany. As the famous military trials of Nazi war criminals are set to commence, an American ex-cop
and member of the Allied occupation forces, Captain Nathan Morgan, is called in
to help solve a string of killings in the city. When he, in turn, requests the
release from prison of a disgraced former German policeman--renowned for his
ability to track murderers--this tale really gets interesting. ... Also new is
George Pelecanos’ The Double (Little, Brown), a follow-up to
2011’s The Cut. Here we find combat veteran and stolen-property specialist Spero Lucas looking to recover pricey artwork--a task that will put him on a collision course with a sociopath whose goal is to humiliate his victims, and whose wont to continue his predations involves Lucas in the very sort of violence he claims to abhor. ... In Spider Woman’s Daughter (Harper), Anne Hillerman returns to the fictional world of Navajo tribal cops created by her late father, Tony Hillerman. After witnessing a shooting, Bernadette Manualito, Jim Chee’s wife and fellow police officer, insists on taking part in the investigation--only to turn up links to an older case involving Joe Leaphorn. ... And UK publisher Quercus has recently released Prayer, Philip Kerr’s first standalone novel in a decade (he’s best known for his Bernie Gunther series, including 2013’s A Man Without Breath). This thriller focuses on FBI Special Agent Gil Martins, whose purgatory in hurricane-ravaged Galveston, Texas, is disrupted by a probe of right-wing violence against prominent atheists--crimes that compel Martins to confront his own loss of religious faith.READ MORE: “Book Bond Review: Solo Is the Thinking Man’s 007,” by John Cox (The Book Bond).
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