Though I already own most of the works in vintage paperback formats, and remain a very reluctant reader of e-books, I’m still excited to receive this news: The Mysterious Press has released nine of Shamus Award winner William Campbell Gault’s crime novels in electronic versions. Perhaps people who’ve never before sampled Gault’s excellent stories will take a shot at one of these.
The majority of these e-books star Los Angeles peeper Brock Callahan, a “compassionate” gumshoe in the style of Thomas B. Dewey’s Mac and Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer. However, Shakedown--which Gault published in 1953 under the pseudonym Roney Scott--introduced another of his private-eye protagonists, Joe Puma.
Look for the whole set of e-tales here.
Showing posts with label William Campbell Gault. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Campbell Gault. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
“A Writer of the Old School”
If you were wondering over this last lazy weekend what had become of me, I hope your questions were answered by last evening’s posting, in my Killer Covers blog, of my rather lengthy (and thus hard to put together) profile of once-renowned author William Campbell Gault.
After being asked to write about Gault and half a dozen other wordsmiths for an upcoming encyclopedic work, 100 American Crime Writers, I started gathering and reading Gault’s novels, most of which feature one of two Southern California private eyes: Joe Puma or Brock Callahan. In addition, I began researching this author’s background, which is interesting in its own right. (He apparently managed a hotel in Wisconsin before embarking on a literary career.) When I found that my knowledge of Gault could never be contained within the limited space of the piece I had been commissioned to write, I decided to try my hand at a longer article for Killer Covers, and then use that as the starting point for my shorter encyclopedia entry.
One thing I haven’t been able to find out about the author, and which I hope somebody reading this post can supply, is the correct date of Gault’s death. It’s supposed to have been sometime in 1995, probably after March of that year, but I don’t find the date anywhere. If you know the answer to this question, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me here.
Meanwhile, why don’t you take a detour over to Killer Covers to learn more about an author who, though now largely forgotten, was once touted by Bill Pronzini as “a living legend.”
After being asked to write about Gault and half a dozen other wordsmiths for an upcoming encyclopedic work, 100 American Crime Writers, I started gathering and reading Gault’s novels, most of which feature one of two Southern California private eyes: Joe Puma or Brock Callahan. In addition, I began researching this author’s background, which is interesting in its own right. (He apparently managed a hotel in Wisconsin before embarking on a literary career.) When I found that my knowledge of Gault could never be contained within the limited space of the piece I had been commissioned to write, I decided to try my hand at a longer article for Killer Covers, and then use that as the starting point for my shorter encyclopedia entry.
One thing I haven’t been able to find out about the author, and which I hope somebody reading this post can supply, is the correct date of Gault’s death. It’s supposed to have been sometime in 1995, probably after March of that year, but I don’t find the date anywhere. If you know the answer to this question, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me here.
Meanwhile, why don’t you take a detour over to Killer Covers to learn more about an author who, though now largely forgotten, was once touted by Bill Pronzini as “a living legend.”
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
“Why Live If You Haven’t Any Illusions?”
Rap Sheet headquarters is experiencing some weird computer problems today, so postings will be necessarily light.
However, I do want to point everyone to an interview with Edgar Award-winning author William Campbell Gault, which appeared originally in the Summer 1979 issue of Paperback Quarterly and has been scanned for your delectation by novelist-blogger Bill Crider. In the interview, Gault talks about the evolution of private eye Joe Puma, his favorite works in the mystery field (although he acknowledges that “I was never much of a mystery reader”), his appreciation for Raymond Chandler, and some of his experiences writing for the classic pulp mags.
You can read the full interview here.
However, I do want to point everyone to an interview with Edgar Award-winning author William Campbell Gault, which appeared originally in the Summer 1979 issue of Paperback Quarterly and has been scanned for your delectation by novelist-blogger Bill Crider. In the interview, Gault talks about the evolution of private eye Joe Puma, his favorite works in the mystery field (although he acknowledges that “I was never much of a mystery reader”), his appreciation for Raymond Chandler, and some of his experiences writing for the classic pulp mags.
You can read the full interview here.
Friday, November 07, 2008
The Book You Have to Read: “The Bloody Bokhara,” by William Campbell Gault
(Editor’s note: This is the 31st installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from Shamus Award-winning Atlanta novelist David Fulmer. The paperback edition of Fulmer’s 2008 standalone thriller, The Blue Door, will be released next month, 
as will be Lost River, the new fourth installment of his series featuring turn-of-the-last century New Orleans detective Valentin St. Cyr. The opening of Lost River can be read here.)
First a confession, offered without the need for bright lights, cigarette smoke, rude sneers, and the back of a meaty cop hand.
I wasn’t drawn to William Campbell Gault by way of a lurid pulp cover featuring a blowsy, busty, blond-haired dame in a curve-jutting posture. Before I got to girls, my post-adolescence was inhabited by dreams of cars: fast cars, sharp cars, and the boys and men who owned and drove them. So I discovered Gault and Henry Gregor Felsen at the same time.
Gault was a writer with definite tone. Whether he was dealing in hot cars or hot lead, his brand of grit came from the same shadows of post-World War II America. Playing in both fields, he displayed a deep sense for the dislocation in the shallows of those years. From Midwest dirt tracks on hot Sunday afternoons to a seedy Los Angeles saloon in the wee small hours, the man nailed loners doing brave and often thankless work.
He wrote two successful gumshoe series, one featuring a private eye by the name of Joe Puma and the other with Brock (“The Rock”) Callahan in its lead role.
I was more intrigued, though, with Gault’s one-offs, all of which were published in the 1950s. He came off the line with the sharply honed Don’t Cry for Me (1952), but it was his third, 1953’s The Bloody Bokhara, that really caught and held me fast. It’s a fascinating and complex little book, which showed Gault at his most prolific in terms of tone and voice.
What surprised me with the first page was how much this tale was unlike a traditional hard-boiled mystery. The narrative kicks off reading like nothing so much as a Bernard Malamud miniature, beginning with a richly drawn ethnic business scenario. The story has much to do with fine rugs. Two, in particular--a priceless Kashan and a Bokhara that bears a distinct bloodstain. Hence, this book’s title. The rugs, with their fantastically intricate and colorful weaves, make a nice analogy for the tale to follow.
The protagonist here, Levon (“Lee”) Kaprelian, is the mostly dutiful son of an Armenian rug merchant. He is thrust into the middle of a case of murder after a visit from a shady lady with an interest in his wares. In more ways that one.
Because this is hard-boiled fiction, it involves a femme fatale. Two, in fact. This first is rich and beautiful and in possession of both rugs, plus dozens more. She involves our hero in a scheme--all aboveboard, at least at first--to unload the goods on other rich women who might be susceptible to a young, handsome salesman’s attentions. The second woman is Kaprelian’s Armenian-American girlfriend, cast as a gypsy beauty and with a clear stake in his affections. There’s also a requisite body of someone who might or might not have deserved to be deprived of life.
The Bloody Bokhara is a tasty tale, and I don’t wish to spoil it for readers to come. I’m much more interested in Gault’s stylistic maneuvers anyway.
Although he provides a classic setup for a hard-boiled mystery, there is much here that deviates from the stereotype. Gault applies a laconic style when it comes to his male characters. You won’t find much in the way of snarling coppers or cleverer-than-thou wiseacres. No one is all that confident, except for the fakes. The women have agendas other than snaring a male. These folks are, in today’s parlance, conflicted.
I also remember being surprised and pleased that Gault doesn’t shy away from the sensual in his yarn. For such a B genre, he delivers some finely toned pillow talk between--are you ready?--non-married partners. It’s only odd because at the time this book was written, doors usually closed and that was the end of that. The reader was left to dream up his or her own scenario for what followed. It was a very mature and open-minded approach, and I liked it. A lot.
I never knew I would grow up to write historical mysteries, but I learned something from Gault about research. Whether it was the esoterica of Oriental rugs or the variations of late-1940s racing engines, the man had the details down cold. The ambiance makes all the difference.
Of course, no book is perfect and Gault committed some misdemeanors along his way. The most apparent being his repetitive use of a name when one character is addressing another, sometimes in such a forced way that I wonder what he or his editor was thinking. It’s strikingly odd quirk for such a disciplined craftsman. But that’s pretty much all the fault I find with The Bloody Bokhara.
Gault went from his well-wrought early volumes to working faster. It’s what happens when the contracts say so. He wrote hard-boiled crime for the grown-ups and baseball, basketball, and football for the high-school crowd, and auto racing for both markets. He maintained his sharp eye, his good feel for honest emotion, and flair for action.
But as entertained as I was by his later books, for my money, he never again hit the notes of the first three. I remain a fan, nonetheless.
One other caveat: I discovered after I had chosen this book and gone to retrieve an old copy that we share a literary agency--him, back when, and me, now. Who knew?
And who cannot be touched by Gault’s famous quote, “The best revenge is good writing”?
Indeed, he was the proof of it.
READ MORE: “William Campbell Gault; Weird Tales,” by Ed Gorman.
as will be Lost River, the new fourth installment of his series featuring turn-of-the-last century New Orleans detective Valentin St. Cyr. The opening of Lost River can be read here.)First a confession, offered without the need for bright lights, cigarette smoke, rude sneers, and the back of a meaty cop hand.
I wasn’t drawn to William Campbell Gault by way of a lurid pulp cover featuring a blowsy, busty, blond-haired dame in a curve-jutting posture. Before I got to girls, my post-adolescence was inhabited by dreams of cars: fast cars, sharp cars, and the boys and men who owned and drove them. So I discovered Gault and Henry Gregor Felsen at the same time.
Gault was a writer with definite tone. Whether he was dealing in hot cars or hot lead, his brand of grit came from the same shadows of post-World War II America. Playing in both fields, he displayed a deep sense for the dislocation in the shallows of those years. From Midwest dirt tracks on hot Sunday afternoons to a seedy Los Angeles saloon in the wee small hours, the man nailed loners doing brave and often thankless work.
He wrote two successful gumshoe series, one featuring a private eye by the name of Joe Puma and the other with Brock (“The Rock”) Callahan in its lead role.
I was more intrigued, though, with Gault’s one-offs, all of which were published in the 1950s. He came off the line with the sharply honed Don’t Cry for Me (1952), but it was his third, 1953’s The Bloody Bokhara, that really caught and held me fast. It’s a fascinating and complex little book, which showed Gault at his most prolific in terms of tone and voice.
What surprised me with the first page was how much this tale was unlike a traditional hard-boiled mystery. The narrative kicks off reading like nothing so much as a Bernard Malamud miniature, beginning with a richly drawn ethnic business scenario. The story has much to do with fine rugs. Two, in particular--a priceless Kashan and a Bokhara that bears a distinct bloodstain. Hence, this book’s title. The rugs, with their fantastically intricate and colorful weaves, make a nice analogy for the tale to follow.
The protagonist here, Levon (“Lee”) Kaprelian, is the mostly dutiful son of an Armenian rug merchant. He is thrust into the middle of a case of murder after a visit from a shady lady with an interest in his wares. In more ways that one.
Because this is hard-boiled fiction, it involves a femme fatale. Two, in fact. This first is rich and beautiful and in possession of both rugs, plus dozens more. She involves our hero in a scheme--all aboveboard, at least at first--to unload the goods on other rich women who might be susceptible to a young, handsome salesman’s attentions. The second woman is Kaprelian’s Armenian-American girlfriend, cast as a gypsy beauty and with a clear stake in his affections. There’s also a requisite body of someone who might or might not have deserved to be deprived of life.
The Bloody Bokhara is a tasty tale, and I don’t wish to spoil it for readers to come. I’m much more interested in Gault’s stylistic maneuvers anyway.
Although he provides a classic setup for a hard-boiled mystery, there is much here that deviates from the stereotype. Gault applies a laconic style when it comes to his male characters. You won’t find much in the way of snarling coppers or cleverer-than-thou wiseacres. No one is all that confident, except for the fakes. The women have agendas other than snaring a male. These folks are, in today’s parlance, conflicted.
I also remember being surprised and pleased that Gault doesn’t shy away from the sensual in his yarn. For such a B genre, he delivers some finely toned pillow talk between--are you ready?--non-married partners. It’s only odd because at the time this book was written, doors usually closed and that was the end of that. The reader was left to dream up his or her own scenario for what followed. It was a very mature and open-minded approach, and I liked it. A lot.
I never knew I would grow up to write historical mysteries, but I learned something from Gault about research. Whether it was the esoterica of Oriental rugs or the variations of late-1940s racing engines, the man had the details down cold. The ambiance makes all the difference.
Of course, no book is perfect and Gault committed some misdemeanors along his way. The most apparent being his repetitive use of a name when one character is addressing another, sometimes in such a forced way that I wonder what he or his editor was thinking. It’s strikingly odd quirk for such a disciplined craftsman. But that’s pretty much all the fault I find with The Bloody Bokhara.
Gault went from his well-wrought early volumes to working faster. It’s what happens when the contracts say so. He wrote hard-boiled crime for the grown-ups and baseball, basketball, and football for the high-school crowd, and auto racing for both markets. He maintained his sharp eye, his good feel for honest emotion, and flair for action.
But as entertained as I was by his later books, for my money, he never again hit the notes of the first three. I remain a fan, nonetheless.
One other caveat: I discovered after I had chosen this book and gone to retrieve an old copy that we share a literary agency--him, back when, and me, now. Who knew?
And who cannot be touched by Gault’s famous quote, “The best revenge is good writing”?
Indeed, he was the proof of it.
READ MORE: “William Campbell Gault; Weird Tales,” by Ed Gorman.
Friday, July 18, 2008
The Book You Have to Read:
“Don’t Cry for Me,” by William Campbell Gault
(Editor’s note: This is the 13th installment of our ongoing Friday blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s selection comes from award-winning novelist-editor Ed Gorman, 
the author most recently of a political thriller titled Sleeping Dogs.)
It was 1952 when William Campbell Gault’s Don’t Cry for Me took the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. And quite a first it was. While the story proved to be nothing revolutionary, the voice certainly was. The narrative is so intimate, it sounds like a man talking to his shrink. Or going to confession.
Protagonist Pete Worden came from an upper-class family, excelled in football in high school and college, and even had a brief stint with the Los Angeles Rams. He also did himself proud in the Big War.
His older brother, John, handles the family estate. He gives Pete $100 a week to live on. He thinks Pete is a bum and he resents giving him even that much. While the money isn’t enough for Pete to keep his souped-up Merc in proper shape, or to do much besides live on the edge, he has his girlfriend Ellen Gallegher and a safe harbor from the nine to five.
When we meet Ellen, a damned good looking, damned smart woman, we know Gault is leaving the tropes of pulp crime fiction behind. She’s from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and was a good Irish Catholic Girl until she read James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which was when she gave up papism.
The plot of Don’t Cry for Me gets rolling when Pete comes home to his small apartment and finds a dead man in his favorite chair. The police are curious and so is local mobster Nick Arnold. Pete wants Mike Kersh to be his bodyguard. And Mike is no standard-issue thug, either. Almost as soon as we meet him he’s explaining to Pete why he quit the Communist Party in the ’40s, because the meetings got so contentious. Now he’s just a Democrat.
Pete gets some help puzzling through his investigation of the dead man’s murder from his neighbor, a pulp writer who specializes in suspense. The neighbor has a lot of parties. Pete gets to hear numerous drunken pulp writers bitching about editors and publishing markets, and getting scared because the pulps are vanishing. They really sound like actual writers. Piss, moan, whine. You know--us.
You see what I mean? Within the confines of a detective story plot, Gault gives us real people in the Los Angeles of the early 1950s. People in these pages argue about books--Ellen loves Sartre, Pete hates him--movies, radio shows, politics. There’s even a brief discussion about what it takes to get a 3 percent GI loan if you’re interested in moving into a housing development. And there’s a great deal of general anxiety about the atomic bomb tests going on and what they portend for the human species.
But what this novel is always about is the disillusionment of Pete Worden with the world in general, most of the people he knows, and above all with himself. He knows he’s a bum, a cipher, and a fake.
While this novel isn’t in league with The Day of the Locust, Gault’s snapshots of Los Angeles between the world wars (the book is filled with references to draft notices and young men getting ready to be shipped out to Korea--the next war, as Pete cynically calls it) are incisive and melancholy.
Don’t Cry for Me is also a love story--a good one and a true one. And a painful one, besides. Ellen Gallegher is one of the most interesting women I’ve found in crime fiction, simply because I’ve never met anybody like her before or since. A sensible, working-class young woman who reads a lot.
The novel has aged well, except for the occasional coy boy-girl dialogue so popular back then (John D. MacDonald used it all too often, too) and a few William Saroyanesque (Saroyan being Pete’s favorite writer) literary quirks. And at least some of the characters are from central casting, especially the homicide detective. But Gault gives them at least a superficial humanity.
The Springsteen quote at the top of this post expresses the theme of Gault’s book and Worden’s dilemma exactly. The latter trusts nobody, especially himself, and it’s this quiet misery that gives the novel its anxiety, passion, and troubled honesty.
You’ll note that I haven’t described the plot. It’s a good one, complex and well-fashioned and fair-played.
But this isn’t a book about plot. It’s a book about people.
READ MORE: “An Author from the Old School,” by David Laurence Wilson (Noir Originals); reviews of Gault’s The Canvas Coffin, The Convertible Hearse, and Vein of Violence, by August West (Vintage Hardboiled Reads); “William Campbell Gault” (Ed Gorman’s Blog).
the author most recently of a political thriller titled Sleeping Dogs.)
I want to know if it’s you I don’t trust
’Cause I damn sure don’t trust myself
--Bruce Springsteen
When a novel wins praise from both Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald it’s probably worth a look.’Cause I damn sure don’t trust myself
--Bruce Springsteen
It was 1952 when William Campbell Gault’s Don’t Cry for Me took the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. And quite a first it was. While the story proved to be nothing revolutionary, the voice certainly was. The narrative is so intimate, it sounds like a man talking to his shrink. Or going to confession.
Protagonist Pete Worden came from an upper-class family, excelled in football in high school and college, and even had a brief stint with the Los Angeles Rams. He also did himself proud in the Big War.
His older brother, John, handles the family estate. He gives Pete $100 a week to live on. He thinks Pete is a bum and he resents giving him even that much. While the money isn’t enough for Pete to keep his souped-up Merc in proper shape, or to do much besides live on the edge, he has his girlfriend Ellen Gallegher and a safe harbor from the nine to five.
When we meet Ellen, a damned good looking, damned smart woman, we know Gault is leaving the tropes of pulp crime fiction behind. She’s from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and was a good Irish Catholic Girl until she read James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which was when she gave up papism.
The plot of Don’t Cry for Me gets rolling when Pete comes home to his small apartment and finds a dead man in his favorite chair. The police are curious and so is local mobster Nick Arnold. Pete wants Mike Kersh to be his bodyguard. And Mike is no standard-issue thug, either. Almost as soon as we meet him he’s explaining to Pete why he quit the Communist Party in the ’40s, because the meetings got so contentious. Now he’s just a Democrat.
Pete gets some help puzzling through his investigation of the dead man’s murder from his neighbor, a pulp writer who specializes in suspense. The neighbor has a lot of parties. Pete gets to hear numerous drunken pulp writers bitching about editors and publishing markets, and getting scared because the pulps are vanishing. They really sound like actual writers. Piss, moan, whine. You know--us.
You see what I mean? Within the confines of a detective story plot, Gault gives us real people in the Los Angeles of the early 1950s. People in these pages argue about books--Ellen loves Sartre, Pete hates him--movies, radio shows, politics. There’s even a brief discussion about what it takes to get a 3 percent GI loan if you’re interested in moving into a housing development. And there’s a great deal of general anxiety about the atomic bomb tests going on and what they portend for the human species.
But what this novel is always about is the disillusionment of Pete Worden with the world in general, most of the people he knows, and above all with himself. He knows he’s a bum, a cipher, and a fake.
While this novel isn’t in league with The Day of the Locust, Gault’s snapshots of Los Angeles between the world wars (the book is filled with references to draft notices and young men getting ready to be shipped out to Korea--the next war, as Pete cynically calls it) are incisive and melancholy.
Don’t Cry for Me is also a love story--a good one and a true one. And a painful one, besides. Ellen Gallegher is one of the most interesting women I’ve found in crime fiction, simply because I’ve never met anybody like her before or since. A sensible, working-class young woman who reads a lot.
The novel has aged well, except for the occasional coy boy-girl dialogue so popular back then (John D. MacDonald used it all too often, too) and a few William Saroyanesque (Saroyan being Pete’s favorite writer) literary quirks. And at least some of the characters are from central casting, especially the homicide detective. But Gault gives them at least a superficial humanity.
The Springsteen quote at the top of this post expresses the theme of Gault’s book and Worden’s dilemma exactly. The latter trusts nobody, especially himself, and it’s this quiet misery that gives the novel its anxiety, passion, and troubled honesty.
You’ll note that I haven’t described the plot. It’s a good one, complex and well-fashioned and fair-played.
But this isn’t a book about plot. It’s a book about people.
* * *
Check back here next Friday, when Robert J. Randisi will be picking The Rap Sheet’s latest “forgotten novel.” Randisi is the author of more than 500 books. He’s also the founder of the Private Eye Writers of America, creator of the Shamus Award and, with Ed Gorman, co-founder of Mystery Scene magazine. Presently, his Rat Pack novels are garnering the best reviews of his career. The third installment, Hey There (You With the Gun in Your Hand), is due out in early December.READ MORE: “An Author from the Old School,” by David Laurence Wilson (Noir Originals); reviews of Gault’s The Canvas Coffin, The Convertible Hearse, and Vein of Violence, by August West (Vintage Hardboiled Reads); “William Campbell Gault” (Ed Gorman’s Blog).
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