Ed Gorman's blog

The Ed McBain/Evan Hunter Companion

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:46:00 +0000

From McFarland Publishing

One of the most prolific crime writers of the last century, Evan Hunter published more than 120 novels from 1952 to 2005 under a variety of pseudonymns. He also wrote several teleplays and screenplays, including Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and the 1954 novel The Blackboard Jungle. When the Mystery Writers of America named Hunter a Grand Master, he gave the designation to his alter ego, Ed McBain, best known for his long-running police procedural series about the detectives of the 87th Precinct. This comprehensive companion provides detailed information about all of Evan Hunter’s/Ed McBain’s works, characters, and recurring themes. From police detective and crime stories to dramatic novels and films, this reference celebrates the vast body of literature of this versatile writer.

About The Author Erin E. MacDonald is a professor of English at Fanshawe College’s School of Language and Liberal Studies in London, Ontario. She has published several articles and is co-author of a composition text. Her work has appeared in the Journal of American and Comparative Cultures and Clues. Series Editor Elizabeth Foxwell lives outside of Washington, D.C.

. When did you start reading Ed McBain?

My sister gave me my first Ed McBain book, 1997’s Nocturne, for my birthday in 1999. She knew I loved cop shows like Law and Order and NYPD Blue and I was starting to read more fiction for fun.

2. What initially attracted you to the series?

I was getting sick of academia. I’d spent a few years reading a lot of literary theory and cultural theory and I actually enjoyed playing with it, but eventually I just got tired of it. I was writing a dissertation on cross-dressing in Victorian literature but my supervisor left and I felt like I needed to change topics in order to get my PhD done. I decided it would be more fun to write my dissertation on something I was really interested in, pop culture-wise. I started out with the idea of tracing the development of the homicide detective, or just the detective figure, from Poe and Doyle and Collins all the way up to American T.V. shows like my favourite at the time, Homicide: Life on the Street. Fortunately, I realized pretty quickly that it was an impossibly huge topic for a 250-300 page dissertation and by that point, I’d read a few more of the 87^th Precinct novels and decided to focus solely on Ed McBain.

I’ve always been drawn to books and shows about cops, having grown up with a cop for a father. There’s something so satisfying about the idea of a real-life hero, even though the best procedurals in my opinion are usually the ones that don’t always have happy Hollywood endings. McBain’s series wasn’t just about sensational thrills and page-turning suspense, although those things are great, too—it was about society. At least that’s what I got out of it—I just immediately saw the series as one long, complex comment on North American society, issues of gender, race, and class. At that time in academia, pop culture was just starting to become an acceptable topic of study, and I was determined to prove that a writer like Ed McBain was addressing those issues just as often as, or even more than, the so-called literary greats.

3. Do you generally read mysteries?

I’ve been reading mysteries since I was a kid, taking Ellery Queen magazine out of the library, watching Murder, She Wrote with my mother, and reading Sherlock Holmes stories to her. I even wrote my own mystery stories and designed little books with illustrations to go along with them. My whole family was drawn to the mystery genre. That said, people are always asking me if I’ve read so-and-so and I usually have to say no, I’ve read nothing but Ed McBain and Ian Rankin for ten years. Oh, and a couple of Elizabeth George novels and M.C. Beatons for fun—I have a bit of a thing for Hamish Macbeth. Also the Stieg Larsson series—I think Evan Hunter would have liked Lisbeth Salander.

4 Do you prefer certain sub-genres?

When I was younger I didn’t really have any preferences—any mystery would do. In the last couple of decades, though, it’s become fairly clear to me that I tend to prefer police stories or other realistic crime stories to the old Golden Age, Agatha Christie types. I don’t think I like hard-boiled, private-eye mysteries any better than the cozies—I tend to like realistic, cynical, usually urban crime fiction that has strong characterizations and a sharp, liberal view on social problems. This includes people like Richard Price and Ian Rankin, among others.

4. How did the idea for this companion evolve?

Elizabeth Foxwell, the series editor of McFarland’s mystery companion series, tracked me down on the internet, found out I’d written a dissertation on McBain, and sent me a message inviting me to submit a book proposal. I had just started a full-time college teaching job in a new city and was pregnant with my first child, so I kind of looked at my husband and said, “I know it might be crazy to take this on now, but I don’t want to pass up the opportunity” and he agreed.

5. Were you ever daunted by all the reading and note taking you had to do?

Of course! It was a hugely daunting project, and with everything I had going on in my life over those years, I could only work on the book in bits and pieces and on holidays. I was working on the book when I was in labour with my second child and I went back to work on it just a few days after he was born. I had to get a few extensions on my contract, because even though I knew from the start that it was going to be huge, I don’t think I really understood what that meant. I hadalready read and written on the 87^th Precinct books when I started the companion, because of my dissertation, but I had just started reading the non-87^th McBains and the Hunter novels, and I was adamant about including them even though I was told I could just focus on the mysteries. Evan Hunter was such a talented writer, in so many genres, that I couldn’t see writing a book about him that didn’t include a serious look at the non-mysteries.

I ended up panicking at one point, I think a year or two after I started the book, thinking I would never be able to get it done. That’s when I tracked down Jane Gelfman, Hunter’s agent, and she put me in touch with Dragica, his widow, and they got me in touch with Akira Naoi and Ted Bergman. I sent them both an e-mail asking if they might have any interest in helping me with the book, since I knew they had exhaustive, encyclopedic knowledge of the 87^th novels, and luckily for me, they were interested. It was an amazing experience, working with a man in Japan and one in Sweden, sending letters and e-mails back and forth. They helped me a lot with some plot summaries of some of the 87^th books, character names, and things like that but probably the coolest things they sent me were letters they’d received from Evan Hunter, maps they’d drawn of the 87^th Precinct, and anecdotes of conversations they’d had with Hunter. Ted also got me in touch with Peter Sommerstein, who donated a couple of his photos of Hunter to the book, and I asked a friend of mine at work to help out, as well. So without all of those people, the book would still have been completed, but it would have taken a year or two longer and just wouldn’t have been as good, I think.

6. Can you describe the process involved in putting such a massive book together?

My process for writing the book was, I have to admit, not terribly methodical or systematic or practical. Usually I just started reading a book and wrote notes with a pencil in the margins, then transcribed those notes into an alphabetized file on my computer and added to them later. I didn’t read the books in chronological order and I didn’t have meticulous files where I sorted everything by theme or anything like that—it was just one gigantic file that I kept adding to until it was over 800 pages long (double spaced). This was my first time writing a book of this length and scope, though, and I think I learned a few things along the way so that the next book will be more systematic.

7. Did you run into any particular problems in the course of writing and compiling it?

In addition to the time crunch and just the overwhelming size of the project, I also had the problem of locating all of Hunter’s books—most of them were out of print so I had to order them from eBay and other places like that. I managed to find almost all of them, but it was slow going. Of course I think they should all be back in print! Younger readers who’ve never heard of Ed McBain would be surprised to discover how timely and controversial they still are.

8. What do you think are the strengths of the 87th books in general?

Like I said before, I love the 87^th books because they are the best combination of anything I could want, as a reader—they’re suspenseful, thrilling, entertaining, sexy, etc. etc. but they’re so much more than that because they attempt to address some really complex social issues, like racism in America, in a really intelligent way. I admire Evan Hunter so much for being able to put all that into his works without it coming off too didactic, like a lecture.

9. Do you see any consistent weaknesses or failings in the books?

I don’t think there are any failings in the books. I said in the companion that the older novels use some fairly one-dimensional, stereotypical characterizations to make certain points, but I don’t really see that as a failing. I mean, I’ve read novels that have more character development, or that are more realistic at times, or more experimental. But from within the genre of mystery fiction, I think they are an incredible accomplishment—who else could have kept a police series alive and bestselling for 50 years? And even outside of genre fiction, I believe that the books have contributed to the quality of American postwar fiction in general. Hunter had a way of cutting through the crap, stylistically and thematically, that I think a lot of authors emulated.

10. If you had to name the five most accomplished 87ths what would they be?

I can’t name only five, but a few of my favourite 87^ths, for their level of complexity and their treatments of contemporary issues like race, gender, and media, are, in no particular order, Mischief, Kiss, The Big Bad City, Romance, The Last Dance, Merely Hate, The Frumious Bandersnatch, Fat Ollie’s Book, He Who Hesitates, Doll, Calypso, Ice, Lulllaby…

A couple of my favourite McBain mysteries belong to the Matthew Hope series: There Was a Little Girl and The Last Best Hope, and a couple are really old ones written under the Marsten name: Runaway Black and The Spiked Heel. Two non-87^th McBain novels, Doors and Guns, are in some respects basically the same novel, but I like it. Every Little Crook and Nanny and A Horse’s Head are hilarious. Actually, maybe Downtown is my favourite McBain crime-comedy. Petals (a novella) and Scimitar (published under the name John Abbott) are two really great thrillers. In terms of non-mysteries, or what Hunter called his “straight” fiction, Streets of Gold and Far From the Sea are favourites.

11. How about the least accomplished?

I never think of any of his works as being totally devoid of anything good, but probably a few of my least favourite 87^th novels, mostly for their lack of realism and for being slightly too contrived, would be And All Through the House, Shotgun, Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here, Hark!, and So Long as You Both Shall Live.

13. What do you think makes the series so popular around the world?

Hunter’s writing. After reading virtually nothing but his works for about ten years and then picking up another author, I could really see the difference. He was just such a good writer, so concise--never a wasted word. Others have said this before but it bears repeating: he was a master storyteller. I also think his works are universal because he had an ability to touch something very human--very fragile and selfish and generous and ambiguous—in his readers.

14. Will you continue to read the 87ths for pleasure after reading them so analytically?

Definitely. I wish he was alive to keep writing them! I’m actually sad that I probably won’t have time to reread them again for a couple of years, while I’m working on my next book, but I will return to them, this time without a pencil in hand.

More Bobbs-Merril

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Tue, 29 May 2012 00:47:00 +0000

Thanks to Jerry House we now have a list of some of the Black Bat titles I'd forgotten. And what novels and writers. Thanks Jerry.

J.S. Blazer is Justin Scott and Deal Me Out is a Westlakian hoot; The Robert Dennis books are fine paranormal mysteries; Carl Dekker is Dennis Lynds and this one is a honey; Bill Hallihan's The Ross Forgery is good, too. Tony Kenrdick's A Tough One To Lose became a major film. Mirian Borgenicht went on to a long fine career.

A quick check on abebooks gives a few of the titles:
- Charles Alverson - FIGHTING BACK
- Robert Barr - THE DARK ISLAND
- Jack M. Bickham - THE SILVER BULLET GANG
- J. S. Blazer - DEAL ME OUT
- Mirian Borgenicht - NO BAIL FOR DALTON and ROADBLOCK
- Karen Campbell - THUNDER ON SUNDAY
- "Brian Coffey" [Koontz] - BLOOD RISK and SURROUNDED
- Beth De Bilio - VENDETTA CON BRIO
- Robert C. Dennis - CONVERSATIONS WITH A CORPSE and THE SWEAT OF FEAR
- Carl Dekker - WOMAN IN MARBLE
- Ron Faust - TOMB OF BLUE ICE
- "Jack Foxx" [Pronzini] - THE JADE FIGURINE
- William M. Green - AVERY'S FORTUNE and THE SALISBURY MANUSCRIPT
- William H. Hallihan - THE ROSS FORGERY
- Reymoure Keith Isely - A STRANGECODE OF JUSTICE
- Beverly Keller - THE BAGHDAD DEFECTIONS
- TONY KENDRICK - A TOUGH ONE TO LOSE
- "John Miles" [Bickham] - THE BLACKMAILER and THE NIGHT HUNTER

Bobbs-Merrill Black Bat line

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Mon, 28 May 2012 19:16:00 +0000

I should have noted the depth of the Black Bat line last night. I tried to find the name of the editor on line today but had no luck so I'm doing this from memory. (I've mentioned Jack Bickham and Gregory MacDonald).

Bill Pronzini did three or four Black Bat titles, including two of my favorites of his, The Jade Figure and the really exciting and mordant Dead Run.

Dean Koontz under his Brian Coffey name did three Richard Stark variations that are terrific thrillers.

And Charles Alverson, who had a promising career as a p.i writer, started as a Black Bat writer with a very sophisticated first book.

I'm sure if I could ever find the entire Black Bat bibliography I'd find many more

Gravetapping; Wilson Tucker

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Sun, 27 May 2012 18:28:00 +0000

Ed Gorman: Welcome back to posting, Ben Boulden. Today he posted about both Jack Bickham and Bill Pronzini. Bill is of course one of the finest crime fiction writers in the world and is in fact an mwa grandmaster. Ben reviews one of bill's most compelling and darkest novels nightcrawlers.
jack was lesser known but extremely talented. ben discusses the night hunters, my favorite bickham novel.i liked it so much after reading it in pb i bought a hardcover and sent it to jack for an autograph. we started corresponding after that. he fought hard aganst the cancer that kept coming back, writing and teaching (he was one of the best) while battling it. A damned fine man and writer.
bill and jack both wrote for the bobbs-merlll line that ben discusses in the same post. good stuff. Amazing what came out of that line, including the firt Fketch novel. Zilch for a budget unfortunately.
MONDAY, MAY 27, 2012
Jack M. Bickham's Black Bat Mystery Titles

Bobbs-Merrill Edition
In the early- to mid-1970s Bobbs-Merrill, as part of its Black Bat Mystery line, published four early suspense novels written by Jack M. Bickham. The four titles were published as by “John Miles”, a pseudonym Mr Bickham used primarily for his early crime and suspense novels, and later for his whodunits. The publication of the Black Bat Mystery titles was a landmark in his career. It represented the change of Bickham’s writing focus from westerns to mystery and suspense.

The John Miles nom de plume was first used by Bickham on his nifty little 1961 crime novel Dally with a Deadly Doll (Ace, D-489). Over the next decade he used the Miles brand sparingly, choosing instead to write westerns under his own name and as by “Jeff Clinton”. The titles published with the Clinton moniker featured a brawling red-headed series character named Wildcat O’Shea. He later published a handful of non series westerns under the pseudonym, and a single science fiction novel titled Kane’s Odyssey (1976).

for the rest go here:
gravetapping.blogspot.com/

-----------------------------------------------Wilson Tucker, Rog Ebert, Vic Ryan and me
Ed here: Somebody sent me this paragraph from a piece about the late Wilson Tucker who was both a prominent writer and fan in science fiction circles for many decades. The Long Loud Silence is still one of my all-time favorite sf novels and I enjoyed his mysteries almost as much as his science fiction. The bit here refers to the time Ebert, Ryan and I attended our first sf convention thanks to Tucker, who drove us to Cincinatti from his home in Bloomington, Illinois. He was pure gentleman.
"At Tucker's 88th birthday party held in Bloomington, Illinois, I heard a fan ask Bob why he had stopped writing. Without hesitation, Tucker said, "Because I'm no longer driven." But he was still very much a social person, still seeking human contact and holding out hope of finding one more mind to help in some way. I didn't ask him why he was still doing this...for the answer would have been, "Because there's nothing else for me to do." I attended because I knew it would be the last time I would see him. At one point, we were interrupted by someone wanting him to go elsewhere, Tucker smiled at them politely and said, "No, I want to talk to George." I reminded him of the time, in 1961 I think it was, when he attended the MidWestCon, bringing with him three young men...Ed Gorman, Vic Ryan, and Roger Ebert. Tucker had the most pleased look on his face when he introduced them and turned them loose...sort of like 'Let's see you draw to three of these.'

Ralph Dennis

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:32:00 +0000

RALPH DENNIS

from 2006

Ralph Dennis

Tommorrow night I'm going to run a piece by the writer Richard A. Moore on the subject of the most beloved obscure private eye writer who ever lived, that being Ralph Dennis who published eleven novels in his Hardman series in the early 1970s.

The books are short enough that I was able to read two of them last night preparing for this entry. The story goes, and the story is wrong, that maybe just maybe Robert B. Parker read one these got his idea for a white p.i. with a black superdude buddy. That is the one similarity the two series share and it's not much of a similarity at all. To me, on a lesser level, the mixed race buddies go back to at least The Lone Ranger.

Where Parker is resolutely BWM and upscale, Dennis is resolutely blue collar (or below). Both men prefer the worlds of their invention to the worlds most of us would call reality. Both the are very good at giving the patina of reality to their respective worlds but their wise enough not to give us naturalism in their books. Chandler was very real either.

Dennis coulda been a contender. His was a narrower fix on the p.i. field than Parker's but if he'd lived longer that might have changed. Parker is a great mass entertainer. A true and enduring star. I'm not sure that Dennis, or most of us, have that quaity in us. That's not to lessen Dennis' achievements, which are considerable. It's just that he never takes us anywhere different. He pretty much lives on the mean streets with down and outers. Parker takes on life in pro sports, life on a college faculty, life on tracking a serial killer. He's like great and classic boxer. He knows enough to keep moving.

Richard Moore is a fine writer in his own right and brings all his gifts to this intriguing piece on the sad life of another fine writer, Ralph Dennis.

Richard Braughtigan

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:22:00 +0000

Ed here: I was never a major Richard Brautigan fan. While I liked Trout Fishing and a good share of his pieces in Rolling Stone, there was always a little too much flower power in his material for me. I remember that when he died I wrote along letter about him to a friend of mine the point of which being that some signal people in our generation's narcissistic yearning for celebration were passing on and that good old days of dope dope dope and free love and the bizarre notion that we could run things more honorably than our parents had...Well, that hadn't worked out so well had it. Good with the bad but looking back there was an awful lot of bad and silly bad manic bad maniac bad and Brautigan was sadly a part of it all.As were a lot of us. I have to say that William Hjortsberg is one of the most interesting writers on the planet.

In Pursuit of Pleasure and Trout

By DWIGHT GARNER

JUBILEE HITCHHIKER

The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

By William Hjortsberg

Illustrated. 852 pages. Counterpoint. $42.50.

For a committed sensualist and prototypical hippie, a man who wore floppy hats, granny glasses, love beads and a droopy mustache that made him look like General Custer at an acid test, Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) had a potent work ethic.

He wrote nearly every morning, regardless of keening hangovers. He spent the rest of the day, William Hjortsberg notes in “Jubilee Hitchhiker,” his sprawling and definitive new biography of this most offbeat of American writers, “in pursuit of happiness.” Happiness for Brautigan usually meant, to borrow the title of an undervalued W. M. Spackman novel, an armful of warm girl. In San Francisco, where he mostly lived, and elsewhere, he had groupies and would hit on “anything that wasn’t nailed down,” one friend commented. He put some of his favorite bohemian cuties on the front of his books. “Richard’s sexual archive,” another friend said, “is reflected on his book covers.” Happiness meant seeing plenty of movies. Once he began making money, in the early 1970s, it also meant good food (oysters, pork buns, the most expensive lobsters at The Palm steakhouse) and guns, which, when drunk, he would frequently discharge indoors. Brautigan and the film director Sam Peckinpah, a friend, once opened fire with a .357 Magnum and a .38 Colt at an alley cat through an open hotel room window.

Brautigan’s signal pleasure, though, from the time he was a young boy, growing up poor in a broken family in Tacoma, Wash., until the end of his life, was trout fishing. It was an obsession that fed his first and probably best novel, “Trout Fishing in America,” written in 1961 but not issued by a major publishing house until 1969.

Generations of anglers have picked up “Trout Fishing in America” based on its title alone, expecting a how-to volume. What they get instead is akin to a gentle tab of LSD: an eccentric and slyly profound novel, seemingly narrated by the ghost of trout fishing past and filled with surreal post-“Walden” visions like a dismembered trout stream for sale at a junkyard.

Brautigan wrote his best novels — “Trout Fishing in America,” “A Confederate General From Big Sur” (1964), “In Watermelon Sugar” (1968) and “The Abortion” (1971) — and books of poetry, notably “The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster” (1968) before fame swamped him in the early ’70s, when he was in his mid-to-late 30s.

He got rich suddenly and enjoyed himself vastly. His writing got woolier and worse, however, and the critics turned on him. He spent most of the money. His looks began to go. (One of his best-known poems is titled “My Nose Is Growing Old.”) Neurotic and increasingly in debt, he committed suicide with a handgun in 1984, at 49.

For the rest go here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/books/richard-brautigan-biography-jubilee-hitchhiker.html

Forgotten Books:1001 Midnights edited by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:25:00 +0000

For what to me are obvious reasons I've never been a particular fan of the famous Jacques Barzun mystery list. I find his writing pedantic and his selection of books sometimes questionable. I'm sorry--it's just the reaction I've always had to it. I'll take H.R.F. Keating's 100 Mystery novels any day.

So I've had to look elsewhere for lists to help rubes like me find treasures I'd never come across otherwise. My favorite book is 1001 Midnights edited by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller. I've read at least forty of the novels recommended in this massive compendium. And sometimes for pleasure I just pick it up to read it.

Every genre is covered here. So are writers great and small. And who are some of the reviewers recommending books? How about Max Collins, Crider, George Kelly, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg, Robert Randisi, Art Scott and Julie Smith? Among many, many others including the Mulzinis themselves. (I have two reviews in here myself.) You can share the pleasure they have in touting overlooked books. And in a few cases downgrading a book that was so fashionable a few decades back.

God I love this book and you will too.

Me Tarzan You Nobody

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:39:00 +0000

Ed here: And I dom't care what anybody says-John Carter of Mars was a great movie. Absolutely true to Burroughs.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2007

Me Tarzan You Nobody

Somebody on line mentioned Lin Carter yesterday so I of course got nostalgic for the mid-Sixties which was right before I took my sacred vows with drink and drug. I looked up Carter on the net. Now you know and I know that he was generally a pretty miserable writer. He had to two good books in him by my estimation The Man Who Loved Mars and Time War. As with all his books you knew on page one exactly who he was "homaging." In Mars he was homaging (doesn't that sound dirty?) Leigh Brackett and Wars he was imitating Van Vogt. His worst work was his attempt to recreate the mystery pulps of the Thirties, Doc Savage, The Shadow and etc. But for some damned reason I bought and read all 900 (I'm joking) of his books and finished every one of them. To his credit, he was a damned fine editor. His Ballantine Fantasy series remains (for me) the benchmark of classic reprint lines. Aw, hell I enjoyed most of his novels, too.

One of the Carter pieces mentioned his affection for Edgar Rice Burroughs. I logged on and am glad I did. Burroughs has always fascinated me and I'm not sure why. Maybe because as a young man he was rather pretentious and vainglorious about himself while all the while being a failure at everything he tried. We've all known people like that (I was certainly one fo them myself--Brian Moore's great The Luck of Ginjer Coffee gets him down on paper for all time) and while we might snicker at them we know there's something sad about them, too, that the bragging is empty and recognizing themselves in the morning mirror is painful.

Then he became a writer. Sort of just like that. An idiotic turn in a sappy Hwood movie. Then he became a writer. And by God not just any writer. Early on he created Tarzan, books still in print in virtually every country today, nearly one hundred years after their first appearance. I still read two or three Burroughs novels a year. He's not anywhere as good as Rafael Sabatini; and it's sacreligious to even utter the names Robert Louis Stevenson and H. Rider Haggard in the same piece. But I recently reread the first Tarzan novel and think I found the obvious reason for Burroughs' enduring success. He wrote books for innocents. He didn't know a damned thing about Africa, his prose occasonally makes you want to give the book in your hand a hot foot, and nobody will ever be outdone in his hatred of Germans (I ain't crazy about them either but still).

But in his innocence he allowed himself to create human creatures who have virtually no human responses. Swinging through the trees in a loincloth? Jane giving it all up to leave in a tree house? Apes and lions living in terror of this white dude? An "Africa" that bears no relation whatsoever to the real thing, an Africa in fact that's closer to the Burroughs Mars than any place else?

When you talk about the aventure novels scooped up by boys early in the last century you ARE talking about Stevenson and Haggard and Sabatini. But for all their adventurousness each of their books come with serious themses. Haggard's She remains nothing less than a bitter look at the mortality of our our species; a very dark book at its core. Sabatini's novels are implicit condemnations of imperialsim and expansionism. And the underlying psychology of Stevenson's bad guys invariably alter the lives of their young victims forever. Consider Treasure island, for instance, in juxtaposition to The Treasure of Sierra Madre. In some ways they're identical. And yet the Stevenson is a young adult book.

But it's fun sometimes to escape all that with Edgar Rice Burroughs. One of my favorite images in all literature is John Carter in that Arizona cave deep in the night when he's summoned to Mars. It's one of the most eerily beautiful scenes I've ever read.

'Route 66,' the complete series, now on DVD

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:53:00 +0000

Ed here: My friend Jack O'Connell sent me this link because he "suspected" I was a Route 66 guy. He's right. This was a dramatic series that not only got its own moment down but presaged what was to come in five years or so. As with any series some episodes were stronger than others but if you want to know what it was like to be in your Twenties in the America of the late Fifties and early Sixties, and didn't go right into college or the service, this is where to look. This America top to bottom with many points never covered by movies or TV in between. Some of the strongest writing and acting of the decade can be found here. Thanks. Jack.

Martin Milner, George Maharis star in 'Route 66,' the complete series, now on DVD

Published: Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 12:50 PM Updated: Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 12:55 PM

By Chris Ball, The Plain Dealer

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"Route 66," the complete series

Two clean-cut young men drift across the country in a Corvette convertible, looking for odd jobs and finding adventure in this classic CBS drama.

You can feel the influence of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" in the 1960-64 series, but its heroes certainly aren't bongo-playing beatniks. The decent, capable characters are quick to lend a hand to a stranger in need as they journey from town to town and coast to coast.

Martin Milner, who later starred in "Adam-12," is on board as Tod Stiles for all 116 episodes. His traveling companion for the first 82 episodes is George Maharis as Buz Murdock. When an illness sidelines Maharis, he is replaced for the final 32 episodes by Glenn Corbett as Lincoln Case.

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Part of the show's appeal lies in its constantly changing setting. One of the associate producers, Sam Manners, was born in Cleveland, and thus a number of episodes take place in prominent Northeast Ohio locations. They include Edgewater Park, the Flats, the port, the East Ninth Street pier, Public Square, a Bratenahl mansion, Euclid Beach Amusement Park and the construction of the freeway interchange at Mayfield Road and I-271.

Most of the episodes were penned by writer-producer Stirling Silliphant, an Oscar winner for his screenplay for "In the Heat of the Night."

Nelson Riddle composed and performed the show's instrumental theme song, which became a pop hit. Arthur Hiller ("Love Story") directed 12 episodes.

Guest stars include Lee Marvin, Inger Stevens, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Rod Steiger, Jack Warden, Ed Asner, Michael Rennie, Julie Newmar, Tammy Grimes, Herschel Bernardi, Barbara Eden, Tom Bosley, DeForest Kelley, John Astin, Harvey Korman, Sylvia Miles, Leslie Nielsen, Burt Reynolds, Ron Howard, Gene Hackman, Martin Sheen, James Caan, Buster Keaton, Peter Lorre, Anne Francis and Suzanne Pleshette.

Unlike many TV shows that eventually just fade out, "Route 66" had a definite concluding episode, where one character gets married and another makes plans to return home to his family.

"Route 66" first arrived on DVD with season one, volume one in 2007, followed little by little by the remainder of the first three seasons. Season four has not been released separately and is only now making its DVD debut in this complete series, prompting complaints from fans who already own the first three seasons and only need the fourth.

The complete series is 24 discs, covering 100 hours. DVD extras consist of vintage commercials, a historical featurette on the Corvette, and the only new bonus item, a 1990 panel discussion at the William S. Paley Television Festival, with Maharis, Hiller, writer-producer Herbert B. Leonard and casting director Marion Dougherty.

From Shout Factory. Released May 22.

cball@plaind.com

The Urban Landscape of Marxist Noir Alan Wald

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:42:00 +0000

Alan Wald

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FROM CRIME TIME

(Thanks to Terry Butler for the link)

Professor Alan Wald tells Graham Barnfield about the writers rediscovered after years of forensic detective work

Part of your last book Writing from the Left reads as a pledge to rediscover the lost authors of the 1940s and 1950s. How did you become interested in these writers?

My preoccupation with 'lost' leftwing authors of the 1940s and 1950s is a logical extension of my research on the 'committed' radical writers of the 1930s. Many of the best-known 'left' authors of the Depression era were, in fact, formed as writers and intellectuals in the 1920s - for example, John Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Josephine Herbst, and Langston Hughes. Even Michael Gold and Jack Conroy served literary apprenticeships in the 1920s. This explains why I was particularly concerned in my first three books with the relationship of Marxism to Modernism, since 'High Modernism' was in full swing in the 1920s. But it wasn't very long before I was asking myself: what was the trajectory of those who were very young in the 1930s, who perhaps did not reach their stride until after World War Two? I was also struck by the fact that so many of the 'canonised' texts of 1930s, such as The Grapes of Wrath, For Whom the Bell Tolls, U.S.A., Native Son, the Studs Lonigan trilogy, Waiting for Lefty, were by writers who later repudiated the particular kind of radicalism to which they adhered at the time when they produced their masterpieces. So I also began to ask myself about the cultural production - and the lives - of those who stayed true to their early convictions through the years of McCarthyite persecution. As a result of further research I began to wonder if it might be an inaccurate representation of US cultural history to focus so much on a '1930s' or 'Great Depression' radical tradition organised around a paradigm of strike novels, conversions-to-Communism novels, and so on. Would it not be more appropriate to think about a radical tradition of larger scope that perhaps expressed itself in distinct forms - and achieved its greatest notoriety - during the 1930s? What if the left tradition were more central to US culture, rather than episodic to 'protest decades' like the 1930s and 1960s? And what if 'writers on the left' were redefined to mean 'writings by leftists', regardless of genre? So I began looking at the names that I did NOT recognise in the book review sections of left publications, or from the membership lists of left cultural organisations. In particular, when I could not locate any references to them in standard literary histories and reference books, I became even more intrigued. I used 'detective' methods of trying to find out the fate of these people - rummaging through phone books in various cities, going to the physical locations of some of their books, writing personal letters to their last known addresses, and looking in the 'miscellaneous' files of the archives of the more important writers and political figures (where materials from unidentified people tends to get lumped and then overlooked). As it turned out, a surprising number of such writers were - or soon became - involved in crime/thriller/pulp/mystery writing, often marked in some fashion by the encounter with Marxism.

for the rest go here:

http://www.crimetime.co.uk/features/marxistnoir.html

LeeMarvin in "The Killers" by Fred Blosser

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:33:00 +0000

SUNDAY, MAY 13, 2007

From Fred Blosser

Ed, there was a fine essay by Manohla Dargis about Lee Marvin in "The New York Times" on Friday -- a must-read if you haven't seen it.

The article's comments about Marvin's performance in Don Siegel's "The Killers" prompted me to pull out my video copy and watch it again for the first time in several years. As I remembered, it's a great crime film with an amazing cast and a tight-knit Gene L. Coon script wonderfully directed by Siegel. Except for some ancient production techniques, such as back projection and some rather blatant stock footage in a few scenes, it hardly seems dated at all. While Dargis remarks that Marvin "owns the film up, down and sideways," the rest of the cast ain't shabby either -- John Cassavettes, Ronald Reagan, Angie Dickinson, Claude Akins, Norman Fell, and Clu Gulager.

You know, the critics in the '60s fell all over themselves praising Jean Luc-Godard and Francois Truffaut for "reinventing" the pulp noir story by using the genre as a coat-rack for exisential musings, but "The Killers" goes them one better, in my opinion. It works equally well as a standard gangster thriller and as an existential statement. The movie, as you'll recall, is centered on a quest by Marvin's character, a contract killer, to find out WHY: Why did his latest victim (Cassavettes) face death willingly and resignedly, without running or pleading? Seems to me there are two existential scenarios there. One is the mystery of the victim's seemingly inexplicable acceptance of a premature and violent death. The other is the mystery of why it matters to Marvin's character. Logically, there is no reason for Marvin's character to care at all, but his irrational obsession drives the movie in its irrationality.

The last time I watched the film, back in the '90s, I was most struck by the casting and how, from the vantage point of 30 years on, it was amusing to see that the mail-car heist that lay behind the death of Cassavettes' character was engineered by a future President of the United States and by an actor who may be best remembered today, thanks to TV Land reruns, as comically irascible landlord Stanley Roper in "Three's Company."

Now, nine years on, I am equally struck by the look of Marvin's and Gulager's hit men with their sunglasses and bland business suits. I couldn't have predicted it in 1998, but the sunglasses and bland-suit look would come back big time as a model of sinister cool in the Matrix movies. The sunglasses in "The Killers" come into play in the first scene of the movie, where the gunmen invade a school for the blind to find their victim. (Pretty chilling and prescient image when you come to think of it, in hindsight of the shootings on the campuses of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and other schools.) Presumably, Marvin and Gulager wear shades as a sort of camouflage, in order not to arouse suspicion as outsiders mingling with the blind residents and employees of the school who also wear dark glasses. Later, Gulager continues to wear his dark glasses in inappropriate situations, a touch that reinforces his character's odd, unpredictable, unsettling vibe.

Hm, maybe Dargis is correct in saying that Marvin "owns the movie," but Gulager gives him a good run for the money. (With some thanks to Siegel, according to Stuart Kaminsky's 1974 book on Siegel's movies, which claims that Gulager's "wild role [was] created entirely by Siegel.") My brother-in-law refers to the Method acting by Gulager, Michael Parks, and others in the early '60s as "the slouch and mumble school of acting," but as delivered by Gulager, it hits the precisely right note to distinguish Gulager's younger killer from Marvin's business-like, straight-on character.

The opening scene also features the most brutally unsettling bit of violence in the movie, to my mind, when Marvin and Gulager hit and terrorize a blind secretary (Virginia Christine) who greets them in a friendly way when they walk into her office to ask the whereabouts of the man they have come to find. Nowadays, NOW would probably picket a movie featuring a scene like that, and in principle, I would agree with their outrage, and I suspect Siegel would have too; but I don't see a sexual/misogynistic undertone to the act that often characterizes violence against women in the movies. It is simply a display of force against an innocent person who happens to be a woman, exerted because Marvin and Gulager are inherently if dispassionately violent men who need to locate their target and complete their job as quickly as possible. It sets the tone of the film in the most disturbingly effective way imaginable.

In the Times article, Dargis laments: "For younger audiences, especially those who believe film history starts with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Marvin may well represent a question mark. (“Who?” a young friend asked.)" Don Siegel, too, I imagine. But I suspect that today's kids and 20-somethings weaned on extreme video games and Quentin Tarantino would find something familiar and resonant in "The Killers" and in Lee Marvin's performance. What do you think?

Fred Blosser

Ghosting

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:03:00 +0000

Ghosting

I've commented before on the business of one writer ghosting another writer's book. Writer one gets sick; falls off the wagon; wife dumps him. Something amiss anyway. He can't do the book. He asks a friend. Friend writes the book, it's published and is credited (unless it's a house name job) to the bibliography of writer number one.

Nobody will ever know. Well, almost nobody.

This is not a new process. It may well have gone on back in Shakespeare's time.

I bring this up because I admire a novel by Leigh Brackett called STRANGER AT HOME. I've been assured she didn't write it. I also admire a novel by Henry Kuttner called MAN DROWNING. Apparently it's an open secret that Cleve Cartmill wrote it.

I guess I have to accept this scuttlebutt as fact. But I wonder. Brackett's style--that sweeping almost mythic prose--is very much in evidence in Stranger. I grew up reading her. I know from Leigh Brackett. I find it difficult to believe that she didn't at least go through somebody else's first draft and make it her own.

As for the Kuttner, a man I admire as much as I admire Brackett, if Drowning is actually by Cleve Cartmill then Cartmill was suicidal when he wrote it. I also know from Cartmill. I can't recall a single Cartmill novel that displays this sense of loss and despair. Despite the fact that Harpers published this in hardcover, this is very much a true Gold Medal novel. And the grotesque woman who hires the protagonist is right out of Kuttner. Not Cartmill. Did Cartmill do the first draft and Kuttner the polish?

See the trouble you get into when you try to fool people?

MGM GREENLIGHTS "CARRIE" REMAKE

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:17:00 +0000

Ed here: Brian DePalma's adaptation of Stephen King's consummate teenage story was just about perfect. I hold out no hope for the remake. This is from Cinema Retro.

MGM GREENLIGHTS "CARRIE" REMAKE; KIMBERLY PEIRCE TO DIRECT

Struggling MGM is betting on the past in order to reverse its fortunes. The studio has a remake of the 1976 filmCarrie going into production. Brian De Palma directed the original adaptation of Stephen King's best-seller about a bullied high school girl who uses psychic powers to get revenge on her tormentors. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie earned Oscar nominations for their performances as Carrie and her crazed mother and young John Travolta had an early big screen role in the film. The new version has a female director, Kimberly Peirce. The story line was an early plea against bullying, something that will probably resonate even more today.

Forgotten Books: Mermaid by Margaret Millar

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:09:00 +0000

One of Margaret Millar's final novels is also perhaps her most brutal.

Cleo Jasper is a beautiful but sightly retarded twenty-two year old woman who has been taken care of by her wealthy and pompous older brother Hilton since the death of their parents. One day she stops in to attorney-detective Tom Aragon's office to inquire about the rights of slightly retarded people. Aragon was one of Millar's few series leads, an honorable young man trying to move his career forward while worrying about his marriage coming apart. Cleo's beauty and gentle confusion give him respite from his worries so he allows himself to be momentarily transfixed by her.

He doesn't hear her name until until her brother Hilton appears and informs Aragon that she is missing. It seems he caught her late at night having sex (she'd been a virgin) in his college age son's bedroom. He was so angry he kicked him out of the house. In sympathy Cleo left later in the middle of the night.

I used the word "brutal" because this is a breathtaking suspense novel in which a large cast of characters is aggrieved but none find solace. The major characters are Hilton's wife who resents how her husband has always considered his sister more important than anyone else in the family and whose bitterness has caused her to despise Mermaid Cleo; the very proper sixty-year-old woman who runs the expensive school where the slightly retarded students go and knows that scandal will end her tenure where she's worked thirty years; the spoiled and violent fifteen-year-old boy who goes to school with Cleo and whose only desire is to someday be accepted by his playboy father; and the detective whose class resentment makes him dislike everybody involved in the case except for Aragon who is not wealthy. And finally to himself by proposing to her. Aragon believes that she has run off with him. But then the counselor is found murdered.

Millar's novels are always tours of the upper and lower classes and Mermaid is no different. Cleo's beauty is such that men of every class are dazzled by her; oddly her mental impairment has a certain wistful charm to add to her fetching face and body.

And Millar's novels always shock and surprise--she was Dame Agatha's favorite crime writer--so much so that they are textbooks for style and structure. Oh yes--and they are always comic as hell at moments.

In every respect Mermaid is stunning.

How I Wrote KING CITY by Lee Goldberg

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:14:00 +0000

Ed here: Lee Goldberg is one of those few writers who've done it all--magazine writing, novels, short stories, tie-ins, books on writing and writing for television and movies. He's also been a producer and director. And I'm sure I'm forgetting some other form. His Monk tie-ins are at least as strong as the tv series best and sometimes even better. He's written two of my all-time favorite novels The Man With The Iron-On Badge and The Walk. His latest novel is King City which in juicy detail he talks about here. I enjoyed the hell out of this and you will too.

How I Wrote KING CITY

Today, Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint released my crime novelKING CITY in digital and printeditions...and Brilliance Audio released the 7-hour audio version,read by Patrick Lawlor.

Here's an essay I posted on this blog in August about the writing process behind the book...

I've written over thirty novels, and my process with all of them was pretty much the same. I had an idea, I wrote a bullet-point outline, and I started writing the book, revising my outline along the way (I call them "living outlines," since I usually finish writing them a few days before I complete my manuscripts). But the process of writing KING CITY, my new standalone crime novel, was entirely different.

KING CITY began as a TV series pitch that I took all over Hollywood four or five years ago. It generated some interest but ultimately didn't lead to anything. So I put it in a drawer and moved on.

But the idea nagged at me anyway and I began to think KING CITY might make a better book than a screenplay. So, between MONK novels three years ago, I wrote 200 pages and a broad-strokes outline for the rest of the book.

I sent the proposal to my agent and began writing my next MONK book. The first place she sent KING CITY to was Penguin/Putnam, my MONK publisher, because she felt certain they'd snap it up. Between DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK, I'd written twenty-some novels for them. We knew that they liked me and my work, which had been successful for them, so we didn't think they'd see KING CITY as much of a gamble.

But they passed, surprising us both. My agent felt the rejection was less about me or the book than the way the business had changed. Mid-list authors were being dropped, editors were being fired, and the days of selling book proposals was over. If I wanted to sell KING CITY, I'd have to write the whole book and then shop it around.

I wasn't wild about that idea. If editors who knew me and my work well didn't find the first 200 pages compelling enough to merit an offer, I doubted that reading the whole novel would change their minds. And if these editors, folks I'd worked with for years, weren't willing to gamble on me, why would someone else?

for the rest go here:

leegoldberg.typepad.com/

Excellent Piece on e Books by Libby Fischer Hellmann

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:07:00 +0000

Whoa! Let’s All Just Take A Deep Breath…

May 15th, 2012 / Author: LibbyFischerHellmann

I’m frustrated. A little angry. But most of all, opinionated (Yeah, I know.. what else is new?)

Over the past few days people have been chattering about a couple of articles dealing with authors and publishing. One is a New York Times story about best-selling authors now being told to publish more than one book a year.

The other is a breezy analysis from Forbes which basically says that anyone with a good brand can become a successful author.

At first I saw these articles as the antithesis of each other, exploring both the opportunity and the curse of the digital revolution. But then I realized they actually were the mirror image of each other. Or more accurately, cause and effect. Bottom line: the two articles reinforce an inherent paradox. A Digital Catch-22.

The New York Times article examines how best-selling authors, many of them crime fiction authors, are now being forced to double-down on product. Authors like Lee Child and Lisa Scottoline are now expected to write more than one novel a year. Whether it’s a short story (in Lee’s case) or a second novel (in Lisa’s), Big Publishing is requiring more product. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Michael Connelly has been doing this for years. Lee Goldberg, too. And, of course, Joe Konrath. More power to them. They are amazing writers. Most of us aren’t.

The Forbes article discusses how writers are increasingly interacting with readers through social marketing and working hard to create their brand. The key sentence for me was: “If someone writes well and is skillful about how to build his or her brand, incredible things can happen.“

Hold on. Not so fast.

Incredible things? Well, maybe. Financial success? Perhaps. But what about the phrase “writes well” which the Forbes article kind of tossed off? What about the quality?

for the rest go here: www.libbyhellmann.com/wp/

Link Wray: So Glad, So Proud

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:55:00 +0000

Link Wray: So Glad, So Proud

by Kim Morgan

Ed here: As usual I played the rube. A few years ago I posted a link to a movie commentary I thought exceptional. I not only praised the article I said that this Kim Morgan should really have a following. Came the e mails. A few suggested I was joking; and a few realized what a moron I was. Kim Morgan has been world famous and world respected for some time even if I didn't know it. So this time I'll say that I respect her even more for this fine take on the late Link Wray one of the all-time great mystery rockers.

Rock pioneer Link Wray, most famous for "Rumble" was boss in every era.

In 2000, at a small club in Portland, Ore., I witnessed this for myself. The half Shawnee shaman, at the age of 71, performed one of the greatest shows I've ever seen in my life. Some time had passed since Quentin Tarantino featured Wray's famed "Rumble" in Pulp Fiction, so the "Rawhide" rocker attracted a smaller crowd this time around. The better for all of us. The crowd consisted of die-hard Rockabillies, a smattering of older people, varied Wray fans, me and my little siste gods work his power -- taking all that is raucous and dark and soulful and yes, light, and hypnotizing us. There were no bad vibes in that cramped crowd of potential rowdies. Moving on stage like the half-Shawnee he was, he worked us as if performing some kind of Native American rock and roll rain dance, while still playing down and dirty -- music that made us feel alive and real and raw. And then dreamy -- a seedy, sexy, soulful, demonic, beatific dream.

And then this wide awake fever dream became so tangibly real -- a moment that's remained a highlight of my life: Link Wray handed me his guitar in the middle of "Rumble." Yes, he actually, mid-performance, leaned over from the stage, and placed his guitar in my hands. And that devil (an angel in disguise) did so with a grin on his face. I was holding Link Wray's guitar! I didn't scream or cry or crumble into Beatlemania hysterics; instead I held it as long as I could and then, in a trance-like state, passed that sacred idol through the crowd. This was to be shared. And Link just took it all in -- jovial and delighted as the awed audience passed it along, and with great, religious respect. He trusted us. It was safely returned back to Wray who, in spite of his dark image (Wray was still one of the greatest looking leather clad rockers ever) and menacing sound, smiled broadly. I still have his pick, stashed safely in my jewelry box.

for the rest go here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-morgan/link-wray-so-glad-so-prou_b_1513063.html?ref=entertainment

The Mitt Hits The Fan

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Sat, 12 May 2012 20:44:00 +0000

Ed here: I always catch hell when I run a political piece but screw it this is too good not to share. I've longed admired James Wolcott's insights and elegant style. Reading him is like listening to exciting music. These are excerpts of his blog post. You can read all of it on James Wolcott's Blog at the Vanity Fair site. You should read him all the time anyway.

When the Mitt Hits the Fan

by James Wolcott

MAY 11, 2012

Once of the reasons Mitt Romney seems like such a time-warped, B-actor leading man of a candidate--a cross between John Gavin and Tom Tryon, with high-gloss Hollywood black hair for that new Cadillac shine and a smile that always has money on its mind--is that surface is all he seems to sport. Below the lacquer, there's no underlife; no doubts, no sawing contradictions, no gnawing resentments. As a human being, he still doesn't seem fully thawed, and you get the sense that his sweat would be cold, like refrigerator condensation. What's strange isn't that Romney seems capable of expressing empathy, since empathy is clearly not something he considers of corporate value, but that in all his years of public life he hasn't learned to fake it, to at least pretend he cares about those less fortunate or vulnerable, something even Rick Perry was able to do with his "have a heart" comment re immigrants. For this brief outburst of humanity, Perry suffered major backlash from the rightwing ghoul squad, but at least it showed a bit of blood circulation on his part. Romney's rusty mechanics on the campaign trail, the forced banter and the creak of premeditation at even the most casual moments, has evoked comparisons with Richard Nixon, but Nixon was genuinely an introspective loner; Romney is a joiner and belonger without any moon shadow of introspection. He doesn't seem to have given anything any deep thought, which is another reason he's no Nixon; Nixon was a law-school grind and a user-upper of yellow legal pads to work out the pros and cons and details of domestic and foreign policy issues, while Romney's policy brain operates on frictionless cruise control. He's a conservative corporate capitalist at home and abroad his thinking is so old, encrusted, and stuck in the frozen tundra that, as Daniel Larison has pointed out, he doesn't even qualify as a neoconservative--he's an unreconstructed Cold Warrior from the 50s or 60s. Another reason he seems like a throwback to the cardboard leading men of lesser Hitchcock and Preminger films.

(more)

He's a coward. He's never gone against the grain, stood up for an underdog or advanced an unpopular cause before it became popular, risked a single gleaming hair off his head, shone any backbone apart from the determination to win, tapped into anything larger than himself, risen to the moment.

The Matilyn Tapes

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:03:00 +0000

MARCH 16, 2007

The conspiracy that killed Marilyn Monroe...

From the Sydney Morning Tribune:

For four decades there have been rumours that Marilyn Monroe's death was not a simple suicide. Now a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, Philippe Mora, has uncovered an FBI document that throws up a chilling new scenario.

The screen legend Marilyn Monroe...the FBI report says she "expected to have her stomach pumped out and get sympathy for her suicide attempt", but it suggests she was left to die. Photo: Harold Lloyd/The Harold Lloyd Collection

BOBBY KENNEDY'S affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of - and perhaps even a participant in - a plan "to induce" her suicide.

The detailed three-page report implicates the Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, Monroe's psychiatrist, staff and her publicist in the plot.

The allegations suggest the 36-year-old actress, who had a history of staging attention-seeking suicide attempts, was deliberately given the means to fake another suicide on August 4, 1962. But this time, it is suggested, she was allowed to die as she sought help.

The document, hidden among thousands of pages released under freedom-of-information laws last October, was received by the FBI on October 19, 1964 - two years after her death - and titled simply "ROBERT F KENNEDY".

It was compiled by an unnamed former special agent working for the then Democrat governor of California, Pat Brown, and forwarded to Washington by Curtis Lynum,then head of the San Francisco FBI. Despite a disclaimer that it could not be sourced or authenticated, it was considered important enough to immediately circulate to the FBI's five most senior officers, including director J. Edgar Hoover's right-hand man, Clyde Tolson.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/kennedy-link-to-death/2007/03/16/1173722744304.html for the rest
------------------------
THE MARILYN TAPES IS AVAILABLE ON KINDLE FOR $2.99

Here's a piece I wrote in 2007 when a book appeared claiming that Marilyn Monroe was murdered by Bobby Kennedy and his friends.

"BOBBY KENNEDY'S affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of - and perhaps even a participant in - a plan "to induce" her suicide.

"The detailed three-page report implicates the Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, Monroe's psychiatrist, staff and her publicist in the plot."

Ed here: Back in 1994 Tor published a novel of mine about Marilyn Monroe called THE MARILYN TAPES. The premise was that the Kennedy Brothers and J. Edgar Hoover had been audio taping Monroe's bedroom at the time of her death. Both tried desperately to get those tapes. The reels would destroy the Kennedys. Hoover could use them to blackmail Jack and Bobby whom he loathed.

I spent most of 1993 writing the book. For the first and only time I hired a reseracher. She lived in LA and had access to all kinds of Marilyn material. Early on I was intrduced to the Marilyn cult. One guy called me and said that his group would have to "approve" my manuscript before I pubished it. They cared deeply, he said, about her reputation. Other callers told me strange Marilyn stories they wanted to to see in the book. I still don't know how they learned I was writing it. Maybe the researcher told them.

I'm no Marilyn expert. In the course of writing the novel I came to realize that I probably wouldn't have liked her much. I say this based on how much trouble she gave various directors and because she insisted on bringing Lee Strasberg to all the sets of her pictures. She would check every bit of acting she did with him no matter what the director said. That said two or three of the reviews noted how sympathetic my portrait of her was. I felt sorry for her but I think she would have been hell to know (my late friend the actor Kevin McCarthy who knew her disagreed with me).

The problem with all this is that there are so many conspiracy theories any semblance of truth gets lost in the fog. As I was thinking when I wrote the following in response to the news story above.

1) The Kennedy-Lawford-etc. conspiracy has been around for years. Here's why I doubt its validity. Remember Monica Lewinsky? I saw her on Larry King one night where she allowed as how in the month after her first tryst with Clinton she told "only three or four people." Do the math on that. And those three or four people told how many other people? Who needs mass communications when you have this much word of mouth going on. Same with the Kennedy-Lawford theory. You've got a minmum of five people involved in this plot. No group of five people, including Lawford who drank a lot, can keep such a dark secret forever. They're going to share it with somebody. And that somebody is going to share it with somebody else. Etc. It just doesn't work. Sorry.

2) The book that contended that J. Edgar Hoover was a cross-dresser. No way. Made up of whole cloth. The same as the story, passed down through the decades, that Hoover wouldn't go after the Mafia because a mob boss had a photo of J. and Tolson in bed together. Urban legend. It's always put this way: "I didn't see it myself but a buddy of mine knows somebdy who DID see it." False. The even better story is the one about (this may have been the same book) Hoover dressing up in a nifty black cocktail dress for New Year's Eve 1958. Please. The most feared and despised man in Washington, D.C?. People praying for his downfall? And he goes out in a cocktail dress? Sure he does. Hoover and Tolson were probably gay but I wonder if they ever acted on it. My opinion only. In my reading I got the sense that Tolson was a decent guy. Hoover was a ruthless psychotic paranoid prick. Other than that I hold his memory in the highest regard.

THE MARILYN TAPES IN AVAILABLE ON KINDLE FOR $2.99

Forgotten Books: Having Wonderful Crime by Craig Rice

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:51:00 +0000

Having Wonderful Crime

I've just reread Craig Rice's 1944 novel Having Wonderful Crime. Rice was, of course, the grand dame of mystery mixed with screwball comedy. She was on the cover of Time in the late Forties and was considered one of the dominant forces in the mystery fiction of the time. But she had demons that were only exacerbated by her alcoholism and wedded up a number of times, once to a man who allegedly did some of her writing or declared that her writing was actually his. The rumors vary.

Having Wonderful Crime is larky in its plotting and typically smart-ass in its dialogue. Customers got what they paid for but beneath the frivolity (which is quite amusing) there's a darkness that makes the drinking scenes (everybody is at least half drunk in a Rice novel) not so much fun.

Rice opens the book with a long scene involving a man who lacks the strength to get out of bed. He is beseiged by the demons and terrified of what he might have done. This is one of the most powerful morning-after scenes I've ever read. I think most alcoholics would agree with me. Then her character, the always inebriated lawyer-slueth John J. Malone of Chicago, must do his thing.

As an aside the book made a frothy B-movie. From IMDB:" Lawyer Malone's two zany friends embroil him in detective work once too often, and the police are after all three. So Malone must accompany Jake and beautiful Helene on their honeymoon at rustic Lenhart Lodge. There, they plunge into a broad burlesque of murder mystery cliches, with rapid-fire wisecracks, double takes, and every sight gag known to Hollywood."

One thing the movie couldn't get to were Rice's social perceptions. There's a scene in which Rice (using interior monologue) assesses a room full of glamorous people and their worth on the glitz scale. Her observations are worthy of Tom Wolfe at his best and nastiest.

This book makes a good case for what we call today the traditional mystery. It's a pleasure to read as pure entertainment but there's a also a wicked social voice relating the reality of this particular time and this particular strata of society. Despite her reputation, I don't think she's hardboiled. At least not in this book. She's just a very good storyeller reporting back from the eyries of the wealthy and privileged. And laughing up her silk sleeve.

Edmond O'Brien

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:19:00 +0000

I watched DOA recently and reaffirmed my opinion that it's one of the great B pulp stories of all time.

"I'd like to report a murder."
"Whose?"
"Mine."

Hw can you miss with an opening like that? This is pure noir from first frame to last, an almost surreal experience of radioactive drugs (the scene with the doctor telling him that he's going to die is handled flawlessly), the almost documentary-like observation of San Francisco architecture, the quick vicious violence.

There's even a snarky bit of satire. The war has ended and prosperity has come to many. Salesmen abound. They fill the hotel where O'Brien first stays. As he goes into his room he sees there's a party going on in the room across from him. He accepts the invitation. Director Rudolph Mate gets everything right in this bit--the inane chatter, the sexual undertone, the sudden drunken jealousy, the goofy hats of the women and the effusive Chamber of Commerce attitude of the men.

From that point on it's grim without relief. As many critics have noted the black band in the jazz club scene was pushing the envelope. There was studio concern the film wouldn't be shown in the South (though I never quite understood that--the band did nothing but make some sweet music, they weren't hitting on white chicks). And then comes the succession of liars O'Brien encounters as he tries to figure out who poisoned him and why. He becomes a de facto hardboiled private eye and a better peeper than most. There's all that anger, all that fear.

I saw this new at Half Price for (I think) $3. Hard to go wrong.

As for O'Brien...several years ago TCM showed him as a very young man in a costume drama. He was thin and theatrcal. Studied. Weight and years gave him a more comfortable persona, the perpetually agigated average man who lost just about every battle with the dark gods. Though he would do more work after his part in The Wild Bunch, I think he was especially memorable as the crazed-wise old coot with rotted teeth and a wino laugh. Fitting and ironic in context that his character and Robert Ryan's were the only two left in the coda. Fine work capping a significant career.

Sleep With Strangers by Dolores Hitchens

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:15:00 +0000

SLEEP WITH STRANGERS

Ed here: While Dolores Hitchens' Sleep with Slander is even stronger than Sleep with Strangers this is a brooding and dark character-driven mystery that keeps the pages turning. This is a very different take on the California noir. The reviewer here is wrong about Hitchens' career. Hitchens "strayed"many times from cozies and did quite well with the suspense-mysterygenre. And while there is a Ross Macdonald influence in her darker books there's also a strong hint of Dorothy B. Hughes. Despite my quibbles I think the writer here filed a solid helpful review from Reading California. This is in my Keeper bookcase.

SLEEP WITH STRANGERS

Dolores Hitchens holds down the No. 3 spot in mylist of prolific California novelists. Her output was impressive. She produced some forty-five books in a career that began in 1938 and continued until her death in 1973. Only twice did she stray from standard puzzle mysteries, many of which featured a cat named Samantha, into the world of the hard-boiled. Both forays proved successful. Author and critic Bill Pronzini calls Sleep with Slander (1960) “the best traditional male private eye novel written by a woman.” And noir authority Woody Haut lists Sleep with Strangers as one of the "primary pulp culture texts." It's also probably the best novel set in Long Beach, although the public library there doesn't have a copy.

Sleep with Strangers by Dolores Hitchens. Doubleday (1955), 192 pp.

Forty-something Long Beach P. I. Jim Sader has begun a new case. His client, young and apparently unsullied Kay Wanderley, comes from one of the town's most prominent families. She wants Jim to locate her mother, Felicia, who left home three nights before and hasn't been seen since. He begins interviewing acquaintances, starting with Felicia's attractive drinking partner, Tina Griffin, and her surly would-be real estate client, Charlie Ott. Meanwhile, Jim's junior partner, Dan Scarborough, is working on a similar case. The missing person is Perry Ajoukian, whose now-frail father lives off a fortune made in the local oil boom. Of more interest to Dan is Perry's neglected wife, Connie, who stuns him with her glittering beauty. Jim at first doubts that the two simultaneous disappearances are connected.

Hitchens renders this mystery story much in the Ross Macdonald style. Jim and Dan are calm and meticulous. They avoid wisecracks and mayhem. More important, they operate in a fully realized setting. Social class and historical precedent have as much importance as appearances. Unlike Macdonald Hitchens uses a third-person narrator, but she keeps the focus tightly on Jim. He's in every scene, and his are the only thoughts the narrator relates. The author goes her own way, however, in the depiction of her protagonist. In contrast to Lew Archer, the Macdonald hero who possesses relentless stamina, Jim is coming to realize that he's growing older and less energetic. More to the point, he fears that his appeal to ingenuous but sexy young women is vanishing. The more he thinks about Kay, the more she becomes a challenge to his manhood -- and his judgment. The solution to the mystery might have been trickier, but otherwise the book is highly recommended.

The Captain Must Die; Koenig; Piccirilli

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Tue, 08 May 2012 00:58:00 +0000

Ed-

I hope you're doing well.

This week Robert Colby's THE CAPTAIN MUST DIE is free for Nook and Kindle (available in the respective stores). I know that was one you liked.

Best, Ben LeRoy

Ed here: I think this is one of the great Gold Medals, right near the top of the list. And now it's FREE!

BTW I got four e mails off line about recommending Joseph Koenig's False Negative and saying it was my choice for an Edgar. This would be in the Paperback Original Category. So enquiring minds wanted to know if I had a choice for Best Novel as indeed I do. The Last Kind Words by Tom Piccirilli is not only a breakthrough for Tom but for the field itself. A brilliant literary crime novel dealing with a family you will never forget. A masterpiece.

AMOS BURKE, SECRET AGENT.

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:27:00 +0000

Ed here: Here in microcosm is what happens when the suits decided to "fix" something. Amos Burke was a ridiculous ham-handed satire of current fads and social tendencies. I loved it. Here we had a slick copper who arrived on crime scenes in a Rolls Royce and got laid more than any three pro basketball players combined. Hollywod was his natural stomping ground. This is from the great Mystery

AMOS BURKE, SECRET AGENT. ABC / Four Star Productions / Barbety, 1965-66. Cast:Gene Barry as Amos Burke, Carl Benton Reid as The Man. Series based on characters created by Frank D. Gilroy. Produced by Aaron Spelling.

From Aaron Spelling: A Prime Time Life, by Aaron Spelling with Jefferson Graham: “Burke’s Law was one of my first great campy shows… Then ABC threw us a curveball with the ‘James Bond’ craze. Suddenly secret agents were in… So in 1965 Burke’s Law, the story of a millionaire L.A. detective, was forcibly changed to Amos Burke, Secret Agent. He became a debonair, globe-trotting secret agent for a United States intelligence agency. I hated it, Gene hated it, we all hated it, and ABC was very wrong to change it…”

The series was a ratings failure from the very beginning. “Balance of Terror” (9/15/65) was the series first episode. The Arbitron ratings (Broadcasting, 9/20/65) found NBC’s I Spy at 37.6 share (first half hour) and 40.9 (last half hour) compared to CBS’s Danny Kaye at 32.3 share and 30.3 share compared to Amos Burke at 24.8 share and 25.8 share. By November the series would be cancelled (Broadcasting, 11/1/65).

Interestingly, the final episode of the series, “Terror in Tiny Town, Part Two” aired at 10pm on Wednesday, January 12, 1966, the same night ABC premiered its new spy series Blue Light at 8:30pm. Could the failure of Amos Burke have played a role in ABC picking up Blue Light and the rush to get it on the air?

So besides the audience having little interest in Amos Burke as a spy, and everyone involved hating it, the series also had a fatal creative flaw, The Man.

The Man was supposed to be Amos Burke’s “M” (Bond) or Mr. Waverly (Man from U.N.C.L.E.). Instead The Man was one of the most unlikable, heartless, mean characters ever to play a good guy on TV. While Amos could not contact The Man, The Man gave him a watch that when it buzzed, it meant Amos had to stop everything and get to the airport as fast as possible to meet The Man. The Man’s office was the inside of a DC-9 and he conducted all meetings (but one) in the air.

for the rest go here: http://mysteryfile.com/blog/

A Different Kind of Audiobook.Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Gorman) — Sun, 06 May 2012 01:05:00 +0000

From Tor.com website

A Different Kind of Audiobook.Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero

SUSAN DUNMAN

Stories have always been a source of inspiration for musicians, but this illustrated cyberpunk anthology turns the tables by using music as an idea catalyst for the authors of these stories. A group of twenty-eight authors, musicians and graphic artists have combined their talents under the name of “The Very Us Artists” to createForeshadows. It’s a near-future world that is dark and gritty, but not without hope.

For this project, the musicians got first crack at describing the Foreshadows world. How will life change as society continues to deteriorate, mega-corporations vie for world dominance, and technology blurs reality with fantasy? Nineteen songs later, the music-makers had their answers and then invited various authors to select a song they liked and write a story to go along with it, reflecting that author’s perception of Foreshadows society. This unique approach gives those who purchase the book an intriguing bonus, as all of the songs are included on a CD in the back of the book. Those who prefer to download an e-book will receive the text and an MP3 file of the music.

I’ll admit that reviewing a title in this format was a bit challenging. Do you listen to the song before reading the accompanying story or do you listen after you’ve read the story? Or, do you listen to all of the songs first or read the stories all together, experiencing each different format as a separate entity?

After tying variations on all of the above, I came to the conclusion that there’s no right or wrong way to experience this work. However, I’ll admit that I most enjoyed reading the story first and then listening to its song. That offered a few extra minutes to reflect back on the story while trying to identify musical connections to the text. It was a bit like going on a musical game of hide and seek, which added to my appreciation and enjoyment of the story.

Both the text and the music offer an engaging variety of styles, themes, and topics. The music gives listeners a satisfying blend of ambient, industrial, electronica, rock, and soundtrack. Some tunes include lyrics, but many are instrumental or have minimal voice work. The stories themselves often deal with the personal and societal consequences war, the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots, and the ever-increasing corruption of technology into a tool for vast power or total escape from reality.

Imagination runs rampant in stories exploring the motivations and machinations of individuals trying to cope with their circumstances. Sometimes they are human and sometimes they are more (or less) than human. And while all stories reflect the Foreshadows universe, the collection contains such a diverse cast of characters and situations that there is nothing predictable about what you’ll encounter in the next adventure.

For example, in “Love Simulacra,” a private investigator depends on the advanced artificial intelligence of his robot to survive dangerous assignments. When the machine requires extensive repairs, he modifies it to look like his first girl-friend. It’s then he discovers that love can become very complicated, whether you’re a man or a machine. The song is a pounding, energy-driven confirmation of true love and the lyrics are perfect – especially after reading the story. “Love Simulacra” was written by Joe Rixman with music and lyrics by Bilian.

Another story, “Cold as the Gun,” also features a private investigator, but Harley Trace is an old school detective. His office is located in a decrepit area called the Unders, his ancient psi-jack malfunctions with new equipment, and his weapon of choice is an old-time Glock – not a fancy neuroneedler. When an executive type from way above in the Ivories pays him a visit, Trace accepts an unusual assignment.

However, things are never as they appear, and this is an ingenious tale of twists and turns created especially for gumshoe fans. The accompanying music is an effective mix of ambient, electronica, vocals and sound effects that seem, in part, to reflect the tension and malevolent environment described in the story. It’s a song that really grows on you. “Cold as the Gun” was written by Robert J. Randisi, with music and lyrics by Joshua Wentz, featuring Jessica Risker.

One of my favorite contributions is “Deep in the Deep: Reaction-Diffusion Dies Tonight.” It seems that the Seattle Public Library is slowly dying — giving up its space to house the homeless. As the city’s financial crisis continues to grow, officials warn that the library’s Reaction-Diffusion Cold Computer will be allowed to thaw in order to save electricity.

The loss of untold amounts of frozen data is unfathomable to the librarians who maintain the computer, but its destruction seems inevitable. As a librarian myself, it was fun to cheer for the home team, so to speak, as they struggle to save much of the planet’s recorded history. The musical counterpart for their bibliographic efforts seems to represent data or information, with lots of beebs and and drones encased in an ambient flow.

There are many other things to discover in this world, including the incredibly popular Stomp Brawl, collecting the mysterious dodec artifacts, addictive memories, and virtual realities for this life and the one beyond. There’s also the Geist, a legendary creature always seeking power sources from which to feed. “It was a shadow in the night sky, an apparition with spectral wings and unknown powers. Feeding off real and artificial life like a vampire.”

The Geist is scattered among a few of the stories, chronicling the efforts of a lone hunter to destroy the dark enigma. In “Geist Eidetic 3:4” the hunter conducts meticulous research to discover the lair of the legendary creature. Each of the songs that accompany tales about the Geist incorporate thematic riffs which serve to link the different songs about the Geist, though they vary widely in style and tempo. It’s a nice touch. “Geist Eidetic 3:4” was written by Jeff LaSala and John LaSala, with music by Dylan Leeds plus Alternate Modes of Underwater Consciousness, Thee Crumb and Ali Kilpatrick. Below is a music sample from this title:

The story of the Geist is compelling and it’s well-worth the purchase of the entire collection for this story-arc alone. But there are plenty of other great stories here, not to mention the interpretive music that has something for all tastes. The music collection can easily stand by itself and it’s likely that some selections will find themselves on your “favorites” playlist.

Ironically, once you associate a song with a story, it’s almost impossible to hear the song without recalling the story line. It’s not unlike a music video — after watching, you can’t help but remember the video scenes when you hear the music again. But in this case, the music triggers memories of scenes from a book, and that’s amazing. It’s also a testament to the power of music and story, as well as to the creativity of those who are part of this unique collaboration. I’m looking forward to more “audiobook” creations from The Very Us Artists.

You can purchase the book, as well as find more information about Foreshadows and those who’ve created it at their website,http://www.foreshadows.net.

Susan Dunman is an audiobook fanatic, no matter the format. Check out her online index of links to thousands of online audiobook reviews at Audiobook Jukebox.

for the rest go here:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/05/a-different-kind-of-audiobook-foreshadows-the-ghosts-of-zero