Showing posts with label Friday's Forgotten Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friday's Forgotten Books. Show all posts
Friday, September 16, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Friday's Forgotten Books, September 9, 2011
Sorry to be late. Water, water everywhere. When will it stop raining?
Next week, Brian Lindenmuth at SPINETINGLER will gather links. Thanks.
Patti Abbott, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
I first read DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT when it came out more than 25 years ago and my reading of it then and now are quite different. I found them quirky then. I find them sad now. As we grow older, things seem more set in stone and a dysfunctional family seems unlikely to change.
It is the most critically acclaimed and beloved of Tyler's books and is often compared to AS I LAY DYING.
All the members of the Tull family are dysfunctional. Beck, the father, deserts his family and for most of the book, we believe he is the primary cause of all their troubles. We don't understand why until the very end and share the frustrations and puzzlement of his wife, Pearl with his actions.
Pearl is run into the ground supporting her family and is seldom up to coping with them. Only a brave writer would give a woman so beset by financial problems such unlikable traits. She resorts to various verbal abuses that scar the children. Cody, the eldest, develops such severe hangups over his father's desertion and his mother's display of favoritism he becomes emotionally estranged from the family. His resentment of his younger brother and the action he takes to ameliorate his pain is painful to read. Jenny grows up scattered and remote despite her profession. Ezra, the most sympathetic character of the book and owner of the "Homesick Restaurant" shares this beaten down quality.
There are few acts of heroism in this book and, in fact, few big scenes. Its success can be pinned to the small accretion of details and words that give the Tull family life. You may not either like or dislike any character in this book, but you will believe they exist. And although you may not want to eat dinner with them, you can picture them in Baltimore even now.
Another writer for Barbara Fister's Challenge to highlight female authors.
Ed Gorman is the author or STRANGLEHOLD, A TICKET TO RIDE and a new Sam McCann book, BAD MOON RISING. You can find him here.
Zero Cool, Michael Crichton
At some point in his life--perhaps subconsciously--Michael Crichton set out to conquer the world. Not enough that he was becoming a doctor. He had to write pulp fiction while still in med school. A
nd not enough that he write pulp fiction, he had to write bestsellers. And not enough that he write bestsellers, he had to put his imprint on Hollywood by creating some of the most enduring popcorn movies of all times. Poor guy.
But for all his triumphs, I still like his early work better somehow. I enjoy Westworld more than Jurassic Park (I even prefer the somwhat messy Looker to some of the Big pictures) and his John Lange pulp stuff more than any of his later books (though The Great Train Robbery, Rising Sun and Sphere still work fine for me).
So I had a great time with the Hard Case Crime reissue of the John Lange novel Zero Cool.
This time out our hero is a radiologist named Peter Ross who, who visiting Spain, manages to pick up a lot of women and a trio of nasty and mysterious men who want him to perform an autopsy on a dead man who turns out to have been a gangster.
You have to admit. This is a pretty unique set-up for a crime novel. Ross and his elegant lady are dragged across Europe looking for an invaluable artifact. Lange was already a master of pacing. Ross is never quite sure what is going on as two different factions need his help to find an invaluable object.
Lange has more fun with this one than his other early books. The dialogue is breezier, the villains are a notch or two up the vermin scale and some elements of the unending race through various countries has the feel of Hitchcock directing Cary Grant.
This is one of those little gems of pure pulp pleasure, long on plot twists and derring do, and honed to lean perfection by a major storyteller.
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Glen Harper
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
Rob Kitchin
B.V. Lawson
Doug Levin
Evan Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Richard Pangburn
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
Tomcat
Next week, Brian Lindenmuth at SPINETINGLER will gather links. Thanks.
Patti Abbott, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
I first read DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT when it came out more than 25 years ago and my reading of it then and now are quite different. I found them quirky then. I find them sad now. As we grow older, things seem more set in stone and a dysfunctional family seems unlikely to change.
It is the most critically acclaimed and beloved of Tyler's books and is often compared to AS I LAY DYING.
All the members of the Tull family are dysfunctional. Beck, the father, deserts his family and for most of the book, we believe he is the primary cause of all their troubles. We don't understand why until the very end and share the frustrations and puzzlement of his wife, Pearl with his actions.
Pearl is run into the ground supporting her family and is seldom up to coping with them. Only a brave writer would give a woman so beset by financial problems such unlikable traits. She resorts to various verbal abuses that scar the children. Cody, the eldest, develops such severe hangups over his father's desertion and his mother's display of favoritism he becomes emotionally estranged from the family. His resentment of his younger brother and the action he takes to ameliorate his pain is painful to read. Jenny grows up scattered and remote despite her profession. Ezra, the most sympathetic character of the book and owner of the "Homesick Restaurant" shares this beaten down quality.
There are few acts of heroism in this book and, in fact, few big scenes. Its success can be pinned to the small accretion of details and words that give the Tull family life. You may not either like or dislike any character in this book, but you will believe they exist. And although you may not want to eat dinner with them, you can picture them in Baltimore even now.
Another writer for Barbara Fister's Challenge to highlight female authors.
Ed Gorman is the author or STRANGLEHOLD, A TICKET TO RIDE and a new Sam McCann book, BAD MOON RISING. You can find him here.
Zero Cool, Michael Crichton
At some point in his life--perhaps subconsciously--Michael Crichton set out to conquer the world. Not enough that he was becoming a doctor. He had to write pulp fiction while still in med school. A
nd not enough that he write pulp fiction, he had to write bestsellers. And not enough that he write bestsellers, he had to put his imprint on Hollywood by creating some of the most enduring popcorn movies of all times. Poor guy.But for all his triumphs, I still like his early work better somehow. I enjoy Westworld more than Jurassic Park (I even prefer the somwhat messy Looker to some of the Big pictures) and his John Lange pulp stuff more than any of his later books (though The Great Train Robbery, Rising Sun and Sphere still work fine for me).
So I had a great time with the Hard Case Crime reissue of the John Lange novel Zero Cool.
This time out our hero is a radiologist named Peter Ross who, who visiting Spain, manages to pick up a lot of women and a trio of nasty and mysterious men who want him to perform an autopsy on a dead man who turns out to have been a gangster.
You have to admit. This is a pretty unique set-up for a crime novel. Ross and his elegant lady are dragged across Europe looking for an invaluable artifact. Lange was already a master of pacing. Ross is never quite sure what is going on as two different factions need his help to find an invaluable object.
Lange has more fun with this one than his other early books. The dialogue is breezier, the villains are a notch or two up the vermin scale and some elements of the unending race through various countries has the feel of Hitchcock directing Cary Grant.
This is one of those little gems of pure pulp pleasure, long on plot twists and derring do, and honed to lean perfection by a major storyteller.
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Glen Harper
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
Rob Kitchin
B.V. Lawson
Doug Levin
Evan Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Richard Pangburn
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
Tomcat
Friday, September 2, 2011
Friday's Forgotten Books, September 2, 2011
Ed Gorman is the author of STRANGLEHOLD and editor of ON DANGEROUS GROUND. You can find him here.
The Crimes of Jordan Wise by Bill Pronzini
Actuary Jordan Wise tells a joke on himself a third of the way through the novel: (paraphrase) an actuary is somebody who doesn't have the personality to be an accountant.
If you watch many true crime shows, you see a lot of Jordan Wises. People who fall into crime through circumstance rather than those who go looking for it.
Jordan becomes a criminal only after meeting Annalise, a troubled and very attractive young woman who needs two things badly--sex and money. But in order to get the sex on a regular basis, Jordan must first provide the money. He embezzles a half million dollars and flees with Annalise to the Virgin Islands. In this first part of the novel, there's nice James M. Cainian detail about how Jordan comes alive for the first time in his life. Some of this is due, whether he admits it or not, to the danger of committing a serious crime. But most of it is due to Annalise and his profound sexual awakening.
The central section of the book reminds me of one of Maugham's great South Seas tales--lust, betrayl, shame played out against vast natural beauty and a native society that, thanks to an old sea man named Bone, that Jordan comes to see value in--even if Annalise, her head filled with dreams of Paris and glamor, does not. Old Maugham got one thing right for sure--as Pronzini demonstrates here--a good share of humanity, wherever you find them, are both treacherous and more than slightly insane.
There are amazing sections of writing about sea craft and sailing that remind me not of old Travis McGee but of the profoundly more troubled and desperate men of Charles Williams who find purity and peace only in the great and epic truths of the sea. That they may be as crazed and treacherous as everybdy else does not seem to bother them unduly.
There are also amazing sections (almost diaristic sections) where Jordan tells of us his fears and desires, his failings and his dreams. In places he deals vididly, painfully with his secret terror of not being enough of a man in any sense to hold Annalise.
The publisher calls this a novel and so it is. Pronzini brings great original width and breadth to the telling of this dark adventure that is both physical and spiritual. He has never written a better novel, the prose here literary in the best sense, lucid and compelling, fit for both action and introspection.
You can't read a page of this without seeing it in movie terms. The psychologically violent love story played out against a variety of contemporary settings gives the narrative great scope. And in Jordan Wise and Annalise he has created two timeless people. This story could have been set in ancient Egypt or Harlem in 1903 or an LA roller skating disco in 1981. As Falkner said neither the human heart nor the human dilemma ever changes.
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
If you watch many true crime shows, you see a lot of Jordan Wises. People who fall into crime through circumstance rather than those who go looking for it.
Jordan becomes a criminal only after meeting Annalise, a troubled and very attractive young woman who needs two things badly--sex and money. But in order to get the sex on a regular basis, Jordan must first provide the money. He embezzles a half million dollars and flees with Annalise to the Virgin Islands. In this first part of the novel, there's nice James M. Cainian detail about how Jordan comes alive for the first time in his life. Some of this is due, whether he admits it or not, to the danger of committing a serious crime. But most of it is due to Annalise and his profound sexual awakening.
The central section of the book reminds me of one of Maugham's great South Seas tales--lust, betrayl, shame played out against vast natural beauty and a native society that, thanks to an old sea man named Bone, that Jordan comes to see value in--even if Annalise, her head filled with dreams of Paris and glamor, does not. Old Maugham got one thing right for sure--as Pronzini demonstrates here--a good share of humanity, wherever you find them, are both treacherous and more than slightly insane.
There are amazing sections of writing about sea craft and sailing that remind me not of old Travis McGee but of the profoundly more troubled and desperate men of Charles Williams who find purity and peace only in the great and epic truths of the sea. That they may be as crazed and treacherous as everybdy else does not seem to bother them unduly.
There are also amazing sections (almost diaristic sections) where Jordan tells of us his fears and desires, his failings and his dreams. In places he deals vididly, painfully with his secret terror of not being enough of a man in any sense to hold Annalise.
The publisher calls this a novel and so it is. Pronzini brings great original width and breadth to the telling of this dark adventure that is both physical and spiritual. He has never written a better novel, the prose here literary in the best sense, lucid and compelling, fit for both action and introspection.
You can't read a page of this without seeing it in movie terms. The psychologically violent love story played out against a variety of contemporary settings gives the narrative great scope. And in Jordan Wise and Annalise he has created two timeless people. This story could have been set in ancient Egypt or Harlem in 1903 or an LA roller skating disco in 1981. As Falkner said neither the human heart nor the human dilemma ever changes.
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Scott Cupp
Loren Eaton
Martin Edwards
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Evan Lewis
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Eric Peterson
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
Friday, August 26, 2011
Friday's Forgotten Books, August 26, 2011
I'll be away on September 18th. Week off perhaps since a bunch of us will be in St. Louis? Or would someone else like to gather links?
Blogger has spacing issues today. Sorry.
Blogger has spacing issues today. Sorry.
Patti Abbott, REPLAY, Ken Grimwood
REPLAY by Ken Grimwood was written in 1986. It tells the story of man who has a coronary in his late thirties and wakes up t
o find himself a high school student again. He quickly comes up with the idea of having an older friend place bets on horse races and football games where he knows the outcome and proceeds through this new life, a hugely wealthy man until it happens again.And again, and again, with each life taking unexpected turns as he makes new choices.
He meets two other replayers, which allows him to discuss his situation.
This was a real page turner (recommended by Jeff Meyerson). Grimwood manages to insert some complexity into the thinking while keeping the pace up. Highly recommended. I can't help but wonder why this was never a movie. Could have been a terrific one. Or even a TV series. That might be even better.
Ed Gorman is the author of STRANGLEHOLD and TICKET TO RIDE. You can find him here.
I've always liked Marshall Crenshaw's songs especially the heartbroke ones which he manages to write with a light but no less painful touch. I saw him once in person just after his career started to slide. He's an interesting guy and a fine musician.
The inter
esting guy angle is on display here with this guide to rock'n roll movies.
The Guide goes all the way to 1994. The reviews are sometimes serious demonstrating that besides being a true rocker he's also a perceptive critic. But the most fun for people like me who grew up in the fifties are his reviews of the rock movies of that decade (and on into the sixties).
God were those movies terrible. I lost count of how many had the same basic plot--town/suburb of oldsters hate rock but kids put on a show for charity/fame and convince even the crabbiest oldster in the film what great young `uns they are after all. And those were the ones that were at least about rock `n roll. There were hybrids put together by adults who didn't have a clue. Thus in the same movie you might have Chuck Berry, the Platters and Liberace.
One of these was so bad that Crenshaw calls it "The attempted murder of rock `n roll." This starred Jimmy Clanton as "Teenage Millionaire." The first thing wrong with it Crenshaw notes is that Clanton "looks about twenty-eight." Here you had Jackie Wilson and Dion appearing with Zasu Pitts (talented actress who started in the silents) and that great actor...Rocky Graziano. Crenshaw's summary line for this one: "The producers of this film are probably on the run because there's no statute of limitations on crimes like this."
Inevitably he gets to Elvis movies and has a great time with them. He says that in "Kissin Cousins" "Elvis fights heroically for a nuclear missile site" to be implanted in this lovely bucolic setting (thanks El). There's also a weird sad note for those of us who liked the Fifties western series "Sugarfoot." At the time Will Hutchins appeared in his Elvis movie he was employed by a studio as a bicyle messenger. Edd Byrnes deserved this fate not Will Hutchins.
A dazzling, smart, fond look at the good and bad that has been done to rock `n roll in both American and British films (The Brits were at least as goofy as we were). You can't go wrong with this one.
esting guy angle is on display here with this guide to rock'n roll movies.The Guide goes all the way to 1994. The reviews are sometimes serious demonstrating that besides being a true rocker he's also a perceptive critic. But the most fun for people like me who grew up in the fifties are his reviews of the rock movies of that decade (and on into the sixties).
God were those movies terrible. I lost count of how many had the same basic plot--town/suburb of oldsters hate rock but kids put on a show for charity/fame and convince even the crabbiest oldster in the film what great young `uns they are after all. And those were the ones that were at least about rock `n roll. There were hybrids put together by adults who didn't have a clue. Thus in the same movie you might have Chuck Berry, the Platters and Liberace.
One of these was so bad that Crenshaw calls it "The attempted murder of rock `n roll." This starred Jimmy Clanton as "Teenage Millionaire." The first thing wrong with it Crenshaw notes is that Clanton "looks about twenty-eight." Here you had Jackie Wilson and Dion appearing with Zasu Pitts (talented actress who started in the silents) and that great actor...Rocky Graziano. Crenshaw's summary line for this one: "The producers of this film are probably on the run because there's no statute of limitations on crimes like this."
Inevitably he gets to Elvis movies and has a great time with them. He says that in "Kissin Cousins" "Elvis fights heroically for a nuclear missile site" to be implanted in this lovely bucolic setting (thanks El). There's also a weird sad note for those of us who liked the Fifties western series "Sugarfoot." At the time Will Hutchins appeared in his Elvis movie he was employed by a studio as a bicyle messenger. Edd Byrnes deserved this fate not Will Hutchins.
A dazzling, smart, fond look at the good and bad that has been done to rock `n roll in both American and British films (The Brits were at least as goofy as we were). You can't go wrong with this one.
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Paul Bishop
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/William Deeck
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Richard Pangburn
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang
Friday, August 19, 2011
Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, August 19, 2011
These were the links that were active with a FB at 8:30. I will be back after two to pick up the rest. R. Narvaez was most recently published in Black Heart Magazine’s Noir issue.
THE HOLLOW MAN, John Dickson Carr
The Hollow Man would make Raymond Chandler kick a hole in a stained glass window. The book’s protagonist, Dr. Gideon Fell, is one of those idiosyncratic, overly clever characters who exist only in cozy mysteries, someone you would never want to know socially in real life — because wherever he goes someone dies. He is also exactly the kind of fellow Chandler decries in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder”: “The hero’s tie may be a little off the mode and the good gray inspector may arrive in a dogcart instead of a streamlined sedan . . . but what he does when he gets there is the same old futzing around with timetables and bits of charred paper and who trampled the jolly old flowering arbutus under the library window.”
But in trying to write my own crime fiction, I have been intrigued by the idea of clues, of leaving evidence around to engage and perplex the reader. TV’s Columbo is one of those types of clue-strewn mysteries. After Columbo, ahem, I mean Peter Falk died, I read an interview with one of the shows co-creators, William Link. Link mentioned that his writing partner Richard Levinson and he were influenced by Carr, someone I’d never heard of. Curious, I Googled Carr and found that he was quite popular in his the 1930s and ‘40s and that one of his best known works was The Hollow Man (aka The Three Coffins), originally published in 1935. I had to read it. After some legwork, I tracked down a UK paperback.
The book begins with teasing at the supernatural (vampires), but soon settles into the classic locked room mystery. In this case, a Dr. Grimaud lies dead in his locked study. There only way out is the window — but the freshly fallen snow on the sill and the ground below is untouched. The killer has evaporated. Dr. Fell deduces a suspect, Grimaud’s long-lost brother, but that person is found dead, shot at close range, in the middle of a street covered with fresh snow — and, alas, no footprints but the victim’s. Two impossible murders! Chandler would have thrown his pipe across the room. Then, Dr. Fell and his Lestrade, Inspector Hadley, volley theories back and forth, with Fell alternately announcing that he has solved it and then stating how he almost made a huge mistake. And, yes, he futzes around with timetables and bits of charred paper.
And then just before the big reveal, Dr. Fell takes time out from capturing a killer to lecture on the conventions of locked room mysteries — for an entire chapter. It’s a humorous bit of meta-narrative, and here I could feel Carr shamelessly bragging about his mastery of the genre.
Overall, I find The Hollow Man’s greatest value is as a textbook for mystery writers in what to do as much as what not to do. It is incessantly logical, gives lessons in subtle clue dropping (ah yes, the firecrackers!), and has mischievous fun with misdirection. But at the same time there is far too much exposition (complete with two diagrams) and most of the characters are merely names — Dr. Fell himself is little more than girth, unkempt hair, and a shovel hat. So, yes, it a flawed but entertaining puzzle, a diversion, of course, not for all tastes; but in it the patient student of mystery fiction will find many rewards.
Yvette Banek
Joe Barone
Paul Bishop
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Cullen Gallagher
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
Kate Laity
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Dan Stumpf
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Richard Pangburn
Eric Peterson
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
TomCat
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