Ed Gorman's Blog, page 104

FORGOTTEN BOOK: Night Kills by Ed Gorman

FORGOTTEN BOOK: NIGHT KILLSreview by Jerry House-Jerry's House of EverythingNight Kills by Ed Gorman (1990)
Kindle Price:$3.99
There are few writers who can entertain as well as Ed Gorman and this early thriller testifies to that.
Frank Brolan is a partner in a small Minneapolis advertising agency that is beginning to reach the big-time.  His partner, Stu Foster, has a talent for landing important clients while Brolan has a gift for the creative side of the business.  The two had been celebrating the signing of an important new client with their staff and afterwards made their way Brolan's house for something to eat, only to find the viciously-hacked body of an attractive woman stuffed into Brolin's freezer.  Brolin recognizes the woman as someone with whom he had a loud public argument with the night before.  Because Brolan has a quick temper and had domestic abuse charges filed against him previously, he is afraid to go to the police.
The dead woman is a hooker named Emma.  Her neighbor and friend, Greg Wagner, is a short, wheelcar-bound man with spina bifida.  Soon, Wagner and Brolan join forces to try to make sense of the murder.  Meanwhile, a teenage hooker named Denise has been picked by a bearded man who drives her to a remote spot and tries to strangle her.  Denise is able to get away but not before lifting the man's wallet, a wallet identifying the attacker as Frank Brolan.  Soon, another hooker is found dead next to one of Brolan's cuff links.
While Brolan, Wagner, and Denise try to understand what is going on, the reader is treated to a knuckle-biting ride.  Gorman carves his characters with scalpel-like precision, their all too human foibles laid bare.  Gorman has always been the poet of the underdog, treating them with love and understanding while sometimes subjecting them to horrific violence.  And the author is not above sly digs at the advertising community, a group he knows all to well.
A darn good book, with only one plot hole that I could find and that (if you close your eyes hard enough and really, truly believe in pixies) could be explained by one character's nature.
Recommended.

William Freidkin's masterpiece Sorcerer available again

Ed here: One of my all-time favorite movies, a masterpiece that virtually nobody
seemed to understand when it opened. One of the most chilling, unforgettable
(I have to use the word) existential journeys ever put to film. 



NEW RELEASE



William Friedkin spent years trying to untangle the studio rights that kept his 1977 film Sorcerer  in limbo.The film, a remake of Henri-George Clouzot’sThe Wages of Fear co-produced by Paramount and Universal, was a financial flop upon release but its reputation has grown over the years even has it became harder to see, unable to be screened in theaters or released on home video.Last year he succeeded in cutting through the knotty rights conflicts and a restored version, mastered from a 4k scan of the original 35mm negative and supervised by Friedkin, screened at the Venice Film Festival, where Friedkin was awarded the Career Golden Lion. A theatrical re-release is planned for early 2014.Now Warner Bros. has officially announced that it will release the film on Blu-ray and DVD on April 22.The press release is short on details—it notes that the Blu-ray will come in a 40-page Blu-ray book with images from the film and excerpts from The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir—but back in June, Friedkin posted on his Facebook page that he will record a commentary track and include extras for the Blu-ray release.The official press release is below, after the jump. SORCERER MAKES LONG-AWAITED DEBUT ON BLU-RAY™ APRIL 22William Friedkin’s Lauded Film Now Newly Remastered, with 40 Page Blu-ray BookBurbank, Calif., January 6, 2014 – William Friedkin’s  Sorcerer,  the cult suspense thriller that has been largely overlooked since its 1977 release, has now been acquired and fully restored by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and will make its Blu-ray™ debut on April 22, 2014. The release, also available on DVD, will be packaged as a 40-page Blu-ray book filled with beautiful images from the film and excerpts from the book, “The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir.” Sorcerer  is derived from the same Georges Arnaud novel that inspired Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 French classic, The Wages of Fear. The film, made following the successes of Friedkin’s The FrenchConnection and The Exorcist, tells the story of four men who, for various reasons, cannot return to their own countries and end up in a dismal South American town where an American oil company is seeking courageous drivers willing to haul nitroglycerin through 200 miles of treacherous terrain. The four displaced men have nothing to lose so they agree for a small payment of cash.Roy Scheider (Jaws), Bruno Cremer (Under the Sun), Francisco Rabal (Dagon) and Amidou (Ronin) star in  Sorcerer  which Friedkin directed from a Walon Green (The Wild Bunch) screenplay. The haunting music was the first credit for Tangerine Dream, the German electronic experimental band who went on to provide many successful scores for such films as “Risky Business,” “VisionQuest” and “Catch Me if You Can.”Over the years, awareness of the film has been steadily building as a result of Friedkin fan requests and newly-found praise from critics

Margaret Maron - Corpus Christmas

 I read Margaret Maron's CORPUS CHRISTMAS in two very enjoyable sittings. Maron is of course a writer of style and polish as well as a singular storyteller. Here's she something more: a a tart culture critic and an amusing one. She has fun with a number of elements here including the holiday itself.

The Eric Breul House is one of those artistic icons so respected you have to genuflect before entering it. For many long years it housed fabled collections of significant art.

Couple problems here. The popularity of the House has faded leaving economic problems And the man who runs it is slightly less popular with staff and major contributors than Hermann Wilhelm Goring.  One Dr. Roger Shambley by name.

Maron's New York cop Sigrid Harald visits Breul House a couple of times. First as the date of her lover and artist Oscar Nauman. The House has honored him with a special dinner. Second she returns in her role as city detective investigating the murder of Dr. Roger Shambley. She needs to find out which of the numerous House suspects had the pleasure of offing the dear old Doc.

Maron's a pro's pro. She doesn't set a foot wrong in this sleek whodunit first published in 1989.

Peter Crowther Cold Comforts Part 3

‘The Good Book’ is a more straightforward PI yarn which, again, was analmost obscene amount of fun to write. And to balance things out, I’d liketo dedicate this to my own dad who passed on in 1972.Marilyn Monroe was a dish. I’ve never really taken to the current vogueof women who are so slim they’re bordering on anorexic, and so whenCarole Nelson Douglas gave me the opportunity to write a story featuringNorma Jean, I jumped at it. This is another of those situations (pretty muchall of them are when I stop to think about it) that I accept a job and thenwonder what the heck I’m going to do. But the solution came to me withouttoo much difficulty—it had to cover the suspicious circumstances ofMarilyn’s death and it had to include something about JFK . . . and, withthe current popularity of conspiracy theories, the rest more or less took careof itself. The result was ‘The Cost of Freedom.’People always ask me why I write stories set in America when I’mEnglish.Well, I don’t have a good answer except to say that I love Americaand, generally speaking, I love Americans. But every now and then I get aspecific request to set a story in England—‘Cat On An Old School Roof ’ introduc t ionxvand ‘The Allotment’ are the products of two such requests. ‘School Roof ’was written for a Cat Crimes anthology with the sub-theme of differenttimes, and I was asked by that loveable editorial trinity of Gorman,Greenberg, and Segriff to do something quintessentially English. Longan admirer of the school adventures of the likes of Billy Bunter, TomMerry, and even Tom Brown, I decided that that’s where I’d set my story—an archetypal English boarding school in the dog days of the 1890s . . .complete with an obligatory school bully and, of course, a cat.‘The Allotment’ came about as a result of a request from author andeditorMartin Edwards to write something quintessentially North English foran anthology project of such tales for the Crime Writers’ Association. Iaccepted the challenge and set to work on something that transferred toEngland the American small town darkness and meticulously researchedsocial detail of Stephen King, mixing in a liberal dose of Peter Lovesey’sslowly unveiling suspense-style in the process. I created my own CalderValley town of Luddersedge and filled it with a potentially huge cast ofeveryday bit players . . . and the result was a great success—so great that,within a couple of weeks, the story sold in the U.S. to Ellery Queen’s MysteryMagazine. However, Editor Janet Hutchings asked for a couple of changesfor its appearance in EQMM—changes I was happy to make and which inno way affected a reader’s enjoyment—but it appears here in its originalform.For many, the abuse of children is the most heinous crime imaginable . . .even more horrific and unforgivable, in its brutal theft of innocence, thanthe taking of actual life. The U.S. lawyer and author Andrew Vachss hasmade this field his life work, both in the courtroom and, with the creation ofhis anti-hero Burke, on the fiction bookshelves, and I thought I’d like tohave a shot myself. ‘A Time To Dance’—a truly short story (fewer than2,000 words—a record for me! I have titles that long!)—sees Koko Tate takeon a cycle of retribution which he believes to be the only hope for a youngboy but one with which he is considerably less than comfortable. The storyoriginally appeared in the short-lived (and truly dire) English magazine,Dark Asylum.‘TheMain Event’ always goes down a storm with audiences. It’s virtuallya one-act play with but a single set, and its central premise—a most unusualmethod of poisoning—is, I believe, entirely preposterous. But I’m informed(reliably, I hope) that it works incredibly well and moves like an expresstrain. I’ll let you be the judge. It appeared in an anthology entitled MurderMost Delicious and has since been reprinted four times.Peter CrowtherxviFirst Lady Murders was the title of an anthology of (yes, you’ve guessed it)murder stories featuring real First Ladies. The brief, offered by NancyPickard, asked only that contributors picked their First Lady and let Nancyknow—I chose Edith Bolling Wilson and decided to set the action in theWhite House gardens. My one small problem was that I didn’t know toomuch about theWhite House gardens (apart from the fact they were probablybigger than mine), so I searched bookstores for reference material andspent what seemed like hours on the web, both to no avail. In desperation,I called the White House. Within one week, a booklet detailing the WhiteHouse’s grounds plopped through my mailbox. The story pretty muchwrote itself from then on.When the Berlin Wall came down, I foresaw problems. At the time, Ijotted down a few notes outlining a potential story set in and around thenewly-liberated East and left it at that. A few years later, another Cat Crimesproject reared its furry head and I rescued the notes and wrote ‘Reunification.’It was considered a little too downbeat and a little too ‘nothing muchhappens’ (actually, nothing at all happens) and the editors passed on it.Since then, it’s appeared in A Treasury of Cat Mysteries, and I confess to alasting fondness for it.Which brings us to the final story in this book.‘Cold Comforts’ was, I think, either my third or fourth Koko story.We’djust gotten through a particularly hard winter in England, with news reportsfilled with true horror stories of old people dying of hypothermia inunheated homes and run-down tenements.My own mum was fairly poorlyeven though—living in a self-contained apartment at the top of ourhouse—she was very warm and well looked after. Anyway, I got to thinkingabout old folks—which, so long as we don’t die young, we’ll all be ourselvesone fine day—and about maybe someone taking responsibility for their‘comfort’ into their own hands. It mixes in a large amount of poetry—something I’ve done elsewhere from time to time, most notably in theoff-beat vampire tale ‘Too Short A Death’—and includes winter in NewYork (my favorite time in that city) plus, of course, Koko Tate.And that’s it for this time.Anyone who knows me or who may have read my various articles andcolumns or who has possibly listened to me ramble on at conventions (bothon and off the stage) will know of my great and enduring love of shortfiction. This is my sixth collection of the stuff and there’s another one(Jewels in the Dust) due later this year . . . so if you enjoy this lot, the goodnews is there’s more to come and still more being written. introduc t ionxviiRight now—Saturday 4th of February 2012 (about 10 years and 11months after my younger self first penned an earlier version of this Foreword)—I’m looking out of my office, seeing a dusting of snow on thechurch roof next door. I’m busy working on a zombie story for my chum,Stephen Jones; the second book in my alien invasion trilogy, Forever Twilight;and, when I can get back to it, my big mainstream novel (set in New York,of course), Thanksgiving.All sorts of adventures await me . . . as, of course, they await you, too. Solet’s stay in touch. By all means drop me a line sometime (p.crowther3@btinternet.com) and let me know what you think of these tales. Writing issuch a lonely life that it’s always nice to know there’s someone out there,living your stories.Meanwhile, look after yourselves and those you care for . . . and keep onreading!Peter CrowtherGrosvenor House in Hornsea, EnglandFebruary 2012From an original version by Peter CrowtherHarrogate, EnglandMarch 2001

Roger Ebert on Hithcock's "Shadow of A Doubt"

                    
                   No one would ever accuse Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" of being plausible, but it is framed so distinctively in the Hitchcock style that it plays firmly and never breaks out of the story. Later you question the absurdity of two detectives following a suspect from New York to California, apparently without being sure of how he looks, and hanging around idly outside his residence for weeks while chatting up the suspect's niece; one of them eventually even proposes marriage. Nor are we convinced that the niece, believing her uncle is a killer of old ladies, would allow him to buy her silence by promising to leave town (because his guilt would "destroy her mother").                    One of Hitchcock's favorite subjects was The Innocent Man Wrongly Accused. In "Shadow of a Doubt," there's no possibility of innocence. It's clear from the outset that Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) is the notorious "Merry Widow Killer," and more than once Hitchcock cuts to nightmarish fantasies of (presumably) merry widows waltzing. We first see Charlie lying on top of his bed, smoking a cigar, when told by his landlady two men had been asking for him. He sees them standing on the corner downstairs, packs a bag with cash, leaves the house and boldly walks right past them. This demonstrates they don't know what he looks like, but not why they wouldn't be interested inanyman leaving the boarding house. The incompetence, and apparently unlimited expense account, of these two cops is one reason the action can span several weeks.                   Charlie's peppy niece Charlotte (Teresa Wright), nicknamed "Young Charlie" after her uncle, has idolized him for years, and complains to her family that life wouldn't be so dull if he paid them a visit. Amazingly, that day they receive a telegram telling them to expect him. In a well-known shot Hitchcock shows Charlie's train arriving beneath an ominous cloud of black smoke. He has arrived in Santa Rosa, California, a paragon of small towns that could have modeled for Norman Rockwell'sSaturday Evening Postcovers.                   The town and the Newton family play major roles in the film, and may reveal Hitchcock's own inner feelings. He shot in late 1941 and early1942, at the outset of World War II, at a time when he was unable to visit his dying mother in London because of wartime restrictions. He later credited the friendliness of the town for making this the most pleasant of all his film locations. His emphasis on the comfy Newton home, a chatty neighborhood, a corner cop who knows everyone's name, the nightly meals around a big dining table--all add up to a security that both he and Uncle Charlie were seeking, and Charlie rhapsodizes about the joys of home and family. The visiting uncle is so quickly embraced by the town there is even a ceremony in his honor.                    What we begin with, then, is the innocent Newton family and the sinister uncle, who moves into Young Charlie's room at the top of the stairs. Also in the family are her father Joseph (Henry Travers), her mother Emma (Patricia Collinge), and her young sister Ann (Edna May Wonacott) and brother Roger (Charles Bates). Travers was in his late 60s and Collinge around 50 when the film was made, and they look on the old side for Ann and Roger's parents but about right for the movie's apple pie symbolism. The next door neighbor, who drops in without knocking, is Herb (Hume Cronyn, in his movie debut). He and Joseph are crime buffs and spend much time in debates about methods of committing a perfect murder. Their asides are funny in themselves, and more so because of Uncle Charlie's discomfiture. His preferred method is strangulation with his bare hands.

                     for the rest go        here:http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gre...

Pro-File Francis Fyfield - UNDERCURRENTS

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1)    Tell us about your current/novel collection. I’ve written over twenty, beginning with ‘A Question of Guilt’ and ending with the current ‘Casting the First Stone.’  Most of these are Witness titles.  Roughly five of these feature Lawyer and Crown Prosecutor Helen West, while another five or so feature Sarah Fortune, a Tart with a heart and legal qualifications.  The rest are stand alones, loosely described as psychological thrillers rather than detection.  They are all novels of suspense, because even the author does not know.
2) Can you give us a sense of what you’re working on now?Right now, I’m beginning to work on the third novel of a trilogy, which began with GOLD DIGGER in 2012, (soon to be published by Witness,) and was followed in 2013 by CASTING THE FIRST STONE. The novels feature Diana Quigley, who, as a teenager, robbed the house of one Thomas Porteous, a rich art Collector forty years her senior.  She finds herself mesmerised by the Art and cannot follow through with the theft, so she goes to prison. When she emerges, she goes back to his house; he takes her in; they become collaborators in their passion for paintings.  They marry; he dies and she inherits the lot as well as the hatred of his ghastly daughters who wish her dead.  It is a genuine love affair, and she is a genuine Collector. She fends off his avaricious children, preserves his inheritance and rescues his grandson.  Book Two, CASTING THE FIRST STONE, begins a year after Thomas’s death.  What is a grief stricken widow to do?  Will she go to the bad or the good?  She does both, while remembering her skill as a thief who was very, very good at throwing stones and breaking windows.Now I’m carrying her further, although I don’t quite now where, yet.  In the meantime, she has joined forces with Sarah Fortune.  Together they make a highly moral and amoral team, who believe that Theft is universally Bad, but not always.(I do all this because I’m a passionate Collector myself, and I want to write about it.)
3) What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?Two that I can think of ….When someone comes up to you and says, you know that book of yours?  I couldn’t put it down.  That’s the point when you know you’ve done your job, which is to take someone out of their own world and bring them into the one you’ve created.  The other, great pleasure is when you write the words, THE END.
4) What is the greatest DISpleasure?When THE END is a very long way off and you’re stuck in a blind alleyway, beating your head against a wall and thinking, this is just such a load of bollocks.
5) If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?Listen to the real readers, rather than telling them what they should like.  They know a helluva lot more than you do.
6) Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you’d like to see in print again?No one entirely forgotten.  I love the writers of the Golden Age of English detective fiction.  If Edmund Campion, Margery Allingham and Gladys Mitchell ever go out of print, (the latter recently revived.. wonderfully eccentric,) I’ll have a fit of the vapours.  Eric Ambler, likewise.
7) Tell us about selling your first novel. Do I ever remember it?  I was a criminal lawyer working in a big office, where the joke going around was that I was trying to write a book, ha ha.  (I’d kept the already published, romantic short stories very secret, but I was still teased.) So, one afternoon, an Editor from Heinemann, big publisher, phoned me at my desk and said, we’d like to publish your book, I yelled at her, something like, bugger off Sylvia, you B, I’ve had enough of these jokes. Slammed the phone down and went off to cry.  Thank God the editor phoned back.
Then I went round the building and told everyone, likewise everyone in the bus queue on the way home.  And on the bus. Everyone, whether they wanted to know or not. Then I phoned my bookish Dad, who made me read in the first place.  He was a doctor, at that point in hospital himself. He said ‘Oh jesus,’ put the phone down and went off to tell everyone on the ward, whether they wanted to know or not.It was perfectly wonderful.  I felt, at last, as if I existed.   Other people had babies: I had a book.
Frances Fyfield.

GUNMAN IN THE STREETS TCM WED.Night 8:00 P.M. ET

GUNMAN IN THE STREETS
Frank Tuttle’s GUNMAN IN THE STREETS is scheduled to air on TCM Wednesday night, 8 p.m. Eastern Time.  Here’s what I wrote about this relatively obscure 1950 crime noir a few years ago in MYSTERY SCENE:
“Filmed by U.S. and British producers in France, the movie begins impressively with a gritty shootout and an almost documentary-style chase through the streets of Paris as racketeer Eddy Robeck (Dane Clark) escapes police custody and enlists the help of his girlfriend Denise (Simone Signoret) to reach the Belgian border.
“The film breaks no new noir ground, playing a bit like Tuttle’s better-known THIS GUN FOR HIRE, minus Alan Ladd and with Clark and Signoret delivering Bogie- and Bacall-style performances, but the direction is crisp, the black-and-white photography handsomely moody.  Fans of ’50 pulp magazines may be tickled to see MANHUNT magazine regular Henry Kane credited as one of the writers who provided ‘additional dialogue’ for the film.”
The occasion of the MYSTERY SCENE review was the release of GUNMAN IN THE STREETS on DVD, in a sharp, restored print, by David Kalat’s All Day Entertainment label.  The DVD is out of print, but copies are available from Amazon and other online sources.  I have a hunch that TCM will air the All Day Entertainment print.
Some related trivia:
I had forgotten (or maybe never knew) that Dane Clark had a long career into the 1980s, including guest roles on series like THE NEW MIKE HAMMER, SIMON & SIMON, and MATT HOUSTON.
Clark and Kane also collaborated on the 1954 radio series, CRIME AND PETER CHAMBERS, based on Kane’s character from the magazines and paperbacks.  The 21 episodes from the series are posted on the web at https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Crime_and_Peter_Chambers_Singles .
Tuttle’s other great classic film noir was the 1935 version of THE GLASS KEY, starring George Raft and Edward Arnold.  Tuttle’s version has been overshadowed by the 1942 remake directed by Stuart Heisler, even to the point that the Heisler version is available on commercial DVD, while Tuttle’s is not, although you can find DVD-R copies on the gray market with a quick Google search.  Tuttle’s version has its own charms, particularly for Raft fans.  Neither film fully captures the bleak, brittle tone of the Hammett novel, each movie offering its own happy ending for protagonist Ned Beaumont.

The great Ken Levine remembers the old days - this one is for duffers

Y, JANUARY 02, 2014 Starting a new feature I’ll do from time to time. “Jobs I Wish I Had.” We all have them. We grow out of most of them, but not all. Secretly, don’t you still wish you could be a ballerina or Navy Seal?

And then there are the jobs you’d love to have but no longer exist. Big band crooner, flapper, Czar of Russia.

Lately the GSN has been showing old black-and-white episodes of I’VE GOT A SECRET and WHAT’S MY LINE? in the middle of the night. (I think contractually they have to play them for so many days a year.) These were old musty game shows from the ‘50s and ‘60s. By today’s standard they are positively archaic. A panel of four personalities must guess the contestants’ job or secret.  That's it.  There was zero production value and if a contestant stumped the panel they won the whopping sum of $50. The shows were aired live (for the east coast anyway). Today they're great fun to watch.

WHAT’S MY LINE? was originally on CBS at (I believe) 10:30 p.m. The panelists all wore tuxedos and formal gowns. The host, John Daly was the most erudite emcee in the history of television. If there are 500,000 words in the English language, he knew and used 469,000 of them – each week. Everyone was very formal. Ms. Francis. Mr. Cerf. Ms. Kilgallen.

When little kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up they’ll often say fireman, or actress, or cowboy, or fashion model. I wanted to be a panelist. And you know what? I still do. Too bad those gigs have gone the way of the 8-Track tape.

Think about it. Sunday night. You go out and have a nice dinner in Manhattan. Roll into CBS at 10:00. Don your tuxedo and get made up. There’s nothing to prepare. You’re not supposed to know what will be on the show. You do the show live at 10:30. You play this parlor game and (in my case) say a few witty lines and get a couple of laughs. At 11:00 you’re done. No pick ups. No alternate takes.   By 11:15 you’re in a bar. For this you are handsomely paid, you’re famous, and these shows lasted upwards of fifteen years. You have job security.

You parlay this into appearing on other panels. Ka-ching!! You trade on your fame and write books (or have others ghost write them for you), speak at events for absurd fees, score lucrative commercial endorsements (“Hi, this is Ken Levine for Studerbaker!”), and be invited to all the A-list society parties. Judy Garland could pass out in my lap. 

I was always amused when one of these panelists missed a show because he was on vacation. Vacation from WHAT? A half-hour a week?

There are very few panelist opportunities today. The Red Eye overnight show on FOX NEWS and I’d love to do that program. Bill Maher’s HBO show, Chelsea Handler’s E! show – these are two others. But slim pickings for sure. What few celebrity game shows there are require you must be a has-been from some ‘70s sitcom. Rarely does the casting call go out for never-beens. So I’m at a distinct disadvantage there.

But that’s one of the jobs I wish I had had. What about you? What’s Your Fantasy Line?

p.s.

Another perk of being a panelist is you can plug your book. Available on Kindle for $2.99. Without that forum how will I ever plug mine?

On The Loose by Andrew Coburn

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2005


I've been saying for years that the single most neglected major crime fiction writer in the United States is Andrew Coburn. And here he is with a new novel to prove me right again.

I've spent two days trying to think of a tidy way to describe On The Loose (Leisure,$6.99) and thus far my best shot is to imagine a collaboration between John D. MacDonald Ruth Rendell. MacDonald for the page-turning excitement of following the most unique serial killer since The Bad Seed and Rendell for some of the quirkiest characters outside several of her own masterpieces.

Coburn is a profoundly American writer as he demonstrates in this novel that spans slightly more than a decade in the life of a small New England town. The storyline never lets you go. The murders are committed by one of the mostly stunningly enigmatic killers in mystery fiction. He is barely ten the first time he strikes. He is not much older the second time. The killings are what propel the storyline.

But Coburn's sense of the town and the lives of his people are what give the book the depth and range of a true novel. He does what Hitchcock did in Shadow of a Doubt--takes a story that has a death-grip on its readers and then walk thems around the lives and town that surround the killer. The fading beauty lost to excess weight and clinical depression; the police chief who believes he is beyond passion only to find it again and risk being crushed by it; the man dying of AIDs and the woman who befriends him; the divide between rich and poor that belittles both sides.

And the writing itself. Coburn plays all the instruments in the orchestra for this book which is, by turns, lyrical, funny, solemn, sarcastic, violent, terrifying and human in a way page-turners rarely are.

It's time for Andrew Coburn to be recognized for the master stylist and storyteller extraordinaire he has been for more than two decades now. On The Run--and everybody in the book really is running from something--proves that he gets better with each new novel.

NEW FROM HAFFNER PRESS: CAPTAIN FUTURE, EDMOND HAMILTON

    The Collected Captain Future, Volume ThreeEdmond HamiltonEdited by Stephen Haffner
Introduction by Chuck Juzek
Cover Art by Earle K. Bergey
Illustrated by H.W. "Wesso" WessolowskiISBN-13 978-1-893887-74-9
600+ page Hardcover$40.00Jumpin’ Jungle Cat of Jupiter! It’s another mega-collection of four complete novels of the “Man of Tomorrow,” the “Wizard of Science,” the protector of the Solar System and a menace to evil-doers throughout the universe: CAPTAIN FUTURE!Now that Captain Future (aka Dr. Curtis Newton) and the Futuremen (Grag the robot; Otho the Android; and Simon Wright, the Living Brain) have traveled through time in the final story of Volume Two (See “The Lost World of Time”), can an adventure beyond the Solar System be far behind?  Most assuredly not! The Futuremen board their trusty space-vessel, The Comet, and blast-off for adventure in QUEST BEYOND THE STARS! But that’s not all the dangers our intrepid defenders will face in VOLUME THREE. Up next is OUTLAWS ON THE MOON! When the peoples of the Solar System believe the Futuremen to be dead, what better time for the emissaries of villainy to attempt to break in to Captain Future’s Secret Moon Base.  Following that nail-biting saga, is arguably the finest of the CAPTAIN FUTURE novels: THE COMET KINGS. Here, author Hamilton pulls out all the stops as the Futuremen combat forces from within Halley’s Comet!  In the final story of this volume, PLANETS IN PERIL, the Futuremen face forces from another dimension that threaten to enslave our entire universe!As with the previous two volumes of  THE COLLECTED CAPTAIN FUTURE , “Under Observation,” the CAPTAIN FUTURE letters column is reprinted, and the original pulp covers and interior illustrations are reproduced in a generous appendix.TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Chuck Juzek 
"Under Observation" - The Captain Future Letters Column 
Quest Beyond the Stars  (Captain Future, Win ’42) 
Outlaws on the Moon  (Captain Future, Spr ’42) 
The Comet Kings  (Captain Future, Sum ’42) 
Planets in Peril  (Captain Future, Fll ’42) 
"The Future of Captain Future" Appendix of original interior artwork - See more at: http://www.haffnerpress.com/book/the-...



    The Reign of the Robots, The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume FourEdmond HamiltonIntroduction by Mike Ashley
Cover Art by Frank R. Paul
Illustrated by Frank R. Paul, H.W. "Wesso" Wessolowski, Hugh Rankin, Joseph Doolin, Leo MoreyISBN-13 978-1-893887-65-7
600+ page Hardcover$40.00Following 2011′s  THE UNIVERSE WRECKERS, THE COLLECTED EDMOND HAMILTON, VOLUME THREE , Haffner Press keeps pouring gasoline on the fire as we announce the next volume(s) of collected stories from one of the godfathers of Space Opera.THE REIGN OF THE ROBOTS, THE COLLECTED EDMOND HAMILTON, VOLUME FOUR is certainly worth your coppers as herewith are contained no fewer than 10 unreprinted stories from WEIRD TALES and/or WONDER STORIES. Alongside these soon-to-be-presented wonders, you’ll find some of Hamilton’s classic works such as “The Man Who Evolved” and “A Conquest of Two Worlds”Noted scholar and editor, Mike Ashley handles the introduction for this mighty tome.As with previous volumes in this series, an appendix showcasing the original pulp magazine illustrations also bulks large with obscura including reader’s letters from the vintage magazines commenting on these stories, along with editorial correspondence between Hamilton and his editors.TABLE OF CONTENTS"The Man Who Saved Science Fiction" by Mike Ashley "The Man Who Saw the Future"  (Amazing Stories, Oct ’30) "The Mind-Master"  (Weird Tales, Oct ’30) "The Horror City"  (Weird Tales, Feb/Mar ’31) "The Man Who Evolved"  (Wonder Stories, Apr ’31) "Monsters of Mars"  (Astounding Stories, Apr ’31 "Ten Million Years Ahead"  (Weird Tales, Apr/May ’31) "The Earth-Owners"  (Weird Tales, Aug ’31) "The Sargasso of Space"  (Astounding Stories, Sep ’31) "The Shot From Saturn"  (Weird Tales, Oct ’31) "Creatures of the Comet"  (Weird Tales, Dec ’31) "The Reign of the Robots"  (Wonder Stories, Dec ’31) "Dead Legs"  (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Jan ’32) "A Conquest of Two Worlds" (Wonder Stories, Feb ’32) "The Earth-Brain"  (Weird Tales, Apr ’32) "The Terror Planet"  (Weird Tales, May ’32) "Space-Rocket Murders"  (Amazing Stories, Oct ’32) "Vampire Village"  (Weird Tales, Nov '32) "The Man Who Conquered Age"  (Weird Tales Dec ’32) Appendix - See more at: http://www.haffnerpress.com/book/the-... http://www.haffnerpress.com/book/the-...