Ed Gorman's Blog, page 158
June 3, 2012
The Lone Wolf series by MIke Barry/Barry Malzberg
Barry N. MalzbergBarry N. Malzberg's science fiction career began an agent for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency in New York in 1965, and he has seen the field from many angles, as reader, writer, editor, agent, and critic. He began publishing short stories in 1967, novels in 1970, and became known as a prolific writer of fiction that took a sardonic view of the meaning - or lack thereof - in individuals’ lives and undertakings, to the point of occasionally being labeled anti-SF in his outlook. Notable novels include Beyond Apollo (1972), winner of the first John W. Campbell Award; Herovit's World (1973); Guernica Night (1975); Galaxies (1975); and The Remaking of Sigmund Freud (1985). His many short story collections include The Passage of the Light: The Recursive Science Fiction of Barry N. Malzberg (1994) and In the Stone House (2000). His collection of critical essays The Engines of the Night: Science Fiction in the Eighties (1982) won a Locus Award.
"I have long maintained that Malzberg's portrayal of The Lone Wolf is one of the most brilliant in the genre. The slow build-up over the series more than pays off in the shattering finale. I'd give just one bit of advice to anyone reading the series from the beginning: Malzberg knows exactly what he's doing." --Jerry House"Since my so-called career, like that of most commercial writers, is little more than a function of what I could write and where I could sell it..." --Barry MalzbergAn Interview with Barry Malzberg
1
Ed. You wrote what you could write and sold it where you could...It's telling that at around the same time you were writing The Lone Wolf you were creating one of your finest most nuanced masterpieces Guerenica Night. I know you were a hard working pro...but that had to be quite a literary leap.
Barry. No, I felt that GUERNICA NIGHT was no "literary leap". Same writer, same urban decay, same obsession with death-as-purgation and for that matter same style. I wrote the first 10 Lone Wolf novels between January and October of 1973, then right on to GUERNICA NIGHT. Felt seamless.
2.
E. I'm not sure whether you or your agent came up with the idea to do a Mac Bolan-type series but what did you make of the genre after you read a few examples of it?
B.
. As I wrote in NOTES ON THE LONE WOLF (collected in Breakfast in the Ruins) I had never read an EXECUTIONER novel prior to signing the contract on LONE WOLF. I found one at the local candystore (paperbacks were sold in candystores, bus terminals, drugstores, gas stations in those roseate days) and spent an hour with it. Absolutely terrible, I thought, but added in the spirit of Schmeling viewing clips of Joe Louis before their first fight, "I see something."
3.
E. Did you consciously decide to basically turn the genre on its head. Wolfe and his vision are nihilistic. He sees that he is trapped in two hells--himself and what America has become. Nothing like this would ever occur in the avenger series by other writers.
B. Jerry House's quote is dead-on; I knew exactly what I wanted to do before I typed the first line and I proceeded with conscious intention. Burton Wulf got ever crazier by intention.
4.
E. What always fascinated me about The Lone Wolf Books was not the violence-which is considerable--but about the running commentary on how the American Streets were fighting a war parallel to that of the battle in Viet Nam. This gave Wulf a gravitas and harsh poetry none of the other avenger series had. You were SERIOUS
4. Yes, I was quite serious. I had at that time what I took to be a Social Vision. Synchronous to the composition of those first ten novels was the passage of the insane and insanely punitive Rockefeller drug laws in NY State which more or less mandated life sentences without probation or appeal for those convicted of selling drugs in any amount. Millions of lives were destroyed. The laws remain largely in effect almost four decades later. Rockefeller died - in the saddle with a girlfriend I would like to remind all - 33 years ago but his legacy for those under the penumbra of the drug laws is eternal.
5.
E. Did your publisher fight you for using the pretext of a men's action for a somber look at the grim unraveling of our country's tenuous grasp in civilization?
B. My editor fought me on nothing. George Ernsberger, a renegade, knew exactly what I was about and left me entirely alone. The publisher _was_ unhappy with the first three books; the characters murdered were depicted too vividly and sympathetically he thought and their deaths went beyond cartoon deaths...he wanted to stop the series. But for one reason or another he relented - my editor fought for me - and gave the greenlight for #4 and its successors and never bothered me again.
6.
E. I agree with you about drugs (I exempt marijuana). Tune in, tune out, right on bro etc--my generation's gift to the world was the utter destruction of the inner cities as well great damage to every other aspect of American culture. But you were saying this when it was unfashionable in the kinds of circles you and I traveled in. Did you get flack for it?
B. I got no flack for the series. I was a fat kid living with spouse and two young daughters in a suburban house, living in camouflage. The gap between the ferocity of those novels and the pallor of my daily life might have been astonishing if I had given it some thought but I didn't, not on a conscious level anyway.
7.
E. Wulf's world view is at times almost misanthropic. I think of what Eugene O'Neill said when first told about the Atomic bomb: "Maybe we deserve it." Or am I wrong?
B. Wulf's view was of course misanthropic. He was Sondheim's Sweeney Todd half a decade before the musical. "This world is full of shit and we are not out of it: you all deserve to die."
7.
E. Did you get much flack for the series?
B. I received one letter. Sic. A Sp4 in Texas mailed me the cover of #5, HAVANA HIT, with a brief note: "You can tear this into quarters and you know where you can stick it." My response: "You're a paying customer and beyond that you're a noncom in the US Army, you have my undying respect." I enclosed a copy of #6 CHICAGO SLAUGHTER "As a way of thanking you for expressing your opinion." I did meet few people at NYC paperback conventions who expressed appreciation. One asked me if the series was based on actual events.
8.
E. Did you get many reviews?
B.To the best of my knowledge, no contemporaneous reviews. Nice mention in Bill Pronzini's/Marcia Muller's THOUSAND AND ONE MIDNIGHTS but Pronzini is my, um, collaborator. Very nice mention too in ENCYCLOPEDIA MYSTERIOSA by the Edgar winning novelist (best paperback original) who died young so long ago. Can't recall his name but I'm sure you know.
9.
E. Are you ever invited to men's adventure meetings or conventions?
B. Other than those 3-4 NYC pulp Conventions I attended (brief signings) I've never been invited to any mystery-related function.
10.
E.How do you feel about having the books available in e book form on the great website Prologue Books?
B. I'm gratified to feel that they are still alive and available in however perilous a fashion more than three and a half decades after I typed FINIS to the series.
11.
E. I'd like to end this by asking you what was it like free landing full time in the years you did it? You produced an enormous amount of work, a good share of it that has not only endured but also been influential on succeeding generations. Does knowing that make your memories of all the long hours and scrambling ins search of work worth it?
B. That's an embracing question and difficult to answer. Ten years ago I would have responded flatly" Not worth it. In the words of Harry The Flat from my 1974 novel UNDERLAY "The fucking you get is not worth the fucking you take." Now I am not sure. The work is honorable because it emerged from an honorable perspective. The money was essential but it wasn't ultimately the money which was driving those books or anything else. I had big plans. Top of the world, Ma.
DERAILED
Derailed
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2008The movie (and novel) Derailed would be near the top. Now I'm willing to admit that there are certain plot points that seem a mite far-fetched but overall this story of two married people who meet each other on a commuter train and embark on a few adulterous hours of fun in a dusty downtown hotel works very well for me. Not so well, alas, for them. Just as they are getting all snuggly a thug breaks in on them and beats both of them savagely. He also photographs them. Soon after the the blackmail calls begin.
My favorite kind of suspense fiction involves average people turned desperate by events. Which explains my fondness for Hitchcock and several of his imitators.
Derailed isn't a great movie but for me it's got three great plots twists and several sturdy if not quite memorable performances, not least by the star Jennifer Anniston who'd previously never done much for me. Here she's playing a woman of intelligece and sensitivy. She's also a lot sexier than in her Friends-type roles.
The reviews I've seen have been savage and I'm not sure why. No, it's not art; it's not even great commercial film making. But it's a cunning, suspenseful movie that keeps dopes like me content for the full length of its running time. So what the hell more can you ask for?
June 2, 2012
Stephen King and Max Brand
Looking for some old stories of mine today I plowed through a box of books and came across, among many other old things, acollection of interviews with Stephen King called Feast of Fear. I'd interviewed hims back in the mid-Eighties for Mystery Scene. He's a great interview subject, smart, flip, wise and passionate about many different things.
I was thumbing through the book and I came across a bit that reflects Duane Swierczynski's very cool Legends of The Underwood on his Secret Dead Blog. I was especially happy to see that King once again praised western-thriller-detective writer Max Brand who for me is one of the great pulp storytellers of all time. When he's at his best his narrative skills are unmatched and he has a range of characters that are the pulp of equivalent of Erskine Caldwell (whom I, like Faulkner, think is one of the great American short story writers).
"I love Max Brand (Frederick Faust)..Frank Gruber tells a fabulous anecdote about him in his book The Pulp Jungle. He says Brand worked at one of the major studious as a "grind" rewriter. Every day, the co-worker who told Gruber the story said, Brand would arrive with a very large steel thermos filled with pure vodka. He would open it, pour a cup into the red top, and begin to write. He wrote all day without stopping except to the bathroom (and to refill his Thermos. from some source in his car, apparently at noon). He never exhibited symptoms of drunkenness. He wrote with hardly a single strike-over. He would finish a quart or two of straight vodka each day, the writer who shared Brand's office said, and he would finish his "grind-work" by 1pm or so. For the next four hours he wrote (his own stuff) either Dr. Kildare or Westerns. And some of those Westerns are damned good stories. You can't put `em down, because the characters actually seem real.
Here's bit of his bio from Wikipedia:
Faust was born in Seattle to Gilbert Leander Faust and Elizabeth (Uriel) Faust, who both died soon after. He grew up in central California, and later worked as a cowhand on one of the many ranches of the San Joaquin Valley. Faust attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he began to write prolifically for student publications, poetry magazines, and, occasionally, newspapers. He did not attain a degree, as he was deemed a troublemaker, whereupon he began to travel extensively. He joined the Canadian Army in 1915, but deserted the next year and went to New York City.
During the 1910s, Faust started to sell stories to the pulp magazines of Frank Munsey, including All-Story Weekly and Argosy Magazine. When the United States joined World War I in 1917, Faust tried to enlist but was turned down. He married Dorothy Schillig in 1917, and the couple had three children. In the 1920s, Faust wrote extensively for pulp magazines, especially Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine, a weekly for which he would write over a million words a year under various pen names, often seeing two serials and a short novel published in a single issue. In 1921 he suffered a severe heart attack, and for the rest of his life suffered from chronic heart disease.
His love for mythology was a constant source of inspiration for his fiction, and it might be that his classical influences, as well as his literary inclinations, are part of the reason for his success at genre fiction. The classical influences are certainly noticeable in his stories, many of which would inspire films. He created the Western character Destry, featured in several filmed versions of Destry Rides Again, and his character Dr. Kildare was adapted to motion pictures, radio, television, and comic books.
Beginning in 1934 Faust began publishing fiction in upscale slick magazines that paid better than pulp magazines. In 1938, due to political events in Europe, Faust returned with his family to the United States, settling in Hollywood, working as a screenwriter for a number of film studios. At one point Warner Brothers was paying him $3,000 a week (at a time when that might be a year’s salary for an average worker), and he made a fortune from MGM’s use of the Dr. Kildare stories. He was one of the highest paid writers of that time. Ironically, Faust disparaged his commercial success and used his own name only for the poetry that he regarded as his true vocation.
When World War II broke out, Faust insisted on doing his part, and despite being well into middle age and having a heart condition, he managed to become a front line war correspondent. Faust was quite famous, and the soldiers enjoyed having this popular author among them. While traveling with American soldiers as they battled in Italy in 1944, Faust was mortally wounded by shrapnel. He was personally commended for bravery by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.i
posted by Ed Gorman @ 3:
June 1, 2012
Kill Now, Pay Later by Robert Terrall
I say this because Kill Now, Pay Later by Robert Terrall, the new one from Hard Case Crime, demonstrates how admirable and readable a really fine craftsman can be. Terrall worked under a variety of names and worked in a variety of forms. As John Gonzales he wrote a very good 1951 Woolrichian Gold Medal called Death for Mr. Big. As Brett Halliday he wrote a number of Mike Shaynes that not even Halliday could have pulled off. And as Robert Kyle he wrote three excellent serious crime novels about governmental and police corruption. He even, believe it or not, wrote some good books under his own name.
In Kill Now, Pay Later private investigator Ben Gates is hired to watch over the very pricey wedding gifts bestowed on the mucky-muck couple getting hitched in a mansion. But somebody doctors Gates' coffee and he passes out. A valuable diamond bracelet is stolen. Right off I liked the set-up because it was unusual. And that's what makes this book such a fine read. Just about everything in it is unusual. Terrall is like another Hard Case Crime author, David Dodge. You're in free fall with these guys. You don't know what the hell they're up to and that's what makes reading them such a pleasure. Nary a single private eye cliche in the entire book.
Terrall was especially good with dialogue. His sex scenes are really sexy and they're good clean fun as well. His take on a recently graduated parochial school vamp is funny, sexy and, given her gold-digging ways, a little scarey.
No it's not a masterpiece; no it contains no big thoughts; no it doesn't enrich humankind. It's just what it should be, a terrific read.
May 31, 2012
Forgotten Books: Fright by Cornell Woolrich
Cornell Woolrich's first novel emulated the work of his literary hero, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Judging from the first act of the new Woolrich novel Fright from Hardcase Crime, the Fitzgerald influence lasted well into Woolrich's later career as a suspense writer.The young, handsome, successful Prescott Marshall could be any of Fitzgerald's early protagonists. New York, Wall Street, a striver eager to marry a beauiful young socialite and acquire the sheen only she can give him...even the prose early on here reminds us of Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" and "The Rich Boy." Strivers dashed by fate.
Bu since Woolrich was by this time writing for the pulps and not Smart Set or Scribners Magazine, young Prescott Marshall's fate is not simply to lose face or be banished from some Edenic yacht cruise...but to face execution at the hands of the State for killing a young woman he slept with once and who turned into a blackmailer. This is in the Teens of the last century, by the way; a historical novel if you will.
From here on we leave the verities of Fitzgerald behind and step into the noose provided by another excellent writer and strong influence on Woolrich...Guy de Maupassant. In the Frenchman's world it's not enough to merely die, you must die in a tortured inch-by-inch way that makes the final darkness almost something to be desired. And dying for some ironic turn of events is best of all.
I read this in a single sitting. It's one those melodramas that carry you along on sheer narrative brute force. I woudn't say it's major Woolrich but I woud say that it's awfully good Woolrich with all the master's cruel tricks at work and a particularly claustrophobic sense of doom. Readers will appreciate its dark twists. Collectors will want to buy a few extra copies.
May 30, 2012
New Books: Mickey Spillane on Screen
From Mcfarland Publishing
Ed here: I spent the long weekend reading this magnificent book and I'm still not finished with it. That's how packed it is with articles, interviews, overviews and information about every aspect of Mickey Spillane's impact on movies, TV, radio, comic books and the publishing industry. He alone created the market for paperback originals. He alone defined the blue collar rage of the men who cam back from the big war. He alone spawned the second wave of private eye fiction following the Hammett-Chandler era. Collins and Traylor pack this book with fascinating stories and incidents about the men and women in front of and behind the cameras and microphones and drawing boards. This is much more than a simple history of Spillane (though the biography here is filled with things about him I never knew). It is also a decade by decade history of the culture Spillane operated in. And it's all as readable as a novel--say a Mickey Spillane novel. :) This book is a flat out treasure.
Here'a quote from Max from Boing Boing:
"I grew up reading Mickey Spillane novels and, years later, was lucky enough to get to know the man behind Mike Hammer. Mickey and I did a number of projects together -- co-editing anthologies, creating the comic book Mike Danger, plus my documentary, "Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane" (1999 -- available on the Criterion DVD/Blu-ray of the great film noir, Kiss Me Deadly).
"About a week before his passing, Mickey called to ask a favor. He was very ill and knew it. He was working on what would be the last Mike Hammer novel, chronologically -- The Goliath Bone, Mike taking on terrorists in post-9/11 Manhattan.
"Mickey had been working hard on Goliath Bonebut was afraid he wouldn't have time to finish it. If need be, would I step in? Then a few days later, he asked his wife Jane to turn over any unfinished material from his several offices to me, saying, "Max will know what to do.""
---------About the BookIn the mid-20th century, Mickey Spillane was the sensation of not just mystery fiction but publishing itself. The level of sex and violence in his Mike Hammer thrillers (starting with I, The Jury in 1947) broke down long-held taboos and engendered a near hysterical critical backlash. Nonetheless, Spillane’s influence has been felt--reflections of Hammer are visible in nearly every subsequent tough guy of fiction and film, including James Bond, Dirty Harry, Shaft, Billy Jack, and Jack Bauer. Spillane’s fiction came to the screen in a series of films that include Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and The Girl Hunters (1963) with the author himself playing his private eye. These films, and television series starring Darren McGavin and Stacy Keach respectively, are examined in a lively, knowledgeable fashion by Spillane experts. Included are cast and crew listings, brief biographical entries on key persons, and a lengthy interview with Spillane.
------------About the Author
Max Allan Collins has earned an unprecedented 16 Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991), receiving the PWA life achievement award in 2007. He is the author of the graphic novel Road to Perdition and has directed four feature films and two documentaries. He lives in Muscatine, Iowa. James L. Traylor grew up reading the paperback adventures of Perry Mason, Ellery Queen, and Mike Hammer. His articles have appeared in The Armchair Detective, The Mystery FANcier, Clues, Hardboiled, The Strand and The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing (1999). He lives in Meansville, Georgia.
New Stephen King Novel Coming from Hard Case Crime
JOYLAND to be published in June 2013
New York, NY; London, UK (May 30, 2012) – Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of pulp-styled crime novels published by Titan Books, today announced it will publish JOYLAND, a new novel by Stephen King, in June 2013. Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, JOYLAND tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever. JOYLAND is a brand-new book and has never previously been published. One of the most beloved storytellers of all time, Stephen King is the world’s best-selling novelist, with more than 300 million books in print.
Called “the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade” by Neal Pollack in The Stranger, Hard Case Crime revives the storytelling and visual style of the pulp paperbacks of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The line features an exciting mix of lost pulp masterpieces from some of the most acclaimed crime writers of all time and gripping new novels from the next generation of great hardboiled authors, all with new painted covers in the grand pulp style. Authors range from modern-day bestsellers such as Pete Hamill, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block and Ed McBain to Golden Age stars like Mickey Spillane (creator of “Mike Hammer”), Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of “Perry Mason”), Wade Miller (author of Touch of Evil), and Cornell Woolrich (author of Rear Window).
Stephen King commented, “I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.”
King’s previous Hard Case Crime novel, The Colorado Kid, became a national bestseller and inspired the television series “Haven,” now going into its third season on SyFy.
“Joyland is a breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book,” said Charles Ardai, Edgar- and Shamus Award-winning editor of Hard Case Crime. “It’s a whodunit, it’s a carny novel, it’s a story about growing up and growing old, and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their time. Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved. When I finished it, I sent a note saying, ‘Goddamn it, Steve, you made me cry.’ ”
Nick Landau, Titan Publisher, added: “Stephen King is one of the fiction greats, and I am tremendously proud and excited to be publishing a brand-new book of his under the Hard Case Crime imprint.”
JOYLAND will feature new painted cover art by the legendary Robert McGinnis, the artist behind the posters for the original Sean Connery James Bond movies and “Breakfast At Tiffany’s,” and by Glen Orbik, the painter of more than a dozen of Hard Case Crime’s most popular covers, including the cover for The Colorado Kid.
Since its debut in 2004, Hard Case Crime has been the subject of enthusiastic coverage by a wide range of publications including The New York Times, USA Today, Time, Playboy, U.S. News & World Report, BusinessWeek, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Houston Chronicle, New York magazine,the New York Post and Daily News, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Parade and USA Weekend, as well as numerous other magazines, newspapers, and online media outlets. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Hard Case Crime is doing a wonderful job publishing both classic and contemporary ‘pulp’ novels in a crisp new format with beautiful, period-style covers. These modern ‘penny dreadfuls’ are worth every dime.” Playboy praised Hard Case Crime’s “lost masterpieces,” writing “They put to shame the work of modern mystery writers whose plots rely on cell phones and terrorists.” And the Philadelphia City Paper wrote, “Tired of overblown, doorstop-sized thrillers…? You’ve come to the right place. Hard Case novels are as spare and as honest as a sock in the jaw.”
Other upcoming Hard Case Crime titles include The Cocktail Waitress, a never-before-published novel by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity, and an epic first novel called The Twenty-Year Death by Ariel S. Winter that has won advance raves from authors such as Peter Straub, James Frey, Alice Sebold, John Banville, David Morrell and Stephen King.
For information about these and other forthcoming titles, visit www.HardCaseCrime.com.
About Hard Case Crime
Founded in 2004 by award-winning novelists Charles Ardai and Max Phillips, Hard Case Crime has been nominated for or won numerous honors since its inception including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Anthony, the Barry, and the Spinetingler Award. The series’ books have been adapted for television and film, with two features currently in development at Universal Pictures and the TV series “Haven” going into its third season this fall on SyFy. Hard Case Crime is published through a collaboration between Winterfall LLC and Titan Publishing Group.
About Titan Publishing Group
Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981, comprising three divisions: Titan Books, Titan Magazines/Comics and Titan Merchandise. Titan Books, recently nominated as Independent Publisher of the Year 2011, has a rapidly growing fiction list encompassing original fiction and reissues, primarily in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror, steampunk and crime. Recent crime and thriller acquisitions include Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins’ all-new Mike Hammer novels, the Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton and the entire backlist of the Queen of Spy Writers, Helen MacInnes. Titan Books also has an extensive line of media and pop culture-related non-fiction, graphic novels, art and music books. The company is based at offices in London, but operates worldwide, with sales and distribution in the US and Canada being handled by Random House. www.titanbooks.com
May 29, 2012
The Ed McBain/Evan Hunter Companion
1
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 87th 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 87th Precinct books when I started the companion, because of my dissertation, but I had just started reading the non-87th 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 87th 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 87th 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 87th 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 87th 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 87ths, 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-87th 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.
May 28, 2012
More Bobbs-Merril
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
Bill Pronzini did three or four Black Bat titles, including two of my favorites of his, The Jade Figure and the most excellent 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
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