Ed Gorman's Blog, page 168

Forgotten Books: Plunder Squad by Richard Stark

THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010
Forgotten Books: Plunder Squad by Richard Stark
Forgotten Books: Plunder Squad by Richard Stark

One of the ways Donald Westlake kept his Parker novels fresh was to vary the the success his man had as a professional criminal. Sometimes the magic worked, sometimes it didn't.

Plunder Squad is a long (for a Parker novel) and intense study of how things can go wrong in trying to plan and execute a robbery. Not anywhere as easy as you thought.

Parker is near broke and in bad need of money. As often happens he's forced to deal with people who overestimate their worth as professionals. In this novel we meet a number of them. We also meet a woman who is familiar to readers of Parker books, the sullen horny slut who has affixed herself to the man who has the idea for the heist. Parker knocks several points off the man's score for even having her around. Inevitably she means trouble not just for her honey bunny but for all of them involved in the robbery. She is contrasted, later in the book, by the crisp, pretty, bright young woman who is a helpmate to her criminal boyfriend.

Plunder Squad is a maze of false starts and bad turns. The heist Parker eventually settles on is complicated and requires the kind of skill and oversight only he can bring to the job. As usual the story is enriched by all the men involved, each with different needs and capabilities. And with different degrees of trustworthyness. In a book of this length you really get into Parker's head and pick up on his paranoia and general distrust of those terrible creatures known as human beings.

This is a major addition to the Richard Stark canon, a relentless and often bleak look at life on the wrong side of the law. Though in the Stark books cops often have fewer scruples than cons.[image error]

The Dark Corner

Ed here: These are two paragraphs from a review of the film The Dark Corner from Noir of The Week. I think these are interesting takes on early noir.

The first thing that struck me about this film is how so often in films from this era the boss and the secretary are inevitably linked romantically. It's as though a man hires a secretary just to woo her and a woman seeks out a job in order to be wooed. It's takes the concept of work romance to a whole other level. The Maltese Falcon remake Satan Meets a Lady (1936) comes to mind, with lusty Warren William drooling over his new secretary who has expectations of him but is dismayed to find he's got a roving eye. It's assumed that the secretary role is a temporary one; a sort of springboard into wifedom. The paint on the door isn't dry yet and Bradford already starts the courtship process by taking her out to a penny arcade and she begins the seduction by not so coyly having him check out her gams when she complains about her stockings. Arranged or not, the chemistry is there. When they kiss, he is rough and she gives in. The kiss is passionate, a mixture of pleasure and pain. She leaves possibly with a bruise on her arm but inevitably with butterflies in her stomach.


If there is ever a child character in a film noir, be on the alert! No matter how small a role, that child's function in the plot is infinitely important. They are the secret holders of crucial information. In The Dark Corner, a young girl with a whistle watches intently as the dirty detective in the white suit makes various phone calls throughout the movie. In her first scene, she is playfully blowing her whistle and the detective is annoyed and threatens her. In her next scene, she knows not to blow the whistle while he's there and waits until he walks away, all the time listening to the details of his conversation. And in a twist that's so film noir, she becomes a whisteblower and helps propel the story forward. She is the epitome of innocence which contrasts with the evilness of the dirty detective, making us loathe him even more.

http://www.noiroftheweek.com/2008/08/...
http://www.noiroftheweek.com/2008/08/...

Scarlett Johansson to play Janet Leigh in the Making of Psycho

Scarlett Johansson to play Janet Leigh in the Making of Psycho from The Guardian UK
Johansson to star opposite Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho

Stepping into the shower ... Scarlett Johansson is to play Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. Photograph: Picture Perfect/Rex Features
Scarlett Johansson will step into the shower to play Janet Leigh in a behind-the-scenes drama about the making of Psycho. Based on the 1990 book by Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho charts the director's struggle to bypass the studios and fund a low-budget, black-and-white horror film from his own pocket.

Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of 'Psycho'
Production year: 2013
Directors: Sacha Gervasi
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson
More on this film
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Johansson's arrival completes the principal cast. Anthony Hopkins is already on board as Hitchcock, while Helen Mirren plays Alma, the director's redoubtable wife. The Fox Searchlight production will be directed by Sacha Gervasi from a script by Rebello and Black Swan writer John McLaughlin.

Psycho cast the Hollywood actor Janet Leigh in the role of Marion Crane, the Arizona secretary who absconds with $40,000 and is then suddenly, shockingly knifed to death in the Bates Motel. The film sparked controversy on its release back in 1960, prompting the writer CA Lejeune to walk out of a press screening and immediately resign as film critic of the Observer newspaper. But Hitchcock's gamble paid off. Psycho went on to be a huge box-office hit, inspired a glut of sequels, rip-offs and homages and is now widely recognised as the director's most inspired picture.

BLOOD & TACOS by Gary Phillips and others

Live today are all-original, '70s & '80s era vigilante pulp short stories in the vein of the Executioner, the Destroyer, et al. at Blood and Tacos featuring stories by yours truly Gary Phillips ("The Silencer Strikes," a nod to Holloway House), Matthew C. Funk, Johnny Shaw, Cameron Ashley and other talented writers. Read 'em online for free or download to yer Kindle for a mere .99. Can you dig it?

Forgotten Books: BLACKMAILER by George Axelrod

BLACKMAILER by George Axelrod
There were few cooler guys on TV in the Fifties than George Axelrod. I didn't see him that often--he did a few talk shows; a few arts shows--but I always thought Now that's the kind of guy I wish I could be. Hip but accessible.

Not only had Axelrod produced such fine B'way and movie hits as "The Seven Year Itch" and "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?," he'd adapted such novels as "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to the screen.

And on TV he was slick and and funny and serious about his craft.

Oh, and one more thing. He was the author of a genuine Gold Medal novel.

I bought BLACKMAILER a few years after it appeared...say forty-five years ago. Now you can get a Hard Case edition and even after all this time it holds up well, albeit as a tribute to a time long past but fondly remembered by some portions of my generation.

What Axelrod did here was take the elements of the standard hardboiled crime novel--good bad girls and bad bad men, the prospect of lots of cash--and mix them up with talent agents and movie stars. And relate all this in a voice that is both literate and a bit larky at times--and works surprisingly well, even in the scenes of violence. There's a faux Hemingway (who was God at that time), a faux Marilyn Monroe (who was Goddess at that time) and enough double-crossing to make you cross-eyed.

This is one of those kick-back novels. A beer or two, a night with nothing to do, a devout desire for pure escape. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Axelrod is one of those seminal figures of the fifties and early sixties (along with people such as David Suskind) who made talk show appearances lively and always at least a bit controversial. Intellectually controversial that is...as opposed to today with its Snookis and Kardashians.

The New Prologue website

On Thursday March 1, 2012, F&W and Adams Media announce the premier of their new ebook website, Prologue, which will feature many of the vintage mystery and genre fiction authors of the past 100 years. Created by Ben LeRoy, the editor of Tyrus Books, it's a great list of the known and the not-so-known.

They've got authors like Gil Brewer, Andrew Coburn, Robert Colby, Richard Deming, Fletcher Flora, William Gault, Orrie Hitt, Frank Kane, Henry Kane, Ed Lacy, Dan J. Marlowe, Wade Miller, Helen Nielsen, Vin Packer, Kin Platt, Peter Rabe, Charles Runyon, Louis Trimble, Jack Webb, Harry Whittington….and that's just for starters.

There's lots more to come: science fiction, romance, westerns, young adult, horror, and more mysteries.

Visit the Prologue website at www.prologuebooks.com, or check out online booksellers like Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. We think you'll be nicely surprised at the number of books being made available. As the site says, this is a "living record" of genre fiction. And this is just the beginning.

Introducing The Hunted and The Dame

Introducing The Hunted and The Dame by Dave Zeltserman


The Hunted and The Dame are the first two ebooks in what I hope readers will find an exciting new novella series from me that mixes hardboiled crime with government conspiracy. Each of these are going to be between 85-110 pages long, which I think is the perfect length for Kindle reading.

The Richard Stark/Parker influence in these will be evident from the sparse prose, the crime heist in The Dame (and heists in future novellas), and the name of my anti-hero, Dan Willis (Parker's cover identity in the early books was Chuck Willis), and while I think Parker fans are going to enjoy these they're still very different. The government conspiracy running through these books will make them very different.

ttp://smallcrimes-novel.blogspot.com/2012/02/introducin...

PLEASE NOTE - I WON'T ACCEPT ANY MORE ANONYMOUS RESPONSES THANK YOU

Davy Jones

From Mark Evanier's New From Me about Davy Jones:

What makes it doubly-sad is that some of us got to meet him just 18 days ago at the Hollywood Show out in Burbank. He had a long line of autograph-seekers and folks who just wanted to meet him and tell him what his work meant to them. As I explained here, he could not have been more gracious and nice to his fans. Shelly Goldstein (seen in a video not far below these words) was one such admirer. She complimented him on his work on stage in Oliver! and he started singing a song from that score for her, a cappella and all the way through to the end. An hour or so later, he saw her walking by and he sprinted out from behind his table to gift her with a CD he was selling there that contained a medley of Oliver! tunes. She was amazed not only at his generosity but at the sheer fact that he remembered her and thought to do that. What a shame to lose someone that charming.

Ed here: I was never much of a Monkees fan but I thought Carol King wrote some good songs for them. I've read so many conflicting reports about who actually played on the Monkees records--the Monkees of course insisted they did but many many studio musicians have claimed otherwise--that I guess it's impossible to know for sure. But Mark's memory of him is certainly a warm one and an especially nice tribute.

When I told my editor Linda he'd died she was upset. "He was the boy all the eighth Catholic girls wanted to date!" Not Bobby Sherman? :)

Lee Marvin

I'll have another Lee Marvin post later on.

Pro-File: Ennis Willie

Ennis Willie:

1. Tell us about your current novel or project.
First, thanks for inviting me along on this ride. And second, allow me to make a confession; the subject I have the most trouble writing about is myself.
Back in the sixties when I was in my early twenties I was driven to write mystery novels ⎯ couldn't have stopped myself if I had tried. I wrote as hard and as well as I was capable until I burned out. By then I had written twenty-one novels, nine of them featuring my only series character, Sand.
Then awhile back I found myself suddenly back in the writing world with a bunch of great writers (including yourself) urging me to get back into print.
The result was SAND'S GAME, an omnibus containing two Sand novels and three Sand short stories with an Introduction to the volume by Max Allan Collins, edited by Lynn F. Myers, Jr. and Stephen Mertz, with individual Introductions by Lynn F. Myers, Jr., Wayne D. Dundee, Bill Crider, Bill Pronzini, James Reasoner, and Gary Lovisi (in order of appearance) and a detailed Interview by Stephen Mertz titled "Ennis Willie gets the Third Degree".
There was even a "Complete Ennis Willie Bibliography".
So eventually SAND'S GAME was finished . . . and I had not written a single word. A job well done!
Then it turned out that the back cover was still blank. So this back cover became my first step back into the writing world:
His name is Sand . . .
. . . a former crime lord with a price on his head, an army of hit men on his back, and a .45 riding in a shoulder rig under his arm to do his talking. A man alone, with few friends and many hates.
Walk along with him in this volume, down the dark streets and fog-filled alleyways of Skid Row as he seeks the monstrosity that killed a ragged little man with sticky fingers and a generous heart who did not deserve to die in this dead place.
Enter a bordello where the madam has just died from a hundred shallow stab wounds. Find out why she used her last breath, not to tell the police the name of the killer, but to breathe out the word "Sand." What had this woman done for him that she knew she could talk to him from the grave?
Fly in with him to the city he left behind when he quit the mob, the city where his enemies rule and where he could never return. But the word is out. It is seeping through the underworld like smoke through a crack.
"Sand is coming back!"
There is nowhere to hide . . . and it's too late to pray.
2. Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?
The second book in the Sand series, SAND'S WAR, has just been released in hardcover and paperback. The eBook is due for release next week.
SAND'S WAR features a new Introduction by Max Allan Collins and two of my Sand favorites, "Haven for the Damned" and "Scarlet Goddess".
"Scarlet Goddess" was the first novel in the Sand series and will always hold a special place in my memory. It was four o'clock in the morning and everything around me was dark and quiet. I always preferred to write at night, when it was easier to concentrate. On this night my wife was asleep in our bed and our new baby was asleep in his crib and I was tapping away at the keys of my portable typewriter when the hair suddenly stood up on the back of my neck. I could feel my neck tingling. I reached back with my hand to feel the tingle, and the short hairs on my neck really were standing up. Suddenly I knew that every word was falling in place as the tapping got faster and faster and I just kept going without looking back. I had anticipated one more day to finish the book, but by the time the sun rose around seven a.m. the book was finished and I didn't need to go back and read it to know it was right.
"Haven for the Damned" I won't try to describe. You kind of have to be there. It is a prequel to "And Some Were Evil" ⎯ the next Sand novel on the horizon.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
For me it was taking a nice break after each book was finished to dream up the next one.
4. The greatest displeasure? Having to meet deadlines. Where's the fun in that?
5. Advice to the publishing world?
Give up on making books fatter and fatter. Enough book obesity already.
6. Are there any forgotten writers you'd like to see in print again?
I checked my bookshelves, and I think I'm the last one.
7. Tell us about selling your first novel.
I wrote my first novel when I was seventeen. "The Work of the Devil" was the title. I sent it around to several publishers, and a couple of them suggested they might be interested if I rewrote certain parts. I didn't want to rewrite. I was always more interested in what I was writing than what I had already written. Eventually it came back from a publisher with coffee spilled all over it. About six months after that I finally pulled out any suggestions I had been given concerning changes and plowed on. It wasn't making the changes that bothered me; it was having to retype the manuscript. Writing was a thrill. Typing was a chore. I finally decided to take on the typing itself as a necessary learning experience and when the manuscript was ready it went out to Merit Books who bought it and sent me a check. That was actually my second sale. I had sold a short story six months earlier to Hi-Life Magazine for $120.00.
"The work of the Devil" was a mystery about a young hitchhiker picked up on the road by two reclusive older sisters involved in an unsolved murder somewhere in their past and living in a rundown southern mansion with a young niece on college break.
The Sand Shockers came later.