Ed Gorman's Blog, page 182

Bad Moon Rising in Baker & Taylor Top Ten; Warren Adler/Pauline Kael

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Three weeks on Baker & Taylor Mystery Bestseller List from #15 to #11 this week #9
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Warren Adler has written a number of bestsellers and has seen some of them turned into major movies. His piece in the Huffington Post makes some memorable and striking comments about the effect movies have on us.

I Found It At The Movies by Warren Adler

Pauline Kael, who reviewed movies for The New Yorker for many years, was considered by many to be the goddess of film critics. Her comments on movies were both insightful and controversial. Once again, a compendium of her reviews is coming out in a newly published book.

Her writings were distinguished by her sharp opinions. When she was negative about the quality of a film, she was downright lethal. When she was positive, she was ecstatic. But whatever her thoughts were about films, her enduring view was that movies were transformative, important, and, in some cases, life changing.

On the surface, such a conclusion might seem, to say the least, exaggerated and over expansive. Indeed, how many times have I heard it said: "It's only a movie."

Years ago, I might have dismissed her opinion, but after a very long, personal retrospective on the impact of movies on my own life, I'm inclined to see her point.

The effect that movies have had on my life, psyche, worldview, relationship with people, knowledge of the human condition, hopes and fears, emulations and aspirations, romanticism, speech, general appearance, taste in clothing, courting, sex, travel, yearnings and ambitions has been profound. There is no denying it.

for the rest go here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/warren-...

New Books: Gardens of Night by Greg F. Gifune

Greg F. Gifune:

It began as an idea for a trilogy. Three novels: BLOOD IN ELECTRIC BLUE, GARDENS OF NIGHT, and SMOKE IN CRIMSON. All would deal with female mythical beings (largely as metaphor) and explore various aspects of the human experience intertwined with mythology. The novels would be connected yet individual, in that they would (and could) stand alone as separate pieces. One could read only one, two or all three (in any order). But if all three were read, answers to many of the mysteries surrounding the stories would be revealed so that once completed the trilogy would become a single maze with a beginning, middle and end connected by a single enigmatic character that would appear (to different degrees) in all three, a transsexual named Wilma Malloy.

Ironically enough, it was the third novel that appeared first, but as a short story called SMOKE. It was published years ago and also appeared in my short story collection DOWN TO SLEEP. The novel, SMOKE IN CRIMSON, I have not yet finished (I've been working on it on and off for several years now), but the first two novels have been completed and published. Both have received a great deal of praise from readers and critics alike, and BLOOD IN ELECTRIC BLUE has just been released in Germany (to rave reviews, thankfully) as part of a foreign rights publishing deal I have with FESTA. As for GARDENS specifically, the idea behind it had to do with how violence (mythological and literal) might impact people who have suffered a terrible trauma without fully understanding why. For Marcus Banyon, the main character, a violent sexual assault against himself and his wife opens the door to what very well may be an alternate reality controlled by the Three Fates. A reality where Marcus can communicate with nature itself on levels never before imagined, and where nature can communicate with him in the same potentially dangerous ways. In the end, what GARDENS is truly about is the unprovoked annihilation of someone's life. It seemed to me that, unpleasant and difficult as it was to write, using sexual assault was the best way to illustrate this, as I could think of no crime that strips away one's dignity in such a primal and base sense as rape does. As Marcus wanders through a surreal dreamscape (much of which, despite his medication, may very well be real), he is confronted not only by the horrors of this life (and perhaps the next), but issues of emotional isolation, love, marriage, friendship, lies, loyalty and a myriad of challenges that will either lead to his destruction or deliverance. Perhaps, in some ways, the strange and frightening corridors Marcus wanders, from mental institutions to hospitals to haunted farmhouses with hellish underground labyrinths, will lead to both.

When Robert Dunbar of UNINVITED BOOKS (a dear friend and a wonderful writer himself) approached me with an idea to launch his new publishing company UNINVITED BOOKS with a novel from me, I was flattered and excited. After hearing his goal with UB to publish dark literary novels, I knew GARDENS would be a perfect fit. Rob loved the concept, so I finished the novel and turned it in. He loved it and went on to publish it, bringing to fruition the second book in the trilogy. Since its release, reviewers have called GARDENS OF NIGHT "superlative literary horror," "brilliant," "psychologically horrifying and brutal," "deeply disturbing" and "extraordinary." I'm very proud of this novel, and honored that UNINVITED BOOKS chose to launch with it. So far reaction has been terrific, and I look forward to finishing the trilogy by completing the final novel SMOKE IN CRIMSON soon. Interviewers often ask me if, of the novels I've written, I have a favorite. I don't. But I do believe GARDENS OF NIGHT is some of my best work, and will speak to readers open to it in ways nothing else I've written has (with the possible exception of BLOOD IN ELECTRIC BLUE).

Many of my novels have been compared to David Lynch films, in that if you're looking for something where everything is spelled out and tied up in a neat little red bow by the end, then I'm probably not your guy. On the flipside, I don't want people to come away from GARDENS having no idea what the hell it was about either. But if you enjoy being challenged and delving into the darkest corners of the human experience, then I think you'll enjoy GARDENS OF NIGHT as both an existential thriller and a thought-provoking and spiritual journey deep into the heart of what it truly means to be alive.

GARDENS OF NIGHT is available from UNINVITED BOOKS at www.uninvitedbooks.com also at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and virtually everywhere books are sold.

Visit Greg F. Gifune at his official site www.gregfgifune.com or on FaceBook.

He can be reached via email at: gfgauthor@verizon.net

Sunday Funnies: Michael Lohan denied bail -- boxing career jeopardized?

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Ed here: All these deadbeat reality show creepazoids. Obviously the thought of getting an actual job fills them with terrror. To me the Lohans should be put in prison for the way they've lived off Lindsay without seeming to care much for her welfare. The last paragraph here about the names on the boxing card...the lowest depths of reality TV..


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Michael Lohan denied bail -- boxing career jeopardized?
October 29, 2011 | 2:15 pm


Michael Lohan is still behind bars after a judge on Saturday denied him bail, a setback that could get in the way of his daddy and celebrity duties.

After nearly a week of trouble between Lindsay's dad and his former fiancee, Kate Major, the 51-year-old faced Hillsborough Circuit Judge Denise Pomponio at a satellite bail hearing to go over his recent alleged violation of a no-contact order.

Lohan tried to make excuses, but the judge wasn't having it. Not surprising, as only three days earlier, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Walter Heinrich had been very clear -- and fairly ticked off -- about what would happen to Lohan if he "even dreamed about" Major.

"It doesn't matter if she called you a hundred times after you got out of jail, Judge Heinrich doesn't have a court order on her, he has a court order on you.... It is your responsibility, because you are under the court order," Pomponio told Lohan.

Major, a former Star magazine reporter who also dated Jon Gosselin, testified that Lohan tried to call her five times after being released from custody Wednesday night and sounded intoxicated. An officer who was with Major that night and heard at least one call via speakerphone told the judge that Lohan was nonthreatening and tried to patch things up with his ex during the call.

The problems had started Tuesday, when Lohan was arrested for allegedly beating Major. The ordeal went from bad to just plain bizarre after he complained of chest pains while in custody, was taken to a hospital and then reportedly tried to bolt. When he finally did post bail Wednesday, he rang up Major multiple times, she said. (That was the violation that landed him in front of the judge Saturday.)

Lohan allegedly tried to flee when police arrived at his Tahitian Inn hotel room by jumping 34 feet off the balcony. He suffered a possible broken foot and had to be taken to the hospital before they transferred him to a Hillsborough County jail on Friday night.

Bail was set at $500 on the charge of nonviolently obstructing police, but with no bail on the other charge, the judge wasn't letting Lohan go anywhere. Major, however, might have to go somewhere: She was reportedly given an eviction notice Friday because of the media hubbub she and her ex have sparked around her apartment building.

Michael Lohan's lockdown couldn't come at a worse time for a guy who according to TMZ was planning this coming week to meet with Dr. Drew Pinsky for a TV stint, attend daughter Lindsay Lohan's probation-violation hearing Wednesday in L.A., and participate in a celebrity boxing match Thursday with contestants including Tareq Salahi, the alleged White House party crasher whose wife, Michaele Salahi, ran off with Journey guitarist Neal Schon in September.

Though Tareq Salahi, Jose Canseco, Joey Buttafuoco and Nadya "Octomom" Suleman are all on the card for the pay-per-view boxing match, Lohan is -- was? -- set to go mano-a-mano with O.J. Simpson houseguest Kato Kaelin.

RELATED:

For Your Halloween Viewing Pleasure: The Seventh Victim

The Seventh Victim

Even if he was overlooked in his lifetime Val Lewton's horror and dark suspense films are not only remembered today but also celebrated. His movies changed horror fiction from the more obvious monsters teeming on Universal's lot to the subtler and darker insinuations we can still see in the horror films of our own time.

There's now a collection of Lewton's finest films available on DVD. In this age of the auteur you might make the assumption that Lewton directed the films but he didn't. He was the producer.

'I'll let Wikipedia do the heavy lifting here: "In 1942, Lewton was named head of the horror unit at RKO studios, at a salary of US$250 per week. As head of the B-horror unit he would have to follow three rules: each film had to come in under a US$150,000 budget, each film was to run under seventy-five minutes, and Lewton's supervisors would supply the title for each film.

"Lewton's first production was Cat People, released in 1942. The film was directed by Jacques Tourneur, who subsequently also directed I Walked With a Zombie and The Leopard Man for Lewton. Made for US$134,000, the film went on to earn nearly US$4 million, and was the top moneymaker for RKO that year. This success enabled Lewton to make his next films with relatively little studio interference, allowing him to avoid the sensationalist material suggested by the film titles he was given, instead focusing on ominous suggestion and themes of existential ambivalence.

"Lewton always wrote the final draft of the screenplays for his films, but avoided an on-screen co-writing credit except in two cases, The Body Snatcher and Bedlam, for which he used the pseudonym "Carlos Keith", which he had previously used on the novel, Where the Cobra Sings. After Jacques Tourneur left RKO's horror film unit, Lewton gave first directing opportunities to Robert Wise and Mark Robson."

Lewton was a sophisticated man familiar with all the arts and it was this intelligence that informed his films. I've watched most of his movies many times and I never get tired of them. They work as classic dark tales of vengeance and retribution and, most of all, as portals into terrifying worlds we only reluctantly enter. There are always moments in these pictures when Hitchcockian shocks slams us up against the wall (he revere Hitchcock). For me there are more of these shocks in "The Seventh Victim" than in any of the other Lewton films.

Victim is Lewton's noir. Occasionally his films had lyrical, almost ethereal moments but not here. The plot details the plight of young Mary who is forced to leave an upscale boarding school because her older sister has not been paying her bills. Mary goes to New York in search of her sister Jacqueline who owned a profitable cosmetics company. But when she reaches the company she discovers that her sister has sold it to another woman and had not been heard of in some time. All too soon a shrink who'd been dealing with Mary—a sinister figure in his own right—relates that Jacqueline has taken up with some strange friends.

To say more about the story from this point I'd have to include spoilers. Story and style are one. Most of the city scenes are ominous and are Germanic in their dense shadow and faintly heard sounds. Young Kim Hunter, who went on to many other fine performances but had a troubled passage in Hollywood, is perfect as the wary naïf desperate to connect with her sister. And to protect her. She fears that her sister has been harmed in some way.

With the exception of a dozen scenes or so the tone is grim, even in spots morbid. This is a film about nothing less than death, about the essence and meaning of death itself. In the last few minutes of the picture we're presented with an image that I remembered exactly from my childhood when I first saw it in a second-run house after the big war. In some ways it's a bitter and brutal philosophical affirmation of the movie's theme. This is what you'll find in the city, it says, in the shadowy towers of privilege; this is extinction.

A number of critics consider this a prequel to "Cat People". Some consider it a sequel to Lewton's "Cat People." The latter makes no sense to me at all. But then we know how critics are, don't we?

An interview with Walter Hill

Ed here: You'll notice the way Hill & the interviewer tip toe pass comparisons between Hills The Driver and the new film Drive. The way Bob Clark always did between his Black Christmas and Halloween.

FROM THE VILLAGE VOICE
Night and the City: Walter Hill on The Warriors and The Driver
Sucker for the underbelly of urban life
By James Hughes
published: October 26, 2011

While filming the cult 1979 masterpiece The Warriors, in which a Coney Island gang busts through city barricades after being falsely implicated in an assassination, director Walter Hill found himself dealing with the real thing. "We were in Brooklyn most of the time during filming," Hill says, "and we were bothered a lot by other real gangs, who, like hyenas, would be circling our sets. And of course our guys, who were a pretty active physical force themselves, took on their own kind of gang sensibility. One night, one of these real gangs was up on a train platform while we were running by below, and they pissed down on us. James Remar and about five other actors took off after them, and went up the stairs to have it out. We were, of course, wondering if we were ever going to get our cast back. Those kinds of things, in a way, happened almost every night."
The anxieties and camaraderie of Brooklyn street life are evident throughout The Warriors, which, between various escapes from rivals wielding bats and billy clubs, is marked by pauses in the dark as the gang members catch their breaths and gird for the next showdown.

"Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence," Robert Bresson urged fellow filmmakers. Through dozens of directorial efforts, including Southern Comfort, both 48 Hrs. films, and the Emmy-winning pilot for Deadwood, Walter Hill has honored this balance.

Before a moment of downtime in his office on the Warner Bros. lot, Hill gives instructions to his editing team, ensuring that the recipient of a stomach punch in his latest film, Bullet to the Head, due out April 2012 and starring Sylvester Stallone, is pinned to the ground long enough to match the impact of the blow. At 69, Hill is still shooting on film, refining action sequences down to the crumple and questioning the nature of confrontation.

"I was always very aware that I was getting away with something," Hill says of his first few films, including his 1975 debut, Hard Times, in which a laconic street fighter played by Charles Bronson ambles through New Orleans and knocks his opponents onto piles of oyster shells along the way. "Somehow in the belly of the great commercial engine of Hollywood, I had managed to get some things through that were not going to be conventional product. Whether they're good, bad, or indifferent, I have to leave to someone else."

for the rest go here:
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/p...

New Books: ESCAPE FROM PARIS by Carolyn Hart, Oct. 2011 edition

Dear Ed,

For the first time ever, the original uncut version of my WWII novel ESCAPE FROM PARIS is now in print from a small press. Best Regards - Carolyn

ESCAPE FROM PARIS by Carolyn Hart, Oct. 2011 edition

Two American sisters risk their lives in Nazi-Occupied Paris to save British fliers from arrest. The Gestapo sets a trap and on the bleak Christmas Eve of 1940, death is only a step behind.

I was a child during WWII and the war dominated our lives.Family members served in the Army or Navy. We followed the faraway course of the fighting in huge black newspaper headlines. Food and gasoline were rationed.

The war remained vivid in my memory and, as an adult, I wrote several WWII suspense novels. To sell Escape from Paris, I cut the book from 93,000 to 55,000 words. That version was published in 1982 and 1983.

This month, to my great delight, Oconee Spirit Press is publishing the original uncut manuscript, which has a newly amended 2011 copyright. It has been 30 years in coming but now ESCAPE FROM PARIS is available as it was written.

I hope readers will share the struggles of brave men and women who defied the Gestapo during the bitter winter of 1940. They knew fear, found love, grieved loss. Their lives and deaths remind us that freedom survives only when the free are brave.

In 1940, England awaited invasion and the Nazis devoured Europe. I believe this book will appeal to book club readers, highly intelligent women, often of a certain age, who will bring their own memories or memories of their parents into play.

All best wishes - Carolyn Hart

Book Club discussion questions and an excerpt are available at www.carolynhart.com .

ESCAPE FROM PARIS
Hardcover $24.95 978-0-9840109-1-2
Trade Paper $14.95 978-0-9830040-3-5
Available by ordering through your favorite bookstore or online.

Forgotten Books: Shooting Star and Spiderweb by Robert Bloch

Shooting Star and Spiderweb by Robert Bloch

Though Robert Bloch made his reputation with horror or horrorific stories and novels, he worked steadily throughout his career in the mystery and crime genres. Shooting Star, one half of the new Hardcase Crime double book (more of these please), is not only crimonious it's also set in Hollywood, one of Bloch's abiding fascinations.

The hook here is novel for those of us who can remember how actor William Boyd bought up all his Hopalong Cassiday movies when they fell from popularity in the Forties and later sold them to TV. Buy low sell high. They brought him millions. Failed literary agent Mark Clayburn, now paying the bills as a private eye, is hired to prove that a Boyd-like actor wasn't the decadent man the press revealed him to be following his murder. The man who hires Clayburn bought up the dead star's Hoppy-like movies and expected to make a fortune. But since the films are aimed at kids...who wants to see a hero whose tastes off-screen were, to be gentle about it, sleazy.

In Spiderweb failed actor Eddie Haines is hired to be a "psychiatric consultant" to the stars by a rather arch villain named Professor Hermann. By blackmailing Eddie, Hermann has found the perfect tool for his racket. There are moments that reminded me of Nightmare Alley throughout the book and more than a few scenes that move the novel into the kind of realistic horror of Psycho. Shooting Star is driven by its mystery storyline; Spiderweb, though the storyline is less focused, depends on shock material to keep you turning the pages.

Neither of these novels is major Bloch but both deserve reading. For one thing they encapsulate a number of the obsessions, sociologically, of the Fifties. For another we see the dark side of Bloch's obsession with Hollywood. In such masterpieces as his short story The Movie People we see his almost innocent sense of what the movies gave to him as a youth. When he speaks of Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd it's as if he's speaking of secular saints. The movies of his boyhood are holy to him.

In these novels and many short stories he deals with the business side of Hollywood. The voice becomes by turns sardonic and angry as he witnesses the passion and beauty of the great films and film artists reduced to power plays and dishonest deals rendered by men who have no idea what they're defiling.

I enjoyed both of these books enormously.

The Dead Man LIves and for $.99!

Ed here: I finished The Dead Man last night and really enjoyed it. And admired it as a piece of work. The structure is ingenious, the large cast of characters (third person omniscient works here) are variously strong, weak, weird, funny, sad, scary and unique and the storytelling is sleek and relentless. I recommend it big time. And it's now only $.99 on KIndle. BTW I hadn't seen the Booklist comparison to Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir's Destroyer series until after I read The Dead Man. But I thought about that old series several times as I read Goldberg & Rabkin.

Here's a piece from Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin published on Amazon.

Amazon.com Review
Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin on The Dead Man series


Lee Goldberg

William Rabkin
We grew up loving those "men's action adventure" paperback novels of the 60s, 70s, and 80s...series like The Destroyer, The Ninja Master, Nick Carter, and The Death Merchant. You could find them in finer supermarkets, gas stations, 7-11s and bookstores everywhere. They were the male equivalent of Harlequin romances,though the only romance was often between a man and his AK-47.

The books were short and tightly-written, with hard-boiled heroes, outrageously sexy women, and gleefully over-the-top plots. Nobody would ever mistake them for great literature, but they were enormous fun to read...and to write (we know, because Lee broke into publishing in the mid-1980s writing one of those series—.357 Vigilante aka The Jury Series under the pen name "Ian Ludlow"--while he was still in college).

Sadly, the "men's action adventure" series novels are virtually extinct now, early victims of the narrowing of the paperback marketplace.

But the Kindle offers the perfect medium for the revival of the genre, which is why we've teamed up with over a dozen other writers on The Dead Man, an original series that we hope recaptures the spirit and pure escapism of the thousands of books written during the heyday of "men's action adventure."

The series is about Matthew Cahill, an ordinary man leading a simple life...until a shocking accident changes everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld that nobody else does, making each day a journey...and an adventure.

New books in The Dead Man series will appear every month or so, just like they used to in paperback in the old days. Our other experienced Dead Man authors come from a wide cross-section of genres – mystery, westerns, horror, science fiction, thrillers, and cozies. And some of them also lead double-lives as Emmy award winning writer/producers of hit network TV series.

The Dead Man gives us the thrilling opportunity to indulge our great affection for the genre and hopefully get you hooked on it, too. -- Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin

Review
The story races by at a brisk rate of knots, each twist and turn, and shift in time providing another revelation [...] I was enjoying it so much, I didn't want it to end. --Permission to Kill Blog

The Dead Man: Face of Evil is a tight, well written, supernatural thriller [that] satisfies all on it's own, while being a terrific opener that promises an epic tale to come. I'm excited for the next book. --Man Eating Bookworm Blog

The Dead Man Face of Evil reminds me of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.[...]a fascinating horror story that leaves you wanting more, more, more! --Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine

"I'm hopeful they continue with this character since it's set up so well. I've not seen a writing tandem like this since the glory days of Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy" --Bookgasm

"Buckle up! The Dead Man: Face of Evil starts at full-speed and never lets up. This is big-ticket horror with characters you care about who are driven to the very edge. Highly recommended!" -New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry, author of Dead of Night

Big News From Mysterious Press

Dear friends and colleagues,
Please forgive me if this is of no interest to you, but I'm pretty jazzed right now. After two years of hard and often frustrating work, the website of my electronic publishing company is up and running. Click this link -- http://mysteriouspress.com/ ; -- if you'd like to see it and the terrific array of books and authors we're offering. It's the first day, so only about 40 books are up, but we'll be adding hundreds more over the next few months. Thanks go to Jane Friedman and her fabulous team at Open Road Integrated Media and my brilliant website administrator, Rob Hart.
Yours sincerely, Otto

http://mysteriouspress.com/search/def...

Authors:

Bergman, Andrew
Blake, James Carlos
Brand, Christianna
Bruen, Ken
Bunker, Edward
Cook, Thomas H.
Coxe, George Harmon
Ellroy, James
English, T.J.
Garfield, Brian
Grady, James
Hall, Adam
Harvey, John
Hornsby, Wendy
Housewright, David
Kaminsky, Stuart
Klavan, Andrew
McCarry, Charles
McShane, Mark
O'Connell, Jack

Bad Moon Rising Keep on Chuggin'

(available on Kindle for $9.95)

Bad Moon Rising hit #11 on Baker & Taylor's Top Selling Mysteries last week. Here are some new review quotes:

"As the story unfolds, motivations, opportunities and actions all are called into question. It's a fast-paced story that will have the reader turning pages to get to the end." --Grift U.K.

"Like Ed Gorman's other shrewdly plotted books about lawyer Sam McCain, "Bad Moon Rising" (Pegasus, 208 pp., $25) takes its title from a pop song. It's the summer of 1968, the Chicago Seven are frolicking at the Democratic Convention, and hippies — still exotic creatures — have settled near McCain's small Iowa town. --Seattle Times

Then something dark and sinister rears its head later in the novel, and Sam faces a large personal challenge. Hopefully, more titles will follow as we await what fate lurks down the pike for our man Sam. Entertaining, articulate, and just a good PI story, Bad Moon Rising was a first-rate read." -- Goodreads

"Gorman offers readers his richest portrait yet about Black River Falls and its people." --The Reading Room


From Viewshound (UK)

Books RSS
Ed Gorman: noir novelist for liberals
Ed Gorman's characters are as tough and worldly as any you'll find in the literature of noir, crime and politics. Hard to believe Gorman's a liberal. He is.
By Matt Paust - Tuesday 25 Oct 2011

Come gather round, liberals, you're not far from home…

Disclosure: I'm a gun nut and enjoy hard-boiled detective novels in which the participants use guns and know the difference between a revolver, a semi-automatic (autoloading) pistol and a (fully automatic) submachinegun.

Politically I'm a liberal, knowing full well many of my liberal brothers and sisters would breathe easier if all guns were suddenly to vanish, or, more realistically, end up in the hands of only military personnel and police officers, or, even more realistically, those of the aforementioned and, with grave reservations, folks with federal licenses, preferably those issued by a liberal Democrat-controlled regime.

Ed Gorman's novels reflect an outlook compatible with this stricter view on the gun issue. Yet, I'm addicted to his writing. I know. WTF? Brothers and sisters, could this mean there is hope for me? Or might it mean simply that Ed Gorman's novels are so good I can abide this chasm of outlook between us? For now, I'm going with a "yes" on the second question.

Come writers and bloggers who proselytize your ken…

Ed is a storyteller, not a preacher. I can imagine myself sitting next to him at an Irish bar hearing the stories straight from his mouth between sips of cold draft beer. I can imagine myself suspending any irritation should an occasional sour political note slip out between the sips and the quips if the stories compel and the beer stays cold. Same with books. Politics are schmolitics to me if I'm caught up in a good yarn filled with colorful characters who come alive on the page. Like Ed's.

Ed writes in several genres — mysteries, westerns, noir, fantasy, short stories, and possibly one or two I'm overlooking — and is prolific in all of them. My introduction to his work came several years ago when my wife gave me one of his mystery novels for Father's Day. It was one of his Sam McCain series of detective stories set in a small Iowa town in the 1950s. I liked it so much I've since read them all. The seventh, Ticket to Ride, came out in March.

Published last fall, his political mystery Stranglehold, is the second in what promises to become a new series featuring political consultant Dev Conrad. It's a tale of murder and blackmail set inside a congressional campaign that held my interest as closely as any mystery I've ever read. Ed's characters are people I know or have known, liked, loved or hated.

Ed always includes at least one literary quote at the front of each novel. As additional evidence that Ed is a novelist for us liberals I offer that his Thomas Jefferson quote says nothing about blood and the tree of liberty. It's this one:

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

And there's this one from the late Baltimore newspaper sage H.L. Mencken:

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.

Oh, the times they ain't a-chaaaaangin'.

A