Ed Gorman's Blog, page 189

Twice as Deadly -- Another New Book From Livia J. Washburn

Ed here: I'm a big fan of Livia's work (as well of James Reasoner, her husband). I remember her story in BLACK MOON. Really good material. This was on James' blog tonight. BYW I'm having trouble geting my iPhotos element to work. I called the computer guy early this morning. It's going on dinner time now. Maybe I'll leave him a crazed sobbing message. It hasn't worked in the past but there's always a first time.





Twice as Deadly -- Another New Book From Livia

Livia has just released TWICE AS DEADLY, an e-book collection of two novellas she wrote back in the Eighties about a Dallas private investigator named Laura Bailey. The first one was published in the anthology/collaborative novel THE BLACK MOON, and the second has never been published until now because the publisher went out of business before the second volume in the series came out. These are excellent hardboiled mysteries with a very likable protagonist, and I'm glad to see them available.





Twice As Deadly [Kindle Edition]

Livia J Washburn (Author)

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Forgotten Books: The Crimes of Jordan Wise by Bill Pronzini

Actuary Jordan Wise tells a joke on himself a third of the way through the novel: (paraphrase) an actuary is somebody who doesn't have the personality to be an accountant.



If you watch many true crime shows, you see a lot of Jordan Wises. People who fall into crime through circumstance rather than those who go looking for it.



Jordan becomes a criminal only after meeting Annalise, a troubled and very attractive young woman who needs two things badly--sex and money. But in order to get the sex on a regular basis, Jordan must first provide the money. He embezzles a half million dollars and flees with Annalise to the Virgin Islands. In this first part of the novel, there's nice James M. Cainian detail about how Jordan comes alive for the first time in his life. Some of this is due, whether he admits it or not, to the danger of committing a serious crime. But most of it is due to Annalise and his profound sexual awakening.



The central section of the book reminds me of one of Maugham's great South Seas tales--lust, betrayl, shame played out against vast natural beauty and a native society that, thanks to an old sea man named Bone, that Jordan comes to see value in--even if Annalise, her head filled with dreams of Paris and glamor, does not. Old Maugham got one thing right for sure--as Pronzini demonstrates here--a good share of humanity, wherever you find them, are both treacherous and more than slightly insane.



There are amazing sections of writing about sea craft and sailing that remind me not of old Travis McGee but of the profoundly more troubled and desperate men of Charles Williams who find purity and peace only in the great and epic truths of the sea. That they may be as crazed and treacherous as everybdy else does not seem to bother them unduly.



There are also amazing sections (almost diaristic sections) where Jordan tells of us his fears and desires, his failings and his dreams. In places he deals vididly, painfully with his secret terror of not being enough of a man in any sense to hold Annalise.



The publisher calls this a novel and so it is. Pronzini brings great original width and breadth to the telling of this dark adventure that is both physical and spiritual. He has never written a better novel, the prose here literary in the best sense, lucid and compelling, fit for both action and introspection.



You can't read a page of this without seeing it in movie terms. The psychologically violent love story played out against a variety of contemporary settings gives the narrative great scope. And in Jordan Wise and Annalise he has created two timeless people. This story could have been set in ancient Egypt or Harlem in 1903 or an LA roller skating disco in 1981. As Falkner said neither the human heart nor the human dilemma ever changes.

New Books: The Wild Side by Mark L. Van Name; PWA Banquet News

Cooking up The Wild Side

by

Mark L. Van Name





If I'm eating at a restaurant with a chef whose work I respect, I'll always opt for the tasting menu. Though it often means I'll be trying dishes I've never experienced before, I want to eat the food the chef most wants to prepare.



I edit anthologies the same way. I approach writers whose work I enjoy, tell them the theme of the book, and then turn them loose. I don't mind not knowing what's coming; I want to read the stories they most want to tell.



With The Wild Side, my goal was to explore the romantic and sexual elements that are present in so much of urban fantasy. All of my novels to date have been science fiction mystery/adventure stories, tales with mystery and thriller structures set far in the future. Editing this book provided a way for me to work in urban fantasy and also give voice to a character, Diego Chan, who'd been kicking around in my head for quite some time. The noir story that resulted, "The Long Dark Night of Diego Chan," is at its core about a hard-bitten operative out to do a last right deed by a lost friend.



I did not offer that story as a model to the other writers. Instead, each started with the same blank slate: urban fantasy with an erotic edge. The destinations they reached from that one starting point varied wildly.



Caitlin Kittredge's "Born Under a Bad Sign" proved to be darker and rougher than my own offering. A story of a fallen angel working in a brothel in 1952, it starts hard and grows harder when some most unwelcome visitors make an already risky job far more dangerous.



By contrast, Dana Cameron's "Love Knot" is a romp that explores the mystery of why an irresistible ardor overcomes all the people who come into contact with an unusual artifact—and how to dispose of that most troublesome object.



The seven other stories feature witches, zombies, fairies, changelings, and other fantastic creatures; vary in time and place from old London to modern Las Vegas; and range from light and comedic to taut and deadly.



What they have in common are the theme and the fact that I enjoyed reading them. I hope other readers do, too.





THE END

--------------------------------------------------PWA BANQUET





Hey Folks,



Seems some people don't understand that the PWA Banquet is open to the public. Since it's Sept. 1 I was hping you'd post this, with my thanks.



Thrills! Chills! Dinner! Cocktails! Awards! The 30th annual PWA Shamus Awards Banquet will be Friday night, September 16, from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. at a St. Louis institution. No, we're not telling you which institution it is. It's a suprise - a great surprise, trust us, and transportation will be provided from the hotel. Tickets are $60, and we have lots of room for everyone (the event is open to the public), so email Bob Randisi at RRandisi@aol.com right this very minute for more information and to order your ticket.







RJR[image error]

Cornell Woolrich by Barry Malzberg

Premiere science fiction and crime writer Barry Malzberg worked with Cornell Woolrich in the last years of Woolrich's life. Here is a legendary piece he wrote about the man.



Cornell



1. He is ordered, once again, to meet his public. Accordingly, he stands behind a lectern while a long line of people, curiously orderly, wait to speak to him one by one. "I loved your dancing," the first, a young man, says, "but essentially, you know, it was very cheap." He agrees with this. "I hated your dancing," an elderly critic points out, "but essentially I admit it was important." He agrees with this. "I both loved and hated your dancing," the third, a young woman, says, "because it was cheap and important," and he agrees with this as the line comes upon him, talking far through the night and passing, one by one, into darkness until he stands blinking in the dawn, rubbing his eyes and looking at the faint trail of litter, wondering if it is a code which somehow he could decipher.



2. He imagines himself being strangled and thrown, still alive, into a small mass of struggle at the bottom of a well. In this well he slowly explodes, balloons to enormous proportion, and as his body slowly fills the area, he perishes in his own breath. This pleases him, rather, although he is not exactly sure how he can get at it artistically.



3. In the hotel room he dreams he is watching on television a tape of his own performance. He has become a dancer and is describing great arcs of grayness while the television host smiles and a chorus of ten sings the songs he loves best. His dancing is a success, and, squinting at his own image, he notices that gaps in his technique appear to have been missed by the studio audience. At the end of his performance the television host embraces him and brings him out for another bow, before the commercial goes on. "Wonderful of you to be herewith us," the host says, "and we'll have you back real soon," but although he dreams that he watches the television unsleeping for many years, he never sees himself again.



4. He receives an award from a national guild of his profession. The award is cast in the form of a finger of silver, pointing at him. No matter which which way he turns the award, the finger always points in his direction. He conceals it with small scraps of paper and hides it in his closet.



5. He is given an assignment but all that he can think of when the time comes to work is cyanosis: the way in which the facial skin will change color when strangulation ensues. It will go from the white of terror to pink to rose to deeper red to purple and finally to gentlest blue of the forgotten sea. The colors tantalize him and he is unable to work for thinking of them, but when the time comes for his assignment to be done he is told that he has done well and is paid accordingly. He then develops a trick of thinking about cyanosis whenever the time comes for work and up to a point this functions well, although he realizes that he cannot rely on such mental tricks forever.



6. He dreams that a girl asks him for his autograph but before he can sign she walks away. Turning in his bed, he finds that this is only partially a dream and that some girl is talking to him in the sheets. He does not know what she is saying. She seems to have a speech impediment and the words are blurred. At a certain point, although he tries to be polite, he throws her out. The girl in the bed and the girl in his dream may have been the same although the question of the speech defect makes this somewhat doubtful. She has asked him very distinctly for his autograph.



7. A man in the hotel lobby asks him for an autograph. He balances the page between his knees while he signs. The man says that he grew up watching him dance and for a moment he doubts the dream until he remembers that all of them all of them all of them are liars.



8. The hotel burns to the ground. Saved, he moves to another hotel whose inscription is: WE ANNOUNCE FIRES BEFOREHAND.



9. While he sleeps something seems to seize him by the throat and he awakens gasping,but it is only the hand of one of the businessmen with whom he deals. "This can't go on indefinitely," the businessman says mildly, and he answers, "I know that very well; let me straighten it out in the morning"—and so on and so forth until the businessman finally goes away, at which point he returns to sleep until dawn. Awakening, it seems that he should remember something but there is already too much on his mind for such worthless games of recollection.



10. He is ordered, once again, to meet his public. Accordingly, he stands behind a lectern and stands behind a lectern and stands behind a lectern and stands—



Afterword to "Cornell"



Cornell Woolrich (1904-68) lived in the Sheraton Russell Hotel on Park Avenue, New York City, through the last decade of his life. He was represented by the literary agency with which I worked from 1965 to 1967, and I sought out Woolrich as an admirer of his work. I was able to do a few things for that work—Ace reissued many titles in the late sixties, Escapade took a story— but I was able to do nothing for the man, who was the unhappiest writer I have ever known. This is quite a statement.

Cornell is still so close and so painful to me (my younger daughter's middle name is his) that I cannot discuss him, in or out of print. This pastiche, written in July 197I and sold to his last patron, Fred Dannay of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, was a false attempt at purgation. No mercy, no mercy: Cornell lives within all of us. His work of the forties was the best of his generation in his field and he will someday be recognized as one of the finest American writers. No mercy there either: such recognition in his lifetime would have made for Cornell no difference. He needed to die.

PLease say it ain't true-The Thin Man to be remade

From The Wrap today-



Jurassic Park' Writer David Koepp to Tackle 'Thin Man'

Published: August 30, 2011 @ 1:04 pm



By Joshua L. Weinstein



Super-writer David Koepp has signed on to write "The Thin Man," a remake of the 1934 movie, for Warner Bros., TheWrap has confirmed.



Koepp's credits include "Jurassic Park" and "Carlito's Way," both in 1993, "Mission: Impossible" in 1996, "Panic Room" in 2007" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" in 2008.



He also wrote the troubled "Men in Black III."



"The Thin Man" has some fancy attachments: Johnny Depp is starring as Nick Charles, the part made famous by William Powell.



Also read: Rob Marshall Signs on to Direct Johnny Depp's 'Thin Man' Remake



Rob Marshall, who was nominated for the Academy Award for directing the 2002 "Chicago," is behind the camera. Marshall last directed Depp in this year's "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides." He also directed the 2005 "Memoirs of a Geisha."



The original movie, based on the Dashiell Hammett novel, was a big enough hit that producers made five sequels.



It's about Nick, a retired detective, and his heiress wife, Nora Charles. For fun, the two solve crimes.



Depp, Christi Dembrowski and Kevin McCormick are producing.



Deadline first reported the news.

Invasion of The Body Snatchers Redux

From 2007:



Fred Blosser pointed me to an interesting article in today's NY Times about the new Nicole Kidman film "Invasion"--the fourth version of Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Here's a section I found interesting:



"Siegel's laconic style is well suited to conveying a multitude of meanings (as he would prove again in 1971's "Dirty Harry"), but the open-endedness of "Invasion" was not a conscious goal so much as the result of a tangle of personalities behind the scenes. The film's producer, Walter Wanger, made his name with issue-driven entertainments like the Spanish Civil War drama "Blockade" and Alfred Hitchcock's espionage thriller "Foreign Correspondent." Wanger first read Finney's story when it was serialized in Collier's magazine in 1954, and even before the novel was published the following year, he had hired Siegel and the screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring to adapt it.



"The book, notably more upbeat than the film, ends with the vanquishing of the aliens. The movie's subversive elements can be traced mostly to Mainwaring, whose other screenplay credits include the classic noir "Out of the Past" (1947). A committed leftist who was briefly blacklisted, Mainwaring infused Finney's scenario with an unsparing pessimism. The love interest (Dana Wynter) winds up a pod and, in the cut Siegel submitted to the studio, Allied Artists, the hero (Kevin McCarthy) is last seen charging out into freeway traffic, issuing a warning that no one heeds: "They're here already! You're next!"



"With a budget of less than $400,000, Siegel finished the film in 23 days, but the post-production dragged on for months when Allied Artists complained about the odd mix of humor and horror, and the bleakness of the conclusion. Trims were made, and in a compromise that further mixed the movie's message, Siegel and Mainwaring, with a minimum of conviction, tacked on a happy ending.



"Mr. Kaufman's "Invasion," while fully a product of its time, carries out what Siegel was unable to do, adding hints of comedy even as it pushes its hero (Donald Sutherland) toward the grimmest of fates. Homage is duly paid to its predecessor with a couple of knowing cameos: Siegel is glimpsed as a cabdriver, and an aged Mr. McCarthy reappears, still wild-eyed and running, sounding the alarm like a Paul Revere who's been at it for 20 years.



"Reissued on DVD last week in a two-disc edition, the '78 "Invasion" also lends a uniquely creepy dimension to the fraught cold war practice of naming names. The drones, when they notice a human in their midst, alert the others by unleashing a sirenlike banshee wail. (The sound designer Ben Burtt used pig shrieks for the effect.)



for the rest go here ......

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/mov...



Ed here:If you're interested in the subject of the first three movie versions, may I recommend The Invasion of The Body Snatchers Companion that I edited with Kevin McCarthy. Stepen King, Dean Koontz, Jon Breen, Tom Picirrilli, Fred Blosser and many other contribute articles about the various films plus there are extensive interviews with Kevin, Robert Solo (who produced two of the movies), Abel Ferrara and others. I prefer the Stark House edition. A much better looking book with more room for extended interviews. It's still available:



http://www.starkhousepress.com/

I admit I was wrong about Louie CK

Now I can't even remember what he did or said in one of the first season's episodes that turned me off to his show. But bored last night I decided to try two episodes from this season, Pamela and Country Drive.



I'm sold and I'm hooked. These are like extraordinary literary stories. The observations are fascinating. In Pamela he's a grown up version of Woody Allen; his confession of love manages to be hilarious and moving at the same time. I would not have chosen this actress in an audition and I would have been dead wrong. She's perfect.



Country Drive masterfully deals with old age, the historical disconnect in America's past and parenting. I've rarely seen child actresses as deft as the two little girls are but they match him line for line every time.



I have several more episodes to go and I'm really looking forward to them. I'm now a big big fan of his.

New Books: Katja From The Punk Band by Simon Logan

Katja From The Punk Band by Simon Logan



I love any form of art which is a puzzle.



"It doesn't matter whether it's Chino Moreno's moody, vague lyrics, David Lynch's disjointed and inverted narratives or the paintings of surrealists like Roland Penrose – if there's a puzzle there then it draws me in.

After completing my first full length novel, Pretty Little Things To Fill Up the Void, and it turning out at 98K, I wanted to write something which more stripped down but I also wanted to challenge myself in terms of the narrative structure. Although not a huge fan of either Tarantino or Elmore Leonard, I'd both read Jackie Brown and seen the movie, and its structure of overlapping and sometimes colliding plotlines had stuck with me. It was a puzzle.



I therefore set out to write something which was leaner and meaner than PLTTFUTV and which adopted the interweaving plotlines structure. I started with the first scene - of the protagonist arriving at her work having just shot her boyfriend and stolen a chemical vial to be smuggled off of the island she is on and then hooking up with another character to help her escape –then basically just started spiralling everything out from there.



I tend to write out the entire plot to any of my novels, at least in sketch form, before I even think about beginning writing them and that certainly came in handy for Katja From The Punk Band. I came up with the separate plot threads then spent an afternoon cutting up pieces of paper with the various scenes which made up each thread and then arranging them and re-arranging them on the floor to see how they would best all fit together. Once that was done I filled in the gaps and cut out bits which weren't going to work – and hey presto the book was born.



As well as the actual structure of the book I also wanted to adopt a more stripped-down approach to the actual writing itself, avoiding any unnecessary elaboration or descriptions and making sure it moved along at a fast pace throughout.

Since being published, Katja From The Punk Band has done really well for me, being selected as one of Spinetingler Magazine's Top Ten Crime Books of 2010 as well as being nominated for their Best New Voice Award and coming in as joint winner of the Fireball Award for the Best Opening Line. Not only that but it got me an agent, the wonderful Allan Guthrie of Jenny Brown Literary Agency - so I certainly can't complain.



So, with another two books in the bag in the meantime (Guerra, an industrial thriller about pirate broadcasters fighting a media war, and lovejunky, part dystopic crime thriller and part brooding noir romance) I figure Katja From The Punk Band 2 is a pretty good idea.



So I'm writing it."

New Books:Deadly Cove by Brendan DuBois

Deadly Cove

by

Brendan DuBois



When I started writing my first novel, "Dead Sand" --- published by Otto Penzler Books --- George Bush was in the White House and we were engaged in combat in Iraq. Now, I'm happy to report that St. Martin's Press has just released the seventh book in my Lewis Cole mystery series, "Deadly Cove."



Astute readers out there might do the math and say boy, that Brendan DuBois is one prolific son-of-a-gun, but readers who know my depraved sense of humor will do the history, and say, yeah, right, DuBois, nice way to make a joke.



The joke being, of course, that I wrote "Dead Sand" following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the first Persian Gulf War, overseen by the first President George Bush. I believe Marx once said that history repeats itself first as a tragedy, and then a farce, but I'm glad he never said anything about mystery novels repeating themselves.



For that's the obvious pitfalls for a recurring mystery series, is repeating the same old plots with the same old characters. It's comforting to go back and walk and re-walk the same characters and situations, but I'd like to think that I avoided those tempting pitfalls in "Deadly Cove."



First of all, while the cast of characters remains the same, there are important differences. The main character is Lewis Cole, a former Department of Defense research analyst, retired on disability, who has a cushy cover job as a columnist for "Shoreline" magazine and lives in an old house in Tyler Beach, N.H. His best friend is Diane Woods, a gay police detective with the Tyler Police Department, and he also has ties with Paula Quinn, a former lover who's a newspaper reporter for the Tyler Chronicle. And rounding up the crew is Felix Tinios, a former mob enforcer from Boston's North End, who has a new career as a security consultant.



Throughout all of my books, Lewis gets involved in things mysterious in and around the historic New Hampshire seacoast, calling on his friends to either help him out or provide back-up where needed. There have been killings, violence, historical discoveries and breathtaking escapes, touched with a funky sense of humor. It's been a fun series to write, and from a fair number of readers, I've had an enthusiastic response to Lewis and his adventures.



But in plotting book seven, I made a conscious decision to mix things up. I started plotting and writing "Deadly Cove" at the start of our current economic downturn, thinking it might be a gamble to do so (what if there was a stunning turnaround), but based on where the economy is now, it was a cinch bet.



This downturn has impacted Lewis and his friends. Lewis' job at his magazine is threatened, and he's forced to do more with less. Paula Quinn is now an assistant editor, with the same pay and more responsibilities. Diane Woods has been promoted to detective sergeant, and with the advent of New Hampshire allowing gay marriage, wants to marry her long-time partner, who's reluctant to make that big step. She's also dependent on the overtime while working at the nuclear power protests. And even a tough guy like Felix Tinios, quick with his fists and with a gun, is struggling to find a full-paying gig.



In "Deadly Cove," a number of anti-nuclear protesters have descended upon the Falconer nuclear power plant, to oppose a decision to build a second reactor at the plant site. This comes on the heels of another nuclear disaster in Russia, not unlike Chernobyl, which reenergizes the anti-nuclear movement. (Of course, having the Japanese nuclear disaster strike a few months before "Deadly Cove" was released was just plain creepy). One would think that the protesters would receive deep support from the locals, but that's not the case.



Many of the locals resent having their lives upended by the thousands of protesters. And beyond that, hundreds of union workers --- seeing the possibility of long-term, good-paying jobs threatened by what they see as long-haired, leftist troublemakers --- also come upon the scene. There's tension in the air during the demonstrations, and in a sudden burst of violence, a prominent anti-nuclear leader is assassinated in front of Lewis and scores of others.



As before in other works, Lewis swings into action. He's not so much concerned about the activist who's been shot; he's more concerned about his friend, Paula Quinn, who's been injured during the chaos following the murder.



As Lewis investigates the shooting and its aftermath, he comes under relationship pressure from his girlfriend, a political consultant for a prominent senator running for president, as well as his new boss at "Shoreline" magazine, who is determined to make Lewis' working environment the proverbial living hell. The shooter, who wants to keep his or her work under wraps, also stalks him. As the novel progresses, the supporting characters play their usual role, but there's an edge to what's going on, as the characters react to outside forces and actions beyond their control.



And for a first in my Lewis Cole novels, I also end the novel on a cliffhanger, with a prominent character facing death. It's an ending that has ensured a number of e-mails from my readers, demanding to know what's going to happen next, which makes me quite happy. I feel "Deadly Cove" is my strongest series novel yet.



Looking back, I don't think I made a conscious decision to write a novel that reflects so many of our current economic and political tensions, but I'm glad I did. It's a stronger novel for it, and I hope it doesn't disappoint any Marxists out there.



# # #

Forgotten Books: Hollywood Rock by Marshall Crenshaw

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I've always liked Marshall Crenshaw's songs especially the heartbroke ones which he manages to write with a light but no less painful touch. I saw him once in person just after his career started to slide. He's an interesting guy and a fine musician. The interesting guy angle is on display here with this guide to rock'n roll movies.



The Guide goes all the way to 1994. The reviews are sometimes serious demonstrating that besides being a true rocker he's also a perceptive critic. But the most fun for people like me who grew up in the fifties are his reviews of the rock movies of that decade (and on into the sixties).



God were those movies terrible. I lost count of how many had the same basic plot--town/suburb of oldsters hate rock but kids put on a show for charity/fame and convince even the crabbiest oldster in the film what great young `uns they are after all. And those were the ones that were at least about rock `n roll. There were hybrids put together by adults who didn't have a clue. Thus in the same movie you might have Chuck Berry, the Platters and Liberace.



One of these was so bad that Crenshaw calls it "The attempted murder of rock `n roll." This starred Jimmy Clanton as "Teenage Millionaire." The first thing wrong with it Crenshaw notes is that Clanton "looks about twenty-eight." Here you had Jackie Wilson and Dion appearing with Zasu Pitts (talented actress who started in the silents) and that great actor...Rocky Graziano. Crenshaw's summary line for this one: "The producers of this film are probably on the run because there's no statute of limitations on crimes like this."



Inevitably he gets to Elvis movies and has a great time with them. He says that in "Kissin Cousins" "Elvis fights heroically for a nuclear missile site" to be implanted in this lovely bucolic setting (thanks El). There's also a weird sad note for those of us who liked the Fifties western series "Sugarfoot." At the time Will Hutchins appeared in his Elvis movie he was employed by a studio as a bicyle messenger. Edd Byrnes deserved this fate not Will Hutchins.



A dazzling, smart, fond look at the good and bad that has been done to rock `n roll in both American and British films (The Brits were at least as goofy as we were). You can't go wrong with this one.