Ed Gorman's Blog, page 193

Top Suspense Group: Dave Zeltserman Dying Memories

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Today's Sizzling Summer Read: Dying Memories

by Dave Zeltserman

Dying Memories opens with a woman shooting a man to death on a crowded street in Boston, claiming that this man raped and murdered her eleven-year old daughter. Except he didn't, because this woman never had a daughter. Another man stabs an MIT professor to death in front of a crowd in Harvard Square, insisting that he witnessed the professor running down his wife in the street. Except the MIT professor was three thousand miles away when the man's wife was killed.

Reporter Bill Conway discovers that these victims are connected to ViGen Corporation, a shadowy pharmaceutical company. When he tries to investigate ViGen Corporation and their role in these deaths, things quickly turn dangerous for him. The following short excerpt has Bill being questioned after being grabbed from the street and thrown into a van, with his interrogators insisting that his real name is Jeffrey Vozzmer.

"Yes you do, Jeffrey. We're not idiots here. Tell me what I want to know and this will all be over."

"Check my wallet," Bill pleaded. He was nauseous, his left ear throbbing. "My driver's license will show you that I'm not this Jeffrey Vozzmer."

"And what would that prove?" Simon asked. "That you took the precautions to be carrying a fake ID? Please, Jeffrey, we're not amateurs. You should know that."

"This is all fucked up," Bill insisted weakly. "I'm not Jeffrey Vozzmer. I never heard that name before."

Simon ignored Bill, said patiently, "Tell me what I want to know."

"I don't know what you want to know."

The same behemoth who had punched him before raised an eyebrow, asking an unspoken question. Simon, sitting opposite Bill, took his time before shaking his head.

"No, I don't believe that will be necessary," he said. "I'm sure we can facilitate Jeffrey to talk without having to resort to any further violence, even if it won't be of his own volition." Then to Bill, "One last time, tell me what I want to know."

Numbly, Bill shook his head. "I swear, I don't know what that is," he said.

Simon sighed and picked up a small leather case that was on the seat next to him. He opened the case carefully, almost lovingly, and took from it a hypodermic needle, which he held up for Bill to look at.

"Relax," Simon lied. "It's only sodium pentothal. More than enough to loosen your lips but not enough to cause any serious damage. At least not usually."

Simon then leaned forward. Bill tried to struggle, but the two thugs held him steady.

"If there was a chance that you would cooperate and remove your jacket I wouldn't need to inject this inside your gum," Simon cooed softly. "But one must do what one must do. Now, please open your mouth or I'll have my associates force it open."

Then it was as if a bomb had been detonated.

Bill escapes this ordeal, but soon finds that it's not just these mysterious forces after him as he's framed for a brutal murder. Or at least Bill's pretty sure he's been framed. The thing is, as with the reader, Bill's never quite sure what's real or not. All he knows is his peril, as well as the stakes involved, keep escalating by the minute.

Dying Memories has some similarities with my crime novels. It's bullet paced with whiplash-inducing twists and turns throughout which will keep both Bill and the reader off balance. Where it's very different than my crime novels, like Small Crimes, Pariah, Killer and Fast Lane, is that while they're pitch black descents into the abyss, Dying Memories is more of a rollercoaster ride colored a murky gray that's brightened by constant flashes of red. And where my crime novel protagonists, Joe Denton, Kyle Nevin, Leonard March and Johnny Lane, are, putting it as delicately as I can, pretty much bastards who readers root for (at least at some level) to find the hell they deserve, the hero of Dying Memories, Bill Conway, is very different. He's someone the reader is going to be able to care about.

I hope you enjoy Dying Memories.
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Ed here: I think we can all agree that Dave Zeltserman's body of body is one of the most original and powerful in modern crime fiction. What makes it even more remarkable is its range of voices and styles.

For instance the Julius Katz novels and stories. First of all they're fair clue mysteries and damned good ones. Second of all even though they're homages to Nero Wolfe they're cutting-edge clever and ultra-modern. I mean Julius Katz as a stand-in for Nero ok but a two-inch square computer chip standing in for Archie? This is mystery fiction as fresh as it comes. And it appeals to readers of every kind. No wonder the Katz stories have won not only the Shamus but the Ellery Queen Reader's Award (first place in a very heavy competition.)

For a copletely different instance how about this starred review from Publisher's Weekly for The Caretaker of Lorne Field."
rom Publishers Weekly

Starred Review." Zeltserman's superb mix of humor and horror focuses on Jack Durkin, the ninth generation of firstborn sons in his family who have daily weeded Lorne Field to purge it of Aukowies, bloodthirsty plants that could overrun the world in weeks if not attended to. Though Jack takes his job seriously, no one else does: his oldest son doesn't want to follow in his footsteps; his wife is tired of living poorly on his caretaker's salary; and the townspeople who subsidize him are increasingly skeptical of purported menaces that no one has ever seen because Jack diligently nips them in the bud. With his support dwindling, Jack finds himself driven to desperate measures to prove that he's truly saving the world. Zeltserman (Pariah) orchestrates events perfectly, making it impossible to tell if Jack is genuinely humankind's unsung hero or merely the latest descendant of a family of superstitious loonies. Readers will keep turning the pages to see how the ambiguous plot resolves"

See what I mean about a body of work with so many different styles and voices. And the books are so damned good.

You can find Dave's books on Kindle and Nook.

Top Suspense Group:Bill Crider Blood Dreams; Val McDermid

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Today's Sizzling Summer Read: Blood Dreams by Jack MacLane
I'm Bill Crider. Jack MacLane is my evil twin. He's usually chained up down in the basement, but back in the late 1980s he somehow got loose, got hold of a computer, and wrote some horror novels for Zebra Books. The family never thought much of Jack, even when he became a writer, but the funny thing is, he coulda been a contender.

At least his editor at Zebra Books thought so. After Jack's first couple of novels, she was going to give Blood Dreams a big push. It's the story of a man named Hubert, who runs a used-book store in a small town. His hobby is killing people. He's very clever, so he's never been caught or even suspected. Not until a boy who has strange dreams, nightmares, really, and all of them about Hubert, comes along. Bad things ensue. And there are alligators!

But I digress. I was going to tell you about how Jack almost became a contender. The editor at Zebra really liked his work, and she had big plans for Blood Dreams. A die-cut foldout cover. A dump full of the books to put at the front of the big chain bookstores. Stuff like that. Jack still has a couple of proof copies of that cover among his little treasures.

But that's all he has because the editor left before the book was published. It became an orphan, and while it did have a cool cover, it didn't get the big push. The new editor shoved Jack's next two books way to the back of the catalog, and Jack, in a black depression went out and, . . . Never mind. We still don't talk about that. He's been down in the basement since then, fondling the tattered paperback editions of his work, talking to spiders, and staring at those cover proofs, now growing moldy with age.

Not even the news that his books are now available in e-book format seems to cheer Jack up, but I have a feeling you could help. Here's how. Buy Jack's books! Especially Blood Dreams. Help him remember the glory days, when he was an up-and-comer. If he cheers up, maybe we'll even let him out of the basement for a while.

--------------------------------------by Val McDermid
Agatha Christie's neat plots emerged from chaos – just like mine
It turns out that I have more in common with Miss Marple's creator than I thought


I hold Agatha Christie entirely responsible for how I've ended up. The Murder at the Vicarage was the only book my grandparents possessed (apart from the Bible) so it was the only port of call for me after I'd finished whatever library books I'd brought with me when I came to stay. I got hooked on the detective novel thanks to Christie but I never considered myself to have much in common with her as a writer.

It turns out we're more alike than I thought. Thanks to the revelations in John Curran's new book, Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, I've discovered some quite worrying congruences.

Seventy-three of Christie's notebooks survive. They're not a collection of identical, leather-bound, hand-tooled books with Florentine endpapers and heavyweight paper. They're a miscellaneous jumble of school jotters, pocket-sized pads and shorthand notebooks. A bit like my own diverse selection, currently comprising: spiral bound, plastic covered with a snap fastener from Dynamic Earth; a small black pocket-sized pad with an elastic band to keep it closed; an A4 Pukka Pad; a leather-bound notebook bought in a tiny shop in Siena. One lives on my desk, one by my bed, one in my backpack and the other floats around, turning up where and when I least expect it.

for the rest go here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/books...[image error]

Today's Sizzling Summer Read: Blood Moon Top Suspense Group

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FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2011

Today's Sizzling Summer Read: Blood Moon

by Ed Gorman

Judging by reader mail over the years Blood Moon is the most sinister of all my suspense novels.

"Blood Moon has everything--prison drama, horror story, whodunit, psycho-thriller--all skillfully combined to lead you to a shock ending." Scotland on Sunday.

I started working on the story after reading two unrelated news stories. One had to do with a strange series of murders in a rural community. The other was about a very rich young man who'd been found guilty of second degree murder for the death of his girl friend and was serving time in particularly violent prison. I wondered both about the nature of the murderer in the boonies and also how the young men, accustomed to a rather cushy life from all accounts, would survive behind bars. A story began to emerge.

"As much a superb thriller as it is a well-plotted detective story." Mystery News

The novel was first published in England where the reviews were generally excellent. The major book club in the UK picked it up and it did well for them. Over here the reviews were also good. I'd written a fair share of horror in the eighties and I was glad to see that mystery readers appreciated how I'd combined the mood of my earlier stories with the whodunit form.

"An expertly wrought atmospheric mystery featuring modern psychological crime fighting by a winning detective." Publisher's Weekly

So I'm happy to see it here on our Top Suspense Group's summer reading list. Happy reading!

"An unusually grueling and suspenseful climax...and uncompromising and unprettified account of violence and human evil..." Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

BLOOD MOON is ON SALE now for a limited time for $0.99. To buy for the Kindle click here.[image error]

David Thomson on Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye"

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Ed here: The following is an excerpt from a piece critic David Thomson wrote about Robert Altman in 2000. You'll have to scroll down to get to the piece on The Long Goodbye. Even if you disagree with Thomson this is bracing piece on Chandler and Altman alike.

David Thomson:

"The Long Goodbye" was mauled to bits by Raymond Chandler connoisseurs and critics alike. The film opened once, took a beating, and tried again. But no large body of people could stomach its drastic, tender transcendence of Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe. After all, it was in the late 60's and 70's that the world really caught up with Bogart doing Marlowe in Howard Hawks's "The Big Sleep." Film buffs rejoiced in and repeated the nearly screwball dialogue from that classic, and they cherished Bogart's insouciant, insolent mastery of the impossible plot, verbal rallies at the net with Bacall, teaching her how to kiss (that lifelong study in the Hawks world) and being so damn cool no one noticed the clouds of fantasy. You could read elegies to Hawks and his empiricism, as well as tributes to Chandler's noir gaze on Los Angeles. In that romantic moment of Bogeyism, many people felt that Altman's satiric treatment was nearly indecent.

Is it possible, Mr. Altman asks demurely, that that black-and-white Marlowe was a touch far-fetched? Instead, he gives us a 70's man, a hipster in a black suit, Elliott Gould, cooler than Bogart ever dreamed of, muttering to himself, bemused by the naked girls across the way, unable to outwit a cat who wants curry-flavored cat food -- a sleepy, languid ramrod of inconsequence who sidles or side-steps through a life he has no hopes of being superior to.

LA DIES and gentlemen, here is something new in the world -- a sweet, decent chump for a movie hero. With nothing but Mr. Altman's fondness to keep him standing up. You almost hear Mr. Altman rhapsodizing over Gould -- look at him move, look at those bowed legs, the face scrunched up in the sun, logic turned crooked by L. A., and all that "It's all right with me" stuff. Is he beautiful, or what?

for the rest go here:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/film/0...

New Books: The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards

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The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards

What is it like to have a brother or sister disappear forever? This is a question at the heart of my latest book, THE HANGING WOOD, fifth in the series of Lake District Mysteries. As a matter of fact, a question that has long intrigued me is apparently much simpler – what is it like to have a brother or sister? For I am an only child, and it's not easy to imagine the very different lives and upbringing of siblings.

But the joy of writing fiction is that you have the licence to set your imagination free, and I took the chance to invent a string of brother/sister relationships which form the core of THE HANGING WOOD's story-line. In the book, Orla Payne has never been able to come to terms with the idea that her older brother Callum was murdered by their uncle, who then committed suicide. The body was never found. Orla meets Daniel Kind, the historian, and when she confides in him, he urges her to talk to DCI Hannah Scarlett.

But when Orla finally talks to Hannah, she doesn't make much sense, and the end result is a shocking tragedy. Stunned by what has happened, Hannah is driven to dig deep into the past, and – with Daniel's help – uncovers a murderous web of familial deceit spanning decades.

The book is set in the Keswick area of the Lake District, one of the most beautiful places in Europe. Much of the action takes place in a tightly-knit community surrounding old Mockbeggar Hall – there is a farm, owned by Orla's father, a caravan park where her mother used to live and now run by two brothers, a residential library, where she has been working, and the Hanging Wood of the title. The library, by the way, was inspired by a real-life library in North Wales – Gladstone's Library, a magical place built by a Victorian Prime Minister and full of atmosphere.

This novel develops the slow-burning relationship between Hannah Scarlett and Daniel Kind, and as well as exploring family relationships, it also tackles the nature of justice. 'Don't you care about justice?' Orla asks Hannah. Of course, Hannah does, but she finds that few things are harder in life than making sure that justice is truly done. And for me, writing THE HANGING WOOD has helped me gain a better understanding of what it is like to have a brother or sister.

Wise words about Any Winehouse and media

Ed here: This is one of the few pieces about Amy Winehouse's death that made sense to me. As a recovering alcoholic and reformed druggie I can tell you from personal experience that there are people who can't be "cured." In my time I've taken six or seven people to rehab, done everything I could for them--and had only one stay clean. I used to get pissed when this happened. I bought into all the AA stuff that everybody can kick. But after nearly thirty-seven years of being sober and watching various friends and acquaintances crack up, go to prison, die I can tell you that some just can't kick.

I was a big fan of Amy Winehouse's music and for selfish reasons. When she was on the air that meant all cRAP music couldn't be. Yes she was stupid to get into drugs in the first place but clearly she was a a way troubled girl before she ever started doping and the drugs presumably bought her some relief.

She was a rhythm and blues singer and a brilliant one (or hadn't you noticed that soul music is no longer heard on corporate pop stations?). I had some sense of what she was going through, all addicts will have. So spare me the self-rieghteousness. Yes she was fucked up but she didn't deserve to die because of it. If all the fucked up people in the world passed on there wouldn't be enough bodies left to populate Gilligan's Island.


Does grieving for Amy Winehouse distract from bigger tragedies?
The singer's death prompts a familiar Internet backlash. Here's why the critics are wrong
BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
From Salon

Poor Amy Winehouse. Not only did the 27-year-old singer, who had a troubled history of drug and alcohol abuse, have the misfortune to die this weekend in London of yet undisclosed causes, she did so in the midst of an already jampacked cycle of terrible news. And everybody knows that a) people can only feel bad about one thing at a time, and that b) in what the U.K. Guardian helpfully refers to as the "hierarchy of death," it's wrong to care about a single individual when there are higher body counts elsewhere in the world. Let the sanctimony begin!

It seemed within minutes of the news of Winehouse's untimely demise, the Internet was abuzz with outpourings of grief and chastisements of said grief. "Amy Winehouse: Sad but not nearly as sad as 4M starving Somalis who can still be helped" went a typical, much forwarded tweet that cropped up in my feed, along with phrases like "real problems," "dead junkie," and "What did anybody expect?" God forbid a young woman's death not turn into an opportunity to announce to the world your cleverness in predicting it all, the unworthiness of someone who had the disease of addiction to merit sympathy, or your outrage because apparently you've been too engrossed in Somalia to give a toss.

It's fair to say that the popular media -- and those of us who follow it -- are often guilty of disproportionate attention to sensational stories. And when that happens, there is the risk of giving less care to tougher, more nuanced but important events. Believe me, if Nancy Grace and Dr. Drew never say another goddamn word about anything or anyone, that will be just great in my book. It's a fine line between newsworthiness and exploitation. And Winehouse's long-standing battles with her demons were a matter of public record; her debacle last month in Belgrade, when she was booed offstage, certainly appears to have been an ominous sign of what was to come.

for the rest go here: http://www.salon.com/news/media_criti...

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/embeedub More: Mary Elizabeth Williams

Larry David; Mariah Carey; Stephen King

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM-Let me say up front that anybody who co-created and wrote for Seinfeld is a genius to me. Truly. It's my favorite show of any kind of all time. That said I often find Curb Your Enthusiasm tiresome because it always relies on the same formula. Larry insults or otherwise pisses off somebody (sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not) and we're off to the races. Now there are at least twenty episodes I consider masterpieces. But sometimes--again because of the formula--the writers have to push too hard to get the ironies out of their situation. Until last night I thought the new season was pretty poor. The episode with the young girl who has her first period in Larry's house--way way over the top and not funny. Not offensive just not funny. The best moments are when Larry's confronts believable situations. And last night delivered big time. This was Larry at his best--Jews eating at the Palestinian chicken place; Susie Essman's teenage daughter turning out to be a real cunning bitch; and Larry as the "social assassin" having to tell people what other people were afraid to tell them. What a great episode.

MARIAH CAREY-http://gawker.com/5824338/the-best-fo...
Ed here: I've liked a few of Carey's songs over the years but mostly I've found her unwittingly hilarious. In many of her videos she tries to be sexy and thus provides a lot of laughs. I dunno...you're either sexy or you ain't and she ain't. All her mugging is like soft-core run amuck. Plus her diva stuff would intimidate Napoleon. I saw a ten minute video of her with her posse and man she comes off like a plantation boss having a bad day with the slaves. PLUS SHE'S NUTS. This is only four minutes long but I believe could be used in a sanity hearing to put her away for good. :) YOU GOTTA SEE THIS!!!!!!

THE DARK TOWER-Universal Nixes Stephen King's 'Dark Tower' - No Ambitious Film Trilogy Or TV Series

Ed here: I love this saga and I was hoping this would be one of the few summer blockbusters that would be worth seeing. Here's luck to them finding another home.

By MIKE FLEMING | Monday July 18, 2011 @ 7:09pm EDT
Tags: Akiva Goldsman, Brian Grazer, Javier Bardem, Ron Howard, Stephen King, The Dark Tower, Universal Pictures

EXCLUSIVE: The moment has come for Universal Pictures to fish or cut bait on The Dark Tower, the ultra-ambitious adaptation of the Stephen King 7-novel series that was going to encompass a trilogy of feature films and two limited run TV series. The studio has said, No Thanks. Universal has passed on going forward with the project, dealing a huge blow in the plan for Ron Howard to direct Akiva Goldsman's script, with Brian Grazer, Goldsman and the author producing and Javier Bardem starring as gunslinger Roland Deschain. Now, the filmmakers will have to find a new backer of what might well be the most ambitious movie project since Bob Shaye allowed Peter Jackson to shoot three installments of The Lord of the Rings back to back.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/07/unive...

Top Suspense Group: Paul Levine; Gold Medal's John McPartland

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FROM PAUL LEVINE--TOP SUSPENSE GROUP:

Windsurfing Injury Led to "Riptide"

But for an injury, I might never have become a novelist.

This is the backstory of "Riptide," a Jake Lassiter novel, now available on Kindle and Nook for $2.99.

In 1986, I rented a condo on Maui for the summer, intent on polishing my skills as a competitive windsurfer. My second day at Hookipa Beach, bouncing over the lip of a roller, the board exploded out of the water and smashed my femur. The E.R. physician told me nothing was broken and recommended smoking a little Maui Wowie for the pain. (No, not Dr. House).


So I sat on the beach with a yellow pad and started handwriting a novel featuring a character that popped into my mind: linebacker-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter. Here's the first sentence of fiction I ever wrote, (not counting certain statements in my appellate briefs). "The old man loved gadgets, money, and large-breasted women, and at the moment, he had all three."

When I returned home to Miami to resume practicing law, I put the novel aside and wrote "To Speak for the Dead," which became my first published book. I kept re-writing "Riptide," which appeared as a William Morrow hardcover under the title "Slashback." And that line about gadgets, money, and breasts? It's now the first sentence of chapter two. Here's what the Tampa Tribune had to say:

"A thriller as fast as the wind...a bracing rush, as breathtaking as hitting the Gulf waters on a chill December morning."

There's more about the Jake Lassiter series on my website, including info about "Riptide," in which Jake Lassiter chases two dangerous professional windsurfers from Miami to Maui in pursuit of the old man's stolen bonds. You can buy the e-book from Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, and Smashwords for $2.99.

Paul Levine

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----------------------GOLD MEDAL'S JOHN MCPARTLAND by JOHN FRASER (from 2007)

Ed here: I re-read John McPartland's fine Big Red's Woman last night and then remembered John Fraser's excellent piece on McPartland which he was kind enough to let me reprint here.

John Fraser has a very readable and wise website devited to books of various kinds. http://www.jottings.ca/john/thriller_...

John McPartland by John Fraser

John McPartland

She was the kind of woman a man noticed, mostly because of her eyes. Dark, almost black pools, they had a warmth that I felt could turn to fire. She had turned her head, looking over the shoulder of the man she was with, and we looked at each other. The third or fourth time it happened he noticed it and I paid some attention to what he was like.

He was a type. You find guys like him driving ten-wheeler transport trucks, or flying, or sometimes as chief petty officers in the Navy, on a sub or a destroyer. Square-built, tough tanned skin, big hands with knuckles that are chunks of stone.The type—what makes him recognizable as a wanderer, a fighter, sometimes a killer—shows in his face.

Big white teeth, yellow a little from cigarettes like his fingers, and he smiles with his teeth closed, talking through them when he's angry. A thin line of short black hairs for a mustache, sideburns of curling hair, hair black and curly, a face that is rough and yet young, and it won't change much if he lives to be fifty. The eyes are fierce, amused, hard.

It's a special breed of man, and the breed are men. Maybe a mixture of German, Irish, French-Canadian, with a streak of Comanche, Ute, or Cheyenne in there about three generations back. You meet men like this one in the truck-stop cafés along U.S. 40, with the diesels drumming outside; or you meet them walking toward the plane on the airstrip; or in jail, still smiling, still ready for a fight.

This guy was laughing as he swung off the bar stool. He was still laughing as he walked over to me.

The Face of Evil (1954)
I

McPartland is that rarity, a writer of tough novels who feels tough himself. (Was Spillane a barroom brawler? If so, did he win?)

McPartland was one of the Gold Medal blue-collar writers; had served in Korea; obviously knew the black-market milieu of that war; came back and wrote raw, rugged, at times very powerful novels; obviously drank, lived with a mistress and illegitimate kids before it was OK to do so; and died young of a heart attack. He was the kind of person who knew what it meant to be in trouble with the law, doing dumb impetuous things, getting into fights.

What comes across again and again in his novels is his understanding of power, the hard masculine will to dominate others, break them, destroy them. His bad guys are some of the most frightening in thriller fiction: Southern rednecks, syndicate "troopers," the Mob. His fights are fights in which the loser can get hurt very badly.

When a black-marketing non-com says he's going to scramble someone's eggs with his combat boots (crush his testicles), or the middle-echelon syndicate enforcer Whitey Darcy tells the fixer Bill Oxford, "We're going to make you cry, feller," or when Buddy Brown, the twenty-year-old petty crook in Big Red's Daughter (1955) tells Jim Work that he's going to make him crawl, we know that's just what they intend to do.

They are hard men.

King McCarthy in The Face of Evil (1955) is a natural fighter. Buddy Brown wins his first two fights with the hero—knocks him down with a sucker punch; gets a painful lock on his knuckles and punches him in the throat while they're sitting drinking beer in a barroom booth. And the Syndicate, the Mafia, punish offenders ruthlessly. Oxford knows what it will be like to go to prison and have your kidneys smashed by an inmate, crippled with pain for the rest of your life every time you pee. Johnny Cool's end in The Kingdom of Johnny Cool is dreadful.

However, in most of the novels there isn't just violence, there's also love, and things work out all right in the end for the hero and heroine. They very easily couldn't, though. A strong, focussed counter-energy on the part of the heroes is necessary.
II

McPartland's best book is The Face of Evil, about the fixer Bill Oxford, who's been on the long downward slide of compromise, complicity, corruption, and has been sent to Long Beach by the PR agency to which he's attached to ruin a genuinely decent reform candidate, upon pain of being stripped of all his high-living perks and slammed into prison. It is tense and well-made throughout.

The Kingdom of Johnny Cool is his other best novel. When it appeared, I wrote to Ross Macdonald (a total stranger, but he'd done a Ph.D. in English himself) to ask him to review it for a student journal I was co-editing. He declined, saying that it seemed to be simply Spillane-type melodrama. He was wrong.

The novel is a powerful account of a Sicilian criminal's rise and fall in America—a more interesting one than W.R. Burnett's Little Caesar (1929)—and it takes us into dark cold waters full of predators. McPartland was on to the Mafia as a subject twelve years before The Godfather, and his attitude towards it is far healthier than Puzo's sentimental power worship. There's nothing cute or admirable about McPartland's Italianos.

Top Suspense Group-Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU; MAX COLLINS NEWS!

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SATURDAY, JULY 23, 2011

Today's Sizzling Summer Read: No One Will Hear You

NOW HEAR THIS! by Max Allan Collins

Two serial killers vie for the attention of the public in NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU, the second J.C. Harrow thriller by Matt Clemens and me. You needn't have read YOU CAN'T STOP ME to jump in here, however, and as much as we like the first book – recently a nominee for the Best Paperback Thriller of the Year – Matt and I feel we've upped the ante and improved our game second-time around.

We listened to reviewers and readers and sought to make NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU a state-of-the-art thrill ride. We made the chapters shorter, increased the plot twists, even while trying to delve deeper in the characters...not just Harrow and his superstar forensics team, but the killers themselves. And we introduced a secondary protagonist, LAPD sex crimes detective, Lt. Anna Amari, who more than holds her own with Harrow.

J.C. Harrow is a tragic hero, a former Midwestern sheriff who once saved the President's life at the Iowa State Fair but – on the same day – lost his family to a homicidal maniac. The national attention this brought him inspired Harrow to become the host of "Crime Seen!" – a sort of reality TV version of CSI, providing Harrow with the platform...and funds...to track down his family's murderer.

This he did in YOU CAN'T STOP ME, and now in NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU he is questioning whether he should continue on as host of this popular show, contemplating returning to law enforcement in some other small Midwestern town. That's when a video shows up at Crime Seen HQ from "Don Juan" – a serial killer who murderers a woman on camera by way of "trying out" to be the show's next villain. When a second killer makes a similar demand, Harrow and his team wonder if they are breeding killers as much as tracking them down....

In addition to being a thriller that has been called "riveting," NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU takes a sharply critical and satirical look at the reality TV craze and its downside.

True-crime writer Matt Clemens and I collaborated on the first eight CSI novels, and the first two CSI MIAMI novels, selling millions of copies. We later wrote the only BONES novel and three CRIMINAL MINDS novels, becoming along the way a team well-versed in serial killer-fueled suspense and forensics sleuthing. We feel NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU is the best – and certainly most exciting and frightening – of the thrillers we've written together.

Will Harrow return? Well, that's up to you....

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MAX ALLAN COLLINS is the author of ROAD TO PERDITION, the graphic novel basis for the Tom Hanks Academy Award-winning film.

No One Will Hear You is available now for both the Kindle and Nook.
----------------------------------------------------- MAX ALLAN COLLINS AT COMIC-CON
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San Diego Comic-Con 2011 Day Two
July 22nd, 2011 by Max Allan Collins
I promised two announcements today, both of considerable import:

First, I will be completing three more of Mickey Spillane's unfinished Mike Hammer novel manuscripts, for a new publisher…Titan of the UK (distributed by Random House in the USA). Titan is one of my favorite publishers — they have a real feel for pop culture — and while I am sorry to leave Harcourt, I am very excited about our new home. I met with Titan honcho Nick Landua today at the con, and he showed me first passes on covers that are innovative and striking for three new Hammer novels. I will be sharing them with you soon.

The books are:

LADY GO, DIE!
COMPLEX 90
KING OF THE WEEDS

I am working on LADY, GO DIE! right now — a manuscript dating to 1948, making it the second Mike Hammer story (after I, THE JURY).

The other news — announced on the reboot of FIRST COMICS panel is that we will be doing Ms. Tree for publisher Ken Levin. The entire run will be collected in new volumes, and Terry Beatty and I be doing a new MS. TREE project, likely a comics mini-series that serializes a graphic novel.

There are number of book publishers here and I spoke to several editors about possible book projects, both tie-in and original.

Nate took a lot of pictures today and we'll share them with you on Sunday morning. Tomorrow (Friday) are the Scribe Awards with a panel focusing on tie-in grand master, Peter David. Also, Barb and I will be appearing in a mystery/crime panel (details above).

M.A.C.

Tags: Comic-Con 2011, Complex 90, King of the Weeds, Lady Go Die, Mike Hammer, Ms. Tree, Spillane
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 3 Comments »

Science Fiction movie posters; Carolyn Hart new e books

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Ed here: Yes these were B and B- minus movies we saw in our yute. The site Where Danger Lives has a lot of them on display, the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of them were so terrible even at twelve I knew it'd be better to skip them. But some, for the time, were pretty darn good.

http://wheredangerlives.blogspot.com/

----------------------------FROM CAROLYN HART - PREVIOUSLY UNAVAILABLE BOOKS NOW IN E BOOK FORMAT

Dear Reader,

ESCAPE FROM PARIS -The story of two American sisters in Paris in 1940 and their race to save downed airmen from the Gestapo . . .

BRAVE HEARTS - A woman caught between duty and love after the fall of the Phillipines to the Japanese . . . .

A SETTLING OF ACCOUNTS - A woman's determination to unmask the man who betrayed her lover to the Nazis . . .

Out of print for many years, my early books are now available as ebooks from Kindlle. .

The books include my first published juvenile mystery, The Secret of the Cellars, and my first adult suspense novel, Flee from the Past.

Newly released juvenile titles:
The Secret of the Cellars
Dangerous Summer

Newly released YA suspense novels:
No Easy Answers
Danger, High Explosives!

Newly released WWII suspense novels:
Flee from the Past
A Settling of Accounts
Escape from Partis
Brave Hearts.

The ebook of Escape from Paris features the never before seen complete uncut ORIGINAL novel. The first publication was cut from 94,000 to 55,000 words.

Standalone mystery novels:
The Rich Die Young
Death by Surprise
Castle Rock
Skulduggery
The Devereaux Legacy.

Newly released short story collections:
Crime on her Mind
Secrets and Other Novels of Suspense which includes A Settling of Accounts

If you are a Kindle reader, I hope you will enjoy one or more of the early books. Please check my website for easy ordering.

Thank you - Carolyn Hart