Ed Gorman's Blog, page 201

Tales From The Crossroads, Volume One 99 cents!

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Ed here: No better bargain anywhere. So far I've read Tom Piccirrilli's This, and That's The End of It. A chilling, powerful take on mortality, the idea of family and the ineluctable burden of loss. A true knock-out. I'm greedily looking forward to the rest.
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Edited by David Niall Wilson & David Dodd, Tales From the Crossroad Volume 1 brings together ten short stories and five novel excerpts from a talented group of Crossroad Press authors. Consisting of obscure reprints and one original short story, plus chosen excerpts from the authors' novels, this is a great introduction to their work, as well as a valuable resource for locating their books. Each author's complete Crossroad Press catalog is linked in the book for your convenience.

Contents:

Simple & All Souls Day by AL Sarrantonio
This, and That's the End of It & Woman in the Dark by Tom Piccirilli
The Three Srangers & NOK (previously unpublished) by Gerard Houarner
The Unmasking & How to Survive a Fire at the Greenmark by Steve Rasnic Tem
Jeaves & The Deteriorating Relations & "And So Will I Remember You" by Chet Williamson.

Exerpts from The Boy With Penny Eyes by Al Sarrantonio, Nightjack by Tom Piccirilli, The Beast That Was Max by Gerard Houarner, The Book of Days by Steve Rasnic Tem and REIGN by Chet Williamson.

Walk out onto the Crossroad...take that eBook reader in hand...enter, and read.

Look for future volumes of Tales From the Crossroad available soon.

NOIR CITY SPRING 2011

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Ed here: One of the most amazing collections of noir-related articles and reviews I've ever seen. For information on how to get it here's the link to the Film Noir Foundation. www.filmnoirfoundation.org/

NOIR CITY
Spring 2011
SPECIAL FEATURES
5 Songbirds A Musical Survey of Romance, Ruin, and Remorse
Vince Keenan
15 Hell Itself Couldn't Be a Stranger Place Orson Welles and Film Noir
Jake Hinkson
25 Vera The Tale of a Talented, Tormented Writer
Guy Savage
35 Caught In a Frame Portraits in Noir
Imogen Sara Smith
44 John Decker's Secret Madonna From Bundy Drive to Brute Force ... and Beyond
Don Malcolm
50 Crane Wilbur Pondering the Potentate of Prison Pictures, from The Perils of Pauline to Police Procedurals
Brent Walker
59 The Heaviest of Them All The Film Noir Legacy of Raymond Burr
Carl Steward
67 Perry Mason: The Cast William Hopper: The Big Man's Right Hand Eric Beetner William Talman: King of the "Losers" Abby Staeble Ray Collins: Great Actor, Lousy Cop Eric Beetner Barbara Hale: World's Greatest Gal Friday Vince Keenan
74 Just Shy of Respect The Hollywood Life and Death of Alan Ladd
Mark Fertig
59
15
80 The Ladd Legacy Don Malcolm
82 Steve Fisher From Pulp Jungle to Hollywood Circus Woody Haut
85 Two-for-One Deal The Women of Raw Deal
Anne M. Hockens
89 The Professional An Appreciation of Claire Trevor
Anne M. Hockens
NOIR CITY INTERVIEW
95 Joseph McBride On Kim Novak, Orson Welles, and Noir Dan Akira Nishimura and Don Malcolm
REGULAR FEATURES
100 A Book vs. Film Comparison Touch the Badge: Orson Welles's Reimagining of Whit Masterson's Badge of Evil
Edward Burma
103 Noir ... or Not? Girl in the Night
Anastasia Lin
DEPARTMENTS
105 Mr. Modern Noir Black Swan: Dark Side of the Loon
Will Viharo
106 TV Noir Boardwalk Empire: The Emperor Has Nice Clothes
Will Viharo
107 I Wake Up Screening Jackals of All Trades: Carlos and Outside the Law
Kelly Vance
109 Now on DVD Johnny Staccato: Timeless Cool In a Timely Format Will Viharo NOIR CITY
Spring 2011
SPECIAL FEATURES
5 Songbirds A Musical Survey of Romance, Ruin, and Remorse
Vince Keenan
15 Hell Itself Couldn't Be a Stranger Place Orson Welles and Film Noir
Jake Hinkson
25 Vera The Tale of a Talented, Tormented Writer
Guy Savage
35 Caught In a Frame Portraits in Noir
Imogen Sara Smith
44 John Decker's Secret Madonna From Bundy Drive to Brute Force ... and Beyond
Don Malcolm
50 Crane Wilbur Pondering the Potentate of Prison Pictures, from The Perils of Pauline to Police Procedurals
Brent Walker
59 The Heaviest of Them All The Film Noir Legacy of Raymond Burr
Carl Steward
67 Perry Mason: The Cast William Hopper: The Big Man's Right Hand Eric Beetner William Talman: King of the "Losers" Abby Staeble Ray Collins: Great Actor, Lousy Cop Eric Beetner Barbara Hale: World's Greatest Gal Friday Vince Keenan
74 Just Shy of Respect The Hollywood Life and Death of Alan Ladd
Mark Fertig
59
15
80 The Ladd Legacy Don Malcolm
82 Steve Fisher From Pulp Jungle to Hollywood Circus Woody Haut
85 Two-for-One Deal The Women of Raw Deal
Anne M. Hockens
89 The Professional An Appreciation of Claire Trevor
Anne M. Hockens
NOIR CITY INTERVIEW
95 Joseph McBride On Kim Novak, Orson Welles, and Noir Dan Akira Nishimura and Don Malcolm
REGULAR FEATURES
100 A Book vs. Film Comparison Touch the Badge: Orson Welles's Reimagining of Whit Masterson's Badge of Evil
Edward Burma
103 Noir ... or Not? Girl in the Night
Anastasia Lin
DEPARTMENTS
105 Mr. Modern Noir Black Swan: Dark Side of the Loon
Will Viharo
106 TV Noir Boardwalk Empire: The Emperor Has Nice Clothes
Will Viharo
107 I Wake Up Screening Jackals of All Trades: Carlos and Outside the Law
Kelly Vance
109 Now on DVD Johnny Staccato: Timeless Cool In a Timely Format Will Viharo

Harold Q. Masur by Ed Lynskey

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Harold Q. Masur: Hardboiled With a Lawyerly Touch
By Ed Lynskey

The late Hal Masur's debut novel Bury Me Deep was published in 1947 the same
year Mickey Spillane's hardboiled classic, I, the Jury, also hit the bookstands.
Otto Penzler brought out a reissue in 1984, probably the most widely available
edition. You can't miss it. The cover features an alluring, half-dressed blonde
poised on a pink sherbet armchair.

Masur graduated from the New York University School of Law in 1934. He practiced
law from 1935-1942 when he then served in the U.S. Air Force. Starting from the
late 1930s, he honed his writing craft by publishing short stories in various
pulp
magazines like Argosy (1939), Popular Detective, (1941), and Detective Story
Magazine (1949). He was also President of MWA (1973-74) and the recipient of
MWA's 1992 Raven Award (in part for his providing pro bono legal counsel to
mystery writers).

Bury Me Deep opens with Scott Jordan returning from Florida to his New York City
apartment. He discovers a half-nude blonde ("bright jonquil-yellow hair") on the
sofa sipping brandy and batting her eyes at him. This attention-getting device
does Spillane one better by frontloading the undressed babe ("She was wearing
black panties and a black bra and that was all.") in its pages instead of a
striptease at the end. The trouble only begins for the weary lawyer when he
ships her home in a cab and she turns up dead.

Masur's Scott Jordan series spanned nine novels and one short story collection
over three decades, a respectable run. Comparisons of Scott Jordan to Erle
Stanley Gardner's
Perry Mason can't be helped. Critics such as Art Scott draw distinct differences
between the two sleuthing lawyers, citing Jordan's more active investigative
role. Masur commented on how he created the protagonist: "The series character,
Scott Jordan, a New York attorney, was first conceived to fall somewhere between
Perry Mason and Archie Goodwin . . . with the dash and insouciance of Rex
Stout's Archie."

I admire Masur's evocative yet controlled prose style. For instance, he writes
about New York City after-hours: "Broadway had pulsed into neon-glaring night
life. Swollen throngs milled restlessly with a rapacious appetite for pleasure.
Box-office windows spawned long queues, and the traffic din was a steady roar in
your ears." This same
passage could've been just as easily lifted out of a Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, or
O'Hara novel.

This title was a top-notch inaugural effort from Mr. Masur to establish a crime
fiction series. Faint echoes of PI Max Thursday (Wade Miller) and Carney Wilde
(Bart Spicer) ring in its pages. Yet, Scott Jordan remains his own man. The
analytical turn of his legal mind and his broader understanding of jurisprudence
give him a dramatic edge over the typical PI tales of his time. Jordan is also
an affable personality. Though this first book didn't make the cut for review in
Anthony Boucher's "Criminals at Large" column in the New York Times, subsequent
Scott Jordan titles did. Finally, Bury Me Deep mustered enough interest to win
an entry in Bill Pronzini's classic critical work 1001 Midnights.

The End

A longer version of this article appeared in CRIME SCENE SCOTLAND.

Ed Lynskey's new titles are LAKE CHARLES and QUIET ANCHORAGE.

Cast in Dark Waters by Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli

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CAST IN DARK WATERS by Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli
(Kindle $2.99)

From Bloodhound:

This jim-dandy little novella is just begging for a sequel, and I don't want to be kept waiting. Cast in Dark Waters seems like it just came out of nowhere, but it has a history as a limited release hardcover book from Subterranean. I missed it then, but I'm glad I caught up with it now.

This is old-school pulp writing, folks, and it reads like something that would have come from the typewriter of Robert E. Howard or one of his contemporaries. The story is set in the Caribbean in the 16th century and feels like a pirate movie from the heyday of when Hollywood did them big and did them right. I love the current Pirates of the Caribbean stuff that's going on now, but I still remember watching Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk and being blown away.

The opening of the story is immediately intriguing, but it's the female sea captain, Crimson, that steps onto center stage and owns the show. She comes in swinging, too, in a wild bar brawl that is a sheer pleasure to read and made me feel all of ten years old again discovering the pulp stories that shaped me into the man I am now. Growing up in southeastern Oklahoma meant there was a lot of cowboys architecture in my male role models, but thanks to the reading material I had at hand there was a lot of pirates, private eyes, and science fiction as well.

The relationship Crimson has with her father (although no one dares suggest to either of them that they're related) is at once absorbing. Tangled relationships are great fiction fodder, and the one between Crimson and Welsh is a great one.

But Gorman and Piccirilli don't stop there. Crimson's husband, Tyree, has gone missing on the island of Benbow, which is believed to be the home to nightmares and bloodsuckers. In this first story, we think we know what the truth is, but we don't receive the final answer. And in that, the authors have us snared. I hope to see a sequel soon.

The seafaring action and the fights on the island are very well done. I felt like I was staying in step with Lady Crimson when she set sail and when she set foot on the island. The mythology of the things she's hunting is very well laid out and I enjoyed the "almost knowing" everything that was involved. After all 16th century pirates don't know everything we know these days.

The atmosphere is very well done and the Caribbean landscape and the lifestyle of a pirate are marked on every page. The authors did some good research and blend it seamlessly into their pirate-horror-adventure concoction.

The new Mystery Scene

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Ed here: I lifted this from the excellent blog The Education of a Pulp Writer. This is the finest issue of Mystery Scene I've ever read. Lawrence Block's (part two) piece on his friend Evan Hunter/Ed McBain is a particular knock-out.
Mystery Scene Spring Issue

What a top looking issue! From Kate Stine:

Hi everyone,

If you haven't read Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next bibliomysteries, then you're in for a real treat. Tom Nolan gives an introduction to the whimsical world of Thursday Next, literary detective in this issue. (Here's some advice for newbies, though: start with the first book in the series, The Eyre Affair.)

Have you ever wondered about the loyal wife, silently standing by her disgraced husband, usually a politician, on the evening news? The Good Wife places that enigmatic figure at the center of one of the most enjoyable dramas on TV. It's full-bodied, nuanced storytelling - and possibly features the only time in history that a steamy sex scene has had National Public Radio's evening news as a soundtrack. Find out more in Matt Zoller Seitz's thoughtful article.

Novelist Kelli Stanley is making a splash and her conversation with Oline Cogdill reveals why. It's not every woman who is equally comfortable discussing ancient Roman curse tablets, the second Sino-Japanese War, segregated 1970s Florida, and comics!

Also, Art Taylor talks with Louis Bayard about his acclaimed literary-themed thrillers, the latest of which, The School of Night, focuses on a secret, possibly heretical, society of scientists and artists in Elizabethan England.

Theatrical crime is running rampant across the country and Wm. F. Hirschman has tracked down some of the top perpetrators on Broadway and in regional theater for us. Don't miss his list of classic crime plays - they make good reading!

There's lots more in the new issue. Hope you enjoy!

Sincerely,
Kate Stine
Editor-in-Chief
Posted by David Cranmer at 3:18 PM
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Hard City by Clark Howard

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Ed here: Clark Howard is one of my all-time favorite writers. And this, I think, is his most important novel. Truly a magnificent achievement of the kind few genre writers ever attempt let alone master.

Here's news about it:

Clark Howard is an award winning and acclaimed mystery writer. In 1981, his story The Horn Man won the Edgar Allan Poe award for best short story of the year from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2009, Howard won the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Short Fiction Mystery Society.

A professional writer for over 40 years, he has written sixteen novels, six books of non-fiction, and has two published collections of short stories, in addition to more than 200 uncollected short stories.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17 and served as a rocket launcher gunner in the Punchbowl in Korea. He was one of eight survivors in a platoon that survived the battle of the high ground north of the Punchbowl. He was discharged from the marines at age 20.

In 1990, Dutton published Howard's novel Hard City in hardback. Hard City was never published in paperback, and the book is now hard to find even on the shelves of used bookstores.

Hard City was Howard's most personal novel. The semi-autobiographical novel features Richie, a young boy from a troubled family, who lives on the streets of 1940s Chicago at age 12 while sleeping in a bowling alley every night. Eventually, Richie's love of reading is key to Richie's surviving, and eventually leaving, the street life.

Writing about Hard City in a new Author's Preface for the publication of Hard City as an ebook, Howard writes, "Because much of it is based on my life as a wayward boy on the mean streets of Chicago's lower West Side, a life frequently fueled by truancy, petty thievery, gang membership, and other disreputable behavior, I had, as a respectable adult, left those bleak days far behind and buried them deep in my memory. The things I had done back then, the life I had experienced, as well as vivid recollections of my mother's drug addiction and my father's incarceration in federal prison and subsequent disappearance, had all melded together into some dark recess of my mind and, I thought, been locked away forever."

Now, Hard City is widely available as an eBook. For those who missed Hard City's hardback publication in 1990, you now have the chance to share Richie's life on the streets of Chicago, and his ultimate redemption via books, reading, and writing.

Here are links to the books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-City-ebook...

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Hard...

The Marilyn Tapes now 99 cents

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Back in 1993 I decided to write a historical novel about the Kennedy-Marilyn Monroe hookup. I wasn't going to write a serious historical novel as Max Allan Collins does with his Hellers (he's the master of the form), instead I was doing a kind of Harold Robbins pastiche. Middle-period Robbins when he crime began to appear in his books. I was a huge Robins fan until he went whacky on drugs.

Months before the book appeared I got a call from somebody who claimed to represent The Marilyn Society or somesuch. They wanted to know if I planned to do right by her in my novel. Very strange fanboy stuff.

When the book appeared the trades were all over the place: PW gave it a mixed review, Booklist (this is from memory) liked it very much, Library Journal trashed it and the distributor (the big one back then) gave it a full page rave review. I also got solid reviews in the mystery magazines and a couple of the entertainment mags as well. It did well in the UK and a couple of other places. And then it was forgotten, not just by readers but by me, too.

About a year ago reviews began appearing on various blogs. "The worst book I could never stop reading" said (I think) the St. Louis paper. Some Marilyn-orientd site noted: "You'll feel ashamed for reading it but you won't be able to put it down." And my favorite from a source I can't find again: "Splashy, trashy and fun!" I meant for it to be Robbins-over-the-top and apparently I succeeded.

I got the idea for putting these quotes here from Norman Mailer. When his novel The Deer Park (which I've always considered his Raymond Chandler novel and admire very much) was totally trashed by critics, Mailer bought a full page ad in the Village Voice and printed quotes from all his terrible reviews. My favorite was Time's: "The biggest garbage heap of the year."

I think you'll have a good time with it. Many of the newspaper review cited my take on Marilyn as compassionate and moving even though she never appears on stage. And many of the same reviewers thought that my sketches of JFK, RFK and especially old Joe Kennedy were well done.

It's worth 99 cents if I do have to say so myself.

Neil Gaiman vs. The Whackjobs

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Ed here: I remember when Minnesota was one of the most progressive states in the union. Now it's run by the tinfoil hats brigade.

Neil Gaiman hits back at US politician's theft accusation
Author, whom Minnesota Republican says he 'hates', insists that his $45,000 fee for a public appearance was market rate

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 May 2011 10.55 BST


. Neil Gaiman. Photograph: Sutton-Hibbert/Rex

Pencil-necked? Maybe. Thief? No way. Award-winning author Neil Gaiman has defended himself against Republican Matt Dean's extraordinary claim that he is a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota".

The astonishing attack from the Minnesota House of Representatives majority leader, published in the Star Tribune yesterday, centred on a fee of $45,000 (£27,000) paid to Gaiman – "who I hate," Dean added – from state art funds last year for a speaking appearance at Stillwater Library in Minnesota.

Describing the comments as "bullying schoolyard nonsense", Gaiman said Dean's assertion that he stole the money "is a lie". "Yes, I gave the money to charities – a sexual abuse one and a library/author one, long ago, when the cheque came in, well before this ever became a political football. But that seems completely irrelevant to this: I don't like the idea that a politician is telling people that charging a market wage for their services is stealing," the bestselling fantasy author wrote on his blog. "[But] it's kind of nice to make someone's Hate List. It reminds me of Nixon's Enemies List. If a man is known by his enemies, I think my stock just went up a little."

for the rest go here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/...

Stuff & More Stuff

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Debbie Reynolds and Albert Brooks in "Mother." Beatrice Henderson: "I love you." John Henderson: "I know you think you do, Mother."

Seth Meyers got off the most memorable line of the night during Weekend Update: "Barack Obama will go down in history as the first black person ever to have to prove that he killed someone" (Nikki Finke)

I was reading Volume 10 of Stephen Jones' Best New Horror anthology when I came up to Nicholas Royle's story "Reunion." Royle is one of those writers who can be enjoyed line by line. His prose is elegant without ever getting in the way of the storytelling or sounding pompous. This is a strange and disturbing tale of the reunion of a class of med school doctors on their twentieth anniversary. Dark and engrossing. But what really animates it for me is the protagonist's hypochondria. Since I share that affliction Royle's claustrophobic take on it unsettled me.

Perfect formula for A movie Superhero by Brian Moylan: "Origin Story + Meaningful Conflict X Awesomeness of Powers - (The Number of Villains X The Number of Sidekicks) ÷ Amount of Time Spent on the Love Interest = The Quality of the Movie"

Joe Kenny reviews Blood Bath by Bruno Rossi: "Good Lord! If I had known this volume of The Sharpshooter was so lurid, so exploitative, so friggin' twisted, I would've read it a whole lot sooner."

For cat lovers: We watched our first episode of My Cat From Hell on Animal Planet last night at 8:00 p.m.CST last night. Jackson Galaxy's looks may put you off at first (remember when Kramer on Seinfeld was called a "hipster doofus?") but don't let all the tatts and the strange beard fool you. Jackson is the very bright and very cool feline equivalent of the Horse Whisperer. I learned more about cats in one hour than I'd learned in a lifetime of having cats (and dogs) around me. Here's the website link http://animal.discovery.com/videos/my...

The Legend of Forrest Tucker's Private Parts - Yes Indeed

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Milton Berle is legendary for being well-endowed. But apparently Forrest Tucker's endowments challenged Berele's. This subject was never brought up on F Troop of course (yes I was an F Troop fan because of Larry Storch).

Here's a another swipe from Mark Evanier's News From Me. For one thing it's good to see Steve Allan again and for another there's a very funny outtake from F Troop with Tucker swearing. I know it's all childish macho crap but it IS funny. Just scroll down a few stories when you link to it.

http://www.newsfromme.com/