Ed Gorman's Blog, page 205

Kim Morgan and femme fatales/Peggy Cummins

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Ed here: I happened to catch Eddie's Muller's fine TCM piece on film noir. Then after writing for awhile I logged on to Kim Morgan's Sunset Gun which is one of the articulate and eloquent film commentary sites anywhere. Here she discusses femme fatales and the stunning Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy.


Kim Morgan:

Peggy Cummins. Kill, baby, kill. She's something (something else), but she's something movie lovers need to be reminded of in our Kill Bill, Resident Evil, The Brave One, Death Proof, Sucker Punch and dear lord, those Charlie's Angels movie-watching times: Tough women have been gracing the big screen for a long time. Though fewer furious femmes (or rather, more obvious furious femmes, watch some noir and you'll see them) saw the light of celluloid in the earlier days of cinema than they do now (and I do love Mr. Tarantino for creating a real female action hero icon via Uma and Kill Bill), they were indeed around -- some with more grit, gusto and attitude than their modern kick-ass sisters.

Examples? Try curvy hand-to-hand combat killer Tura Satana in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, karate-chopping Pam Grier in Coffy, swaggering Joan Crawford and her Johnny Guitar, beautiful crazy Tuesday Weld in Pretty Poison, tuff Babs Stanwyck in Forty Guns or Faye Dunaway's iconic tommy-gun–wielding Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde (a movie highly influenced by Gun Crazy). Even Bette Davis (celebrating her birthday today) is something of a bad-ass in the spectacularly underrated Beyond the Forest in which she's an ace shot, knocking down an innocent little porcupine because, as she says: "Porkies irritate me." But one of my favorites, a womanly wonder of big screen sexiness, branded our brains in 1950 when the unforgettable Peggy Cummins shot her way through the classic film noir Gun Crazy.

for the rest go here:
http://sunsetgun.typepad.com/

RAVE REVIEWS for Top Suspense Group Anthology

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We're getting great reviews for our first Top Suspense anthology. One story by each Top Suspense member, plus the original round robin story, plus a link that will reveal the authors for each section of the round robin story. Only $2.99 on Kindle and other e book servers. $11.99 for the handsome print edition. Here's the Amazon link http://www.amazon.com/Top-Suspense-Cl...

Unreasonable Doubt by Max Allan Collins
Death's Brother by Bill Crider
Poisoned by Stephen Gallagher
Remaindered by Lee Goldberg
Fire in the Sky by Joel Goldman
The Baby Store by Ed Gorman
The Jade Elephant by Libby Fischer Hellmann
The Big O by Vicki Hendricks
The Chirashi Covenant by Naomi Hirahara
El Valiente en el Infierno by Paul Levine
A Handful of Dust by Harry Shannon
The Canary by Dave Zeltserman
The Chase by Top Suspense Group

Daisy California by Ricky Sprague

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Ed here: My friend Ricky Sprague is a witty and very clever writer-cartoonist whose work ranges from the whimsical to the very dark (his blog Child-Murdering Robot childmurderingrobot.blogspot.com/ manages to be both hilarious and outrageous frequently). Here's some of his latest work, two issues of a comic book that won me over by page four. Great work.


Daisy California issues available now!

You can purchase the first two volumes of the "Daisy California" comic book that I am creating with my seven year-old niece. It's her character, based on her, and her ideas. If you like little children and you like superheroes and you like comic books, then this should, in theory, be right up your alley. If you are unsure, you can visit the Daisy California website (consider "liking" her on facebook!) to preview the two available issues.


The "Preview Issue," in which Daisy California battles the nefarious villain Stranger Danger, can be purchased here.


The first issue, in which Daisy California battles the nefarious villain Nuketard, and along the way meets the superhero Purple Extravagance and the supervillain Loquacious Lexus Looney, can be purchased here.

These issues are guaranteed to go up in value. Not monetary value, but sentimental/artistic/historical value, as in you'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you got in on the ground floor of what is sure to become a major pop culture phenomenon, etc.

Order them here: http://www.comixpress.com/store/index...

Top Suspense Group: Introducing Stephen Gallagher

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Ed here: Stephen Gallagher's novels make the case that popular fiction can also be literature. I've read several of his novels two and three times and with each rereading I find myself rewarded with images and nuances of character and subtle themes I'd missed previously. I can say the same for his short fiction. He is also a dazzling storyteller. He has Hitchcock's feel for pace and twist and Claude Chabrol's for the moments when anguished people come apart. We are delighted and proud to have him as a member of the Top Suspense Group. Order one of his novels today. http://www.topsuspensegroup.com/

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Stephen Gallagher is a novelist, screenwriter, and director. He is the author of fourteen novels, including Nightmare, with Angel; Red, Red Robin; and The Spirit Box.

Described by London newspaper The Independent as "the finest British writer of bestselling popular fiction since le Carré ... Gallagher, like le Carré, is a novelist whose themes seem to reflect something of the essence of our times, and a novelist whose skill lies in embedding those themes in accessible plots." According to Arena magazine, "Gallagher has quietly become Britain's finest popular novelist, working a dark seam between horror and the psychological thriller."

The Daily Telegraph wrote, "Since Valley of Lights, he has been refining his own brand of psycho-thriller, with a discomforting knack of charting mental disintegration and a razor-sharp sense of place." Charles de Lint wrote in Mystery Scene magazine, "Gallagher is a master of abnormal psychology and he just gets better and better." Also in Mystery Scene David Mathew added, "never a writer to rest on his laurels, he has written good hard thrillers, some horror genre work (such as Valley of Lights), and a novel (Oktober) that might even qualify as a vague distortion of contemporary world fantasy… in places. You might go as far as to employ that overused phrase sui generis. He is, at any rate, one of the best writers of his generation."

Winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild awards, Stephen Gallagher's screen work began with Doctor Who and includes miniseries adaptations of his novels Chimera and Oktober, which he also directed. He created and wrote for both the British and American versions of Eleventh Hour, which starred Patrick Stewart in the UK and Rufus Sewell in Jerry Bruckheimer's CBS remake. His most recent novel is The Kingdom of Bones and his next will be The Suicide Hour, both from Random House.

Top Suspense Group: Max Allan Collins

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The Dark City by Max Allan Collins
$9.99 Kindle
$9.99 Nook
THE UNTOUCHABLES WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING

In 1929, Eliot Ness put away Alfonse "Scarface"Capone and became the biggest living legend this side of law and order. Now it's 1935. With the Untouchables and Prohibition behind him and the Great Depression falling darkly across the nation, Ness arrives in Cleveland to straighten out a crooked city. An anonymous ring of bent cops is dealing in vice, graft, gambling and labor racketeering, overlorded by a mysterious top cop known as "the outside chief!' But between corrupt politicians, jealous colleagues, a parasitic reporter and two blondes with nothing in common. Ness has big troubles pulling the sheets off the bed of blue vipers. Until the outside chief makes a move, and Ness moves just a bit quicker.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS, a Shamus-winning master of mystery' and suspense, has here skillfully woven fact and fiction to create a unique mystery series based on the life and exploits of one of America's most memorable heroes, Eliot Ness. The Dark City is the first in this rich, exciting new series.

Ed here: I'd like to remind people of how many fine writers you'll find in the Top Suspense Group. I'm sure that most of you have already read and enjoyed books and stories by Max Collins but some of you might now realize how long and how celebrated his career has been. You'll find some of his most exciting books available right now at http://www.topsuspensegroup.com/

MAX ALLAN COLLINS has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991), receiving the PWA life achievement award, the Eye, in 2007.

His graphic novel Road to Perdition (1998) is the basis of the Academy Award-winning 2002 film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. It was followed by two acclaimed prose sequels, Road to Purgatory (2004) and Road to Paradise (2005), with a graphic novel sequel, Return to Perdition, forthcoming. He has written a number of suspense series, including Quarry, Nolan, Mallory, and Eliot Ness. He is also completing a number of "Mike Hammer" novels begun by the late Mickey Spillane, and collaborates with Matthew Clemens on the J.C. Harrow serial killer novels.

His many comics credits include the syndicated strip "Dick Tracy"; his own "Ms. Tree"; "Batman"; and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, based on the hit TV series for which he has also written video games, jigsaw puzzles, and ten novels that have sold millions of copies worldwide. His tie-in books have appeared on the USA TODAY bestseller list nine times and the New York Times list three times. His movie novels include Saving Private Ryan, Air Force One, and American Gangster, which won the Best Novel "Scribe" Award in 2008 from the International Association of Tie-in Writers.

He has written and directed five feature films and two documentaries, including the Lifetime movie "Mommy" (1996) and a 1997 sequel, "Mommy's Day." He wrote "The Expert," a 1995 HBO World Premiere, and "The Last Lullaby," starring Tom Sizemore, a feature film based on Collins' acclaimed novel, The Last Quarry.

His coffee-table book The History of Mystery received nominations for every major mystery award and Men's Adventure Magazines (with George Hagenauer) won the Anthony Award.

Collins lives in Muscatine, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins; they have collaborated on three novels and numerous short stories, and are currently writing the successful "Trash 'n' Treasures" mysteries—their Antiques Flee Market (2008) won the Romantic Times Best Humorous Mystery Novel award in 2009.

Visit his website at www.maxallancollins.com/blog/

Spinetingler Awards

Be sure to vote here http://www.spinetinglermag.com/catego... in every category.

I'm recommending you vote for Dave Zeltersman's knock-out novel KILLER and Bill Crider's masterful editing of Damn Near Dead 2: Live Noir or Die Trying. BTW somebody name Gorman has been nominated for best collection. Please don't let my years of service in the Foreign Legion or single-handidly defeating the Venusians when they invaded influence your vote.

FORGOTTEn BOOKS: THE INNOCENT MRS. DUFF by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

FORGOTTEn BOOKS: THE INNOCENT MRS. DUFF by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

One of the more familiar knocks on mystery fiction is that it rarely treats death seriously. That too often murder is simply the device that propels the story and not much more. I think that's a fair criticism and I certainly include my own work as being guilty of that particular sin. Murder, even literary murder, should HURT.

I'd also add to that criticism the various addictions common to the genre, namely alcoholism and drug addiction. Only Larry Block and a few others have taken us into the real world of recovering alcoholics. For the most part addiction has become just another keystroke common to the world of mystery fiction.

I've read three novels in my life that have described accurately--in my experience as an alcoholic--the horrors of being drunk most of your life. Certainly Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, After the First Death by Larry Block and a novel you've probably never heard of, though alcoholic Raymond Chandler pushed it as one of the finest suspense novels of his time.

For some reason, much as I've pushed her here, I'd never read THE INNOCENT MRS. DUFF by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding. It is remarkable in many ways, not least because the protagonis. Jacob Duff is drunk for virtually the entire novel. And we see 95% of the book through his eyes. Functionally drunk for most of it but also falling-down drunk in places. Holding's genius was to sustain a sense of dread that I don't think even Ruth Rendell has equaled. There are times in her novels when I have to put the book down for a few minutes. They are that claustrophobic in mood and action.

That's the first most remarkable aspect of the book. The second most remarkable is the fact that we see the book through the eyes of one of the most arrogant, self-invoved, cold and self-deluded man I've ever encountered in fiction of any kind. I hated the bastard so much--I'm not enamored of the upper-classes, alas, and Duff embodies everything I loathe about them--I almost gave up after chapter three. I wasn't sure I wanted to learn anything more about this jerk,

But Holding has the voodoo, at least for me. She makes me turn pages faster than any best-seller because what you're rushing to discover is the fate of her people. All the good folks in this one are women, especially Duff's younger, beautiful and very decent wife. He constantly compares her unfavorably to his first wife, though we soon learn that he didn't care much for his first wife, either. At age forty he's still looking for his dream woman. God have mercy on her soul if he ever finds her.

As always with Holding, as with much of Poe, what we have is not so much a plot (though she's as good as Christie) as a phantasmagoria of despair, distrust and suspicion that consumes the protagonist. Is his wife cheating on him? Is she setting up his death so she'll inherit his estate? Is she turning his young son against him? Has his wealthy aunt, his life-long mentor and mother confessor, taken the side of his young wife? Has his drinking disgraced him in his small town and are all those smirks aimed at him? And finally, is he a murderer? And why does he have to sneak around these days to drink?

If you're curious about Holding, this is a good place to start. Anthony Boucher always said that she was the mother of all psychological suspense novelists. What's intresting is how few, fifty-some years after her death, have come close to equaling her enormous powers.

Character parts

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2006

Character parts

I like to read while I eat. Lately I've been working my way through David Thomson's enormous Biographical Dictionary of Film at lunch time. Thomson is the most interesting and entertaining flm critic since Pauline Kael--and every bit as frustrating. When I disagree with him, I want to call him up and read him his rights--before violating every one of them.

Today I read his take on Edmond O'Brien. Thomson notes going in that movie stars aren't supposed to sweat. That makes them too much like everybody in the audience. Part of movie stardom is inaccessability, fantasy. But what a clever hook because beefy O'Brien sweated all the time, especially in his most memorable movie DOA. He was also fat, frequently out of breath, devoutly neurotic and often frightened. He was, in other words, pretty much like the people in the darkness watching him on the big screen. An Everyman of sorts.

In the course of his entry on O'Brien, Thomson makes clear that he enjoys the odd-ball actors and actresses far more than he does the stars. Thus he finds Warren Oates vastly more compelling than Robert Redford and Jeff Goldblum more intriguing than Paul Newman.

When I was a kid I rarely wondered about the lives of the stars. But I was always curious about character actors such as Elisha Cook, Jr. and J. Carrol Naish. There was a vitality to their performances that the stars were rarely capable of matching. And in the case of Cook, there was a melancholy and weariness that I recognized even then as being much like my own.

Same with the women. The ones I was always excited about were the second- and third-leads. They were the ones I got crushes on. They were often as pretty as the leading ladies, sometimes even prettier. And they frequently had more interesting roles, the bitch, the tart, the victim.

Barry Gifford once remarked that when you see a musical with all those young gorgeous girl dancers you have to wonder what became of them. The majority probably became housewives; more than a few probably took to the streets as parts became harder and harder to come by; and a lucky handful became the wives of powerful Hwood men.

I've been watching a lot of silent films of TCM and the same impulse grabs me then, too. Who were they? What happened to them? Did they know they'd become immortal? A full century later I sit in our family room and watch them as--most likely anyway--another century from now people will still be watching them. This is probably heresy of sorts but to me film immortality is far more imposing than literary immortality.

gee i've never thought of you that way before miss marple but i sure am changin' my mind

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From Huffington Post

'Miss Marple': Jennifer Garner To Star In Young Reboot


This beloved classic is getting a facelift. Quite literally.

Disney has closed a deal for a big screen reboot of Agatha Christie's "Miss Marple" mystery novel series, and the House of Mouse is making substantial changes to the story. Deadline reports that, instead of the British grandma Jane Marple portrayed in the books and in previous big screen incarnations, the film series will instead feature a young, far more svelte amateur sleuth, to be played by Jennifer Garner.

Garner, of course, has plenty of screen experience when it comes to solving mysteries, starring in the longrunning TV spy show, "Alias." This will be a bit different; the novels, 12 in all, were written from the 1930-70's. Whether the films will stay in that considerable span of time, or be brought up to date has yet to be announced.

Marple has been played by a number of notable actors, both on TV and the big screen. The first films starred Margaret Rutherford, while Angela Landsbury took on the role in the star-studded "The Mirror Crack'd," which included Tony Curtis and Elizabeth Taylor.

Mildred Pierce

I liked it. Kate Winslet was all we'd hoped for as was Melissa Leo. The two child actors stunned me. The death of the little girl moved me; made me pause to think about mortality in general. She was such a sweetie.

All that said there were elements that I didn't care for. First and foremost being the male roles. Would she really have given herself so quickly to the little rat-bastard who was once her husband's dishonest business partner? And the handsome dashing playboy is pure stereotype. I was surprised we didn't have a polo scene. To me he's as off-putting as the business partner, a poseur out of a bad Christie novel.

While I also had problems with the Joan Crawford version, Jack Carson as the business partner and Zachary Scott as the wealthy young man made dramatic sense. Their appeal to Mildred was obvious.

The testament to how bad the two new version men are can be found in Mildred's ex-husband. Yes, he left her for another woman but for all that I found him admirable, a man who genuinely loves his family and is generous enough to give them the house and (after some jousting) their only car. This is my kind of writing- the bad-good man.

One other difficulty I had with last night's two hour opener was the overall tone. There's a kind of filmic somberness that is really self-reverential. This is such an important movie we wouldn't dare just let go of it here and there just to see what happens. It's like going to High Mass with all the Pope-like hats on the heads of the priests.

As a blogger pointed out this morning, Mildred Pierce is especially relevant today because it is about the destruction of the middle class during the Depression (yes, the working poor was destroyed by it, too, of course but Cain focused on the white collar group). The one difference being that in those days respectable women didn't work outside the home. Mildred has to hide her job from her snotty daughter Veda, Today's Veda would be swell with her mom working as long as she got new clothes and a an iPad out of it.

I'm looking forward to the next installments.