Ed Gorman's Blog, page 26

Gravetapping: TIEBREAKER by Jack M. Bickham

Ed here: Jack was a friend of mine, one of the finest people and writers I've ever known.He fought cancer for over a decade but never let it slow him down. People like Donald Westlake praised him and professionals generally agreed that he could hit the big time if he ever got the chance.He got one very big chance but his publisher blew it for him. He was also a revered teacher of writing.
Ben Boulden:Posted: 19 Aug 2015 06:00 AM PDTI n 1989 a midlist writer named Jack Bickham published the slim suspense novel Tiebreaker. It was the first of six novels featuring aging professional tennis player, current teaching pro, sometime magazine writer, and former CIA asset Brad Smith. Brad is a step beyond the tail of his career and, after investing his prime years’ winnings unwisely, earns a living as a teaching pro at a club in Richardson, Texas. The novel’s opening is too good not to share—
“The last thing I had on my mind was somebody breaking into my condominium and dragging me into the past.”
It wasn’t on his mind because he was playing the finals of his tennis club’s first annual Richardson Charity Tournament against a hotshot college player acting like John McEnroe and threatening to clean the court with Brad. A battle between age and arrogance. When Brad makes it home, so both he and the reader can discover who and what is going to drag him into the past, he finds his old agency contact, Collie Davis, watching a western on television with a beer in his hand.
The agency has an assignment requiring Brad’s specialized credentials; a young Yugoslavian tennis star named Danisa Lechova wants to defect to the west, but her passport has been confiscated, and the UDBA (Yugoslavia’s version of the KGB) is openly watching her. Brad agrees, reluctantly, to act as Danisa’s go-between for the defection, using his cover as a tennis writer. 
The Brad Smith novels rank as my favorite featuring a serial character. Brad is uniquely American. He does odd jobs for the agency due to a perceived debt he owes—
“ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”
—but he often doesn’t like the assignments, or the agency’s work overall. In a sense he is supporting the lesser of two evils—meaning the CIA against the KGB and the Soviet Union. He is a patriot, but it stops somewhere short of murder, coups, criminality, and E. Howard Hunt. He has a conscience and a well-defined ethical awareness that is unique to spy thrillers. He is also likable, admirable, mostly, and has more trouble with women than imaginable.
The novels, and Tiebreakeris no exception, are written in both first and third person. Brad’s perspective is in first, and an assortment of characters, including good guys and bad, are in third. The alternating perspectives give the novel a hybrid feel—Brad’s narration is more closely related to a private eye novel with social commentary making it more personal, and the third person expands it into a broader and larger suspense-spy story.
The tennis is an integral element to the story, and it is described so well it becomes a secondary character—
“Somehow I got my Prince composite on the yellow blur and bounced it down the line, hitting the back corner, close. He glided over to get it and I thought I saw the angle and guessed, chuffing up toward the net.”
The suspense is expertly designed around the story questions—a clue is identified, but its impact and relevance is not revealed for several pages. It is done without any annoying tricks or contrivance. The characters—both Brad Smith and the secondary folks—are well defined without any doubts about motivation or outcome. There are no crazy monsters, or unexplained actions. Everything is logical and smooth. 
I like Tiebreaker and its five sequels so well that I re-read the entire series every few years, and if I was any more weak-willed I would probably read them more often. 

From Libby Fischer Hellmann

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× Delete                               Did you see Robert Altman's movie The Player? 
Good film, by the way, with Tim Robbins. (See 
the official movie trailer here.) Last week, I flew 
out to Hollywood (LA, really) to pitch my books 
to a dozen production companies. Sounds cool, right?Actually it was more like a speed-dating marathon. 
I had five minutes with each company, and I pitched 
Easy Innocence, Nobody's Child, Havana Lost, and a 
Bitter Veil, depending on what the company seemed 
to want. To find out more about the experience -- 
some of it amusing, some not so much -- head to 
my blog post called Movies 'R Us here.​
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WHAT I DO BETWEEN BOOKS
High five here! I recently finished the 5th thriller
 in the Ellie Foreman Series! It's called Jump Cut – 
both my background and Ellie’s are in film production
 -- which is when there's an abrupt cut, or “jump”
 in a shot. More on this novel will be coming later.
After finishing a book -- well, it's not really finished 
until it's published -- there can be a letdown. You 
feel like your entire focus is getting the book done, 
and then it suddenly is. What do I do next? Well 
that's the topic of another blog post called 
What I Do Between Books , in case 
you're interested.  ​
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WRITING CRIME FICTION – MY LOVE-
HATE RELATIONSHIP
There are some aspects of writing crime fiction 
that I LOVE, such as imagining plot twists and turns. 
But then there are the parts that I HATE, such as 
dragging myself into my office, staring at a blank 
screen, forcing myself to write, something, anything, 
to move the plot forward. It's excruciating, and 
I compare it to being a Polar explorer. Too extreme?  
Learn more of what  I LOVE  
and what  I HATE  in these blog posts.  ​
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NEW: AVAILABLE SOON - THE INCIDENTAL SPY

Now for the truly gratifying part of being a writer. I'm 
thrilled to announce my latest novella:  The Incidental 
Spy  -- set in   the early years of the Manhattan 
Project in Chicago. 
Here’s the description:
Young Lena Bentheim is forced to flee 
Nazi Germany for Chicago in 1935, leaving 
her family and boyfriend  behind. After learning 
English, she eventually finds a new life as a 
secretary in the Physics Department of 
the University of Chicago. She meets and 
marries another German refugee scientist 
and has a child. Then tragedy 
strikes and Lena is forced to spy 
on the nuclear fission 
experiments at the U of Chicago.
You can purchase the print version  here , and I hope 
you will. The ebook version won’t be out for another 
month or so, but either way, honest reviews are 
always welcome, as those of you on the
 Libby's Review
 Crew already know.​
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× Delete                               Thank you for being part of my gang. You keep 
me going, and 
I couldn't do it without you.
Happy reading, and until next time...
Warmly,Libby  

One of the Great Ken Levine posts - Trying to look hip

What NOT to wear at a music award showBy Ken Levine http://kenlevine.blogspot.com
A couple of weeks ago I told the story of how cool I looked in the GQ profile (thanks to borrowing someone else's clothes).  Here's what happens when I was left to my own devices.

In the late '70s my partner and I were writing a pilot for the very flamboyant film producer, Alan Carr.  He had just produced the film adaptation of GREASE.  The pilot was about a girl who booked rock acts for a live music show like THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (which ran on Friday nights in the swinging 70s). One day Allan calls and says for research purposes we should attend the DON KIRSCHNER ROCK AWARDS. This was a bullshit network made-up award show, a predecessor to the AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS or MTV AWARDS, or FRED’S AWARDS if Fred could get someone to televise it. We were to mingle with the stars, get a feel of the world, etc. The tickets were free so what the hell?

It was broadcast live from the Hollywood Palladium at 5 p.m. (8 p.m. in the east). We were given house seats and told to dress black tie. So we had to hit the rental store. When the salesman learned the occasion he said, “You can’t just get black tuxedos. Not for the ROCK AWARDS. Are you nuts? You’ve got to wear something much hipper than that.” Considering we were the two un-hippest guys on the planet that made sense. We wanted to fit in. Didn’t want Peter Frampton thinking we were not happening. So we said, “What do you got?”

The day of the show we picked up our dates at about 3:00. They got one look at our outfits and both almost bust a gut. Like two complete idiots we were wearing matching brown tuxedos with peach colored ruffled shirts. All that was missing was paisley cummerbund.

Obviously, it was too late to do anything about it so off we went to the Palladium. And big surprise, we were the only two people there in brown tuxedos with peach ruffled shirts. Our dates were still laughing. Actually, the sound of snickering seemed to follow us wherever we went. Gone were my fantasies of Olivia Newton-John slipping me her number.

To save face I took off my glasses and tried to pass myself off as Prince.

It’s now 4:45. We’re seated. The stage P.A. calls out, “Chaka Khan? Is Chaka Khan here?” I don’t know why but I raised my hand and said, “Here!” The woman sitting right in front of me whirled around and said, “Hey, Fuckhead! I’m Chaka Khan!” So much for my mingling with the stars. (Chaka pictured right with sort of the warm expression she gave me.)

After suffering through the show (“Oh wow, man. I can’t tell you what an honor it is to receive this, uh…what is this again?”), we got out at about 7:30. Unbelievably, we weren’t invited to any of the post show parties. When Alice Cooper laughs at your outfit, you know you look like an imbecile. So now we had to get dinner. Where do you go on a Tuesday night in Hollywood dressed like the groomsmen of Liberace’s wedding?

Thank God for Kelbos!
Longtime Angelinos know what I’m talking about. Kelbos was a super tacky Polynesian themed restaurant with several L.A. locations. Picture Trader Vic’s for Homer Simpson. They’re gone now but back then there was one right across the street from CBS Television City.

(Side note: CBS Television City is in the heart of the Fairfax district, a decidedly Jewish section of town. The joke is to get to CBS just drive down Fairfax Ave. And the first window that doesn’t have a chicken in it is CBS.)

We walk into Kelbos, two Jerry Vale impersonators and their dates, and the host doesn’t even bat an eye. Shows us to a booth and even offers us complimentary drinks in skulls. We all must’ve laughed for an hour at how stupid we looked. But at least no one saw us.

Then I get home and watch the tape-delayed replay of the show. Chaka Khan wins an award. Jumps up. And there we are, in a lovely two shot, on national television. And it was an extra good idea to sit right next to each other.

I think Allan Carr was embarrassed. And this from a man who wore caftans and cold cream.

New Book Post Between the Living and the Dead Bill Crider

Ed here: I'm just about to start reading this. The Dan Rhodes books are both classic mysteries and one of those created worlds you want to keep revisiting. But as always with just about everything Bill writes there's an undertow of understanding and compassion for vagaries of human existence. Bill has yet to get his due.

New Book Post
Between the Living and the DeadBill Crider
I’ve written a lot of books over the years, and my method of writing is haphazard.  I usually just sit down and start writing with no idea where I’m going.  Oh, I have a general idea of things, but I don’t know how things are going to play out from one page to the next.  I can’t help it.  It’s just the way I work.
Between the Living and the Dead was a little different.  It’s the first time ever that I’ve known what the last line was going to be almost as soon as I started writing.  I might not have known what else was going to happen, but at least I had that line.
Let me back up a little.  Here’s what else I knew.  I knew I wanted to write a haunted house book and a ghost story.  That’s something I’ve wanted to do almost since I sold my first book, but I didn’t know how to go about it.  I never came up with the right approach.  When I came up with the last line, however, I knew what I needed.  I needed ghost hunters.
If you’ve read any of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes books (and if you haven’t you should start immediately, if not sooner), you know that there’s a slightly offbeat character named Seepy Benton.  He’s just the kind of guy who’d like to be a ghost hunter.  Now that I had that taken care of, I just needed a haunted house.  No problem.  Every small town has a haunted house or two, right?  And if someone got killed in that house, well, the sheriff would have to investigate.  If there’s a dead man in a haunted house, can the ghost hunters be far behind?  Of course not.  
So the story was set in motion.  Here’s something I learned in physics class way back in high school.  I don’t remember a lot of things from that class (it’s a long story; ask me about it someday, and maybe I’ll tell you), but I do remember Newton’s First Law of Motion, part of which says something along these lines: “An object in motion tends to remain in motion until acted upon by an external force.”  A story is like that, too.  Once it begins, there’s just no stopping it until it’s acted on by an external force, like the words “the end.”
  I had a good time writing Between the Living and the Dead, so I hope you have a good time reading it.

Publicity Push: John Hegenberger's Elliot Cross Books

“A great debut for a protagonist readers are sure to want to see more of!” —Wayne D. Dundee, on TRIPL3 CROSS
 “It’s a fast-moving tale of mystery and espionage that will engage you right from the start. Check it out.” —Bill Crider, on TRIPL3 CROSS
Cross Examinations is a prequel for TRIPL3 CROSS, and both are available at Amazon—click the titles and you will be transported to each books  ’   Amazon page. The novels are below with the publisher’s brief description and the first paragraph from each book.
Cross Examinations  . 
Publisher’s description : A series of serious crimes: Kidnapping. Murder. Art Thief. Blackmail. Comic Books. 
Private Investigator Eliot Cross faces heartache, headache, backache, and a royal pain in the neck in these rollicking noir stores from the heart of the Heartland.
First paragraph : I hung a left and bounced into the lot of Bailey’s Quality Cars as the policeman jumped to his feet, waving his hands like a burning blind man. I stomped the brake, leaving the tail of my Dodge Charger out in the curb lane. [from the story “Headache”]
TRIPL3 CROSS  .
Publisher’s description : It’s 1988, and small-town P.I. Eliot Cross is searching for his long-lost father. Then, a CIA informant says that Dad has been in deep cover for over twenty years. Now, the informant’s been murdered and Eliot is on the run. 
Scrambling to clear his name, Eliot journeys from Washington D.C. to Havana, Cuba, struggling against deadly drug-runners, syndicate hit-men and his own violent nature. But the worst is yet to come, as Eliot discovers his father is at the center of an international conspiracy, a nuclear threat and a double cross...or is that a triple cross?
First paragraph : The new 1988 Ford van had been following me for days. I’d ducked it twice, but here it was coming up from behind me, a reverse image in my rearview mirror.
Mr. Hegenberger also has four novels scheduled for release later this year featuring L.A.P.I., Los Angeles Private Investigator, Stan Wade. The series will run at least four titles—Starfall, Superfall, Spyfall, and Stormfall. The first is scheduled for release in October. Mr. Hegenberger's website has a very nice description of each. You are subscribed to email updates from Gravetapping
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The GREAT David Thomson looks at Hitchock

For the entire essay go here (The New Republic)
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/11...



By David ThomsonPhoto: Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo 
The other day, two esteemed literary figures sent me a short questionnaire on Alfred Hitchcock. They wondered, do I think about him? I do.The questions were going to a lot of people, and I don’t know what the esteemed lit figs plan to do with the survey. But what struck me was the currency of Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980). It’s not that he has an anniversary, but those dates are telling. He has been dead more than thirty years. A group of exceptional film-makers died at about the same moment: Howard Hawks, Chaplin, Nicholas Ray, George Cukor, William Wyler, Vincente Minnelli, Douglas Sirk, King Vidor. With regret, I have to concede that those careers are now known in the halls of cinephilia but hardly anywhere else. Yet if you say “Hitch” out loud on any bus, people start looking for a bomb, or a fat man with a poker face who is studiously ignoring the search. That voice, his look, the promise, and the threat—they’re all with us still.A package of Hitchcock’s silent films, beautifully restored by the British Film Institute’s National Archive, is traveling round the country and delighting viewers who had come to think of him as American, Technicolored, and a devotee of desperate cries and screaming music. Recently two feature films about him— The Girl  and  Hitchcock —had a commercial release. They weren’t any good, but someone reckoned that this director’s curious and repressed sex life was a subject for entertainment instead of biographical research. And in 2012, the poll of critics organized by Sight & Sound (it comes once a decade) determined that at long last  Citizen Kane  should step aside.  Vertigo  was the greatest film ever made.That’s a curious shift. When it opened in 1958, Vertigo was a flop, in an age when Hitch was not accustomed to such affronts. Not long afterward, he withdrew the film, which surely helped to increase its allure. I was entranced by Vertigo in 1958, and I am fascinated by its courage still—I mean its resolve to defy the box office and expose the workings of a secretive man. But is it even the best Hitchcock film? I’d rather see  Rear Window ,  North by Northwest ,  Psycho , or  Notorious . That hardly matters. As soon as you mention Psycho, the cabinet of Dr. Hitchcock is ajar, allowing us to see and hear his insolent mixture of menace and contempt, murder and mischief. My problem with Vertigo’s gloom is that there are no laughs (except for the absurd ease of parking in San Francisco). When Hitch is most himself, we laugh as we cringe, and sooner or later we get the inner message—what are the movies if we don’t know whether to smile or to shudder?
When I imagined the bomb on the bus, with the fat man taking no notice, I was alluding to a big scene in  Sabotage  (1936), but the example is important to most of Hitchcock. He wanted to devastate us, but he preferred to stay cool and professional about it. He was confirmed in his respect for fear, like a great artist, or a great torturer. His films were experiments in what a screen, darkness, and apprehension could do, and he liked to maintain the manner of the laboratory technician, observing but himself unmoved. So part of the recklessness in Vertigo was the way a private (if not secretive) man was prepared to disclose his own disquiet over this chronic detachment. The guilty passion glimpsed in that film was of a man falling into his own sexual fascination with a story until it drowned life. Thus the greatest film ever made (for now) is a stricken admission about film itself and the fantasy it feeds on.
Hitchcock didn’t want to be caught out. As a young man in London, drawn into film through his skill as a graphic artist, he found himself a little laughed at as a highbrow, a man who studied film very closely as a narrative technology and who was ready to go to Germany to observe the most modern treatments of terror and menace. (He stole from Fritz Lang.) That was the spirit of art struggling to emerge in the form of a plump, unappealing East London boy, a greengrocer’s son, without advantages of class and education, with only seething brilliance to belie his bulk. It’s a trial run for Harold Pinter—East End, lower-middle class, Jewish, subversive, power-minded—but Pinter ended up marrying into the aristocracy and getting a Nobel. Hitch never even won an Oscar for directing. As his first American employer, David O. Selznick, said, he wasn’t quite the man you’d want to have dinner with. That London drawl was to hide a fear of being common.

Sam Elliott, a Leading Man Again at 71, No Cowboy Hat Required

Sam Elliott at his home in Malibu, Calif. Credit
Bryan Sheffield for The New York Times 

MALIBU, Calif. — Not too long ago, the actor Sam Elliott, who has spent much of his 46-year career alternately fighting and embracing habitual typecasting as America’s cowboy, was referred to as a “male ingénue.”At 71, Mr. Elliott is not young, and anyone who’s witnessed the knowing gleam in his peepers wouldn’t for a second peg him as innocent. But with lauded performances this year in three indie films and guest spots in two acclaimed television series, Mr. Elliott is definitely having a moment.In May, he was named best guest performer in a drama series at the Critics’ Choice Television Awards for his work on FX’s “Justified.” The film “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” in which he played a leading man for the first time in years, opposite Blythe Danner, steadily drew crowds despite its limited release this spring. (It was a co-star of that film, Mary Kay Place, who slyly called Mr. Elliott an ingénue.) He appeared in another Sundance indie, “Digging for Fire,” and in February returned to “Parks and Recreation” to play the vegan hippie Ron Dunn.But it is Mr. Elliott’s turn as a spurned lover in “Grandma,” which stars Lily Tomlin and opens Aug. 21, that has garnered him some of his warmest reviews yet: He brought a ferocious emotional rawness to the part that caught critics and even the director off-guard. Variety’s Scott Foundas raved that Mr. Elliott had, in 10 minutes on screen, created “a fuller, richer character than most actors do given two hours.” The Awards Circuit website said he should be considered for an Oscar.“What he does in that moment in some ways became the emotional core of the film,” said Paul Weitz, who wrote and directed “Grandma.” “You’re not used to the idea that this person is going to expose himself as an actor.”Indeed, Mr. Elliott’s resonant baritone growl, which still weakens the knees of female fans, and mustache, rendered in multiple shades of handlebar, have, over the decades, become synonymous with stoic, steely dudes: usually cowboys (“Tombstone,” “The Big Lebowski,” “The Golden Compass”), followed by bikers (“Roadhouse,” “Mask”), pilots (“Up in the Air”) and military men (“Hulk,” “We Were Soldiers”). That Mr. Elliott has been able to remain, as a septuagenarian, the man many guys want to be and gals want to be with is also a testament to his sustained, indisputable, silver foxiness. Commenting on a video of him speaking in January at Sundance, one fan wrote, “This man must be at least 87 percent testosterone.”In “Grandma,” Mr. Elliott said, he was able to stretch beyond the narrowed bandwidth that comes with playing an idealized type of man. This break from character, he said, brought a measure of unforeseen relief.“I came unglued a little bit, and it happened in the doing of it,” he said, or, rather, drawled. “It was a real catharsis, in a positive way.”

for the rest go here:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/movies/sam-elliott-a-leading-man-again-at-71-no-cowboy-hat-required.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=1o

Is ‘Deadwood’ Being Reborn

Is ‘Deadwood’ Being Reborn…wood?BY MOZE HALPERIN AUGUST 13, 2015 9:55 AMfrom Flavorwire
Garret Dillahunt played both Jack McCall and Francis Wolcott on Deadwood (after the first, murderous character fled the scene and was potentially executed, creator David Milch decided to bring him back in another violent — well, aren’t they all? — role). Now, it seems Dillahunt is playing a third role for Deadwood — the personal liaison to fans’ deepest fantasies. For he recently tweeted something people have been waiting on for almost ten years, since the HBO Western was cancelled:Following this Tweet, he made an extremely good point — and though it’s unclear whether or not it’s a jab at Entourage, it’s certainly more fun to assume it is:The show, which had an avid but not immense following, was originally cancelled in 2006, with a 6-episode final season offered to tie up loose ends. Milch had declined this offer originally due to its incompatibility with the temporal structure of the show (with each episode representing a day in a two-week period). Instead, he preferred to break the episodic structure entirely, and he and HBO had agreed on two two-hour specials. But hopes that this would happen faded as, over the years, actors like Ian McShane (who played the infamous Al Swearengen) declared the series completely “dead” in 2009.Deadline reports that HBO has responded to Dillahunt’s hopeful/goading tweets, saying in a statement:

In reference to Garret Dillahunt’s tweet regarding the rumored Deadwood movie, there have only been very preliminary conversations.

But preliminary conversations are, at least, a bit more hopeful than what was thought after McShane’s finalizing declaration in 2009. With “dead” TV shows being resuscitated now more than ever before, the new TV climate of false endings seems wholly ready for a Deadwood follow-up.Tags:

Forgotten Books: Baby Moll by Steve Brackeen (John Farris)

From 2008
John Farris was my generation's first literary rock star. When his novel Harrison High was published it quickly became controversial because of its honest depiction of life among American teenagers. This was 1959. America still believed that if teens weren't exactly like Ricky and David Nelson they certainly weren't like Elvis. Given the fact that many of these teens would be in the streets protesting the Viet Nam war only a few years later, you can see how badly books such as Pat Boone's Twixt twelve and Twenty misjudged them.

The paperback edition became a companion to Peyton Place, published a few years earlier, both Great Reads and both purveyors of unpopular truths.

Mr. Farris, now famous, was all of twenty-three when the book was published. But he was no beginner. Born in 1936 he could already claim the following novels in print:

* The Corpse Next Door (Graphic Books, 1956) (as John Farris)
* The Body on the Beach (Bouregy & Curl, 1957, hc) (as Steve Brackeen)
* Baby Moll (Crest, 1958, pb) (as Steve Brackeen)
* Danger in My Blood (Crest, 1958, pb) (as Steve Brackeen)

He was writing and publishing before he could legally buy beer.

Hard Case Crime has now given us a chance to look at some of Farris' early work with Baby Moll appearing this month. And fine work it is.

"Six years after quitting the Florida Mob, Peter Mallory is about to be dragged back in.

"Stalked by a vicious killer and losing his hold on power, Mallory’s old boss needs help—the kind of help only a man like Mallory can provide. But behind the walls of the fenced-in island compound he once called home, Mallory is about to find himself surrounded by beautiful women, by temptation, and by danger—and one wrong step could trigger a bloodbath."

If you have any doubt about Farris' writing skills open the book and read the first chapter. It is both lyrical and ominous, an unlikely combination in a paperback crime novel. This establishes the way Farris even then managed to take some of the familiar tropes of genre fiction and make them entirely his own.

The set-up itself is unique. Mallory called back to save the life of a boss he despises but a man he owes his life. The boss got him off the bottle.

The story, as it plays out, is also all Farris'. While parts of the first act brought Peter Rabe to mind Farris takes the gangster novel in a different direction. Given the relationship of the people on the island the book becomes almost Gothic in its entanglements and ambience.

Farris of course went on to write numerous bestsellers, a number of them staples of modern dark suspense and horror, but even here, early on, he was a cunning storyteller fascinated by the perplexity and perversity of the human soul. A good deal of his horror will live for generations to come. He is a true master.

Gravetapping: Dan J. Marlowe Stark House

Gravetapping byBen Boulden



Dan J. Marlowe.  The name alone brings an echo of the hardboiled—

“I’ll be leaving one of these days, and the day I do they’ll never forget it.”  
He wrote in the heyday of the paperback original.  His best work was published by Gold Medal, and his novels stand above most of his contemporaries as hard, uncompromising masterpieces of hardboiled crime and suspense.  
His life was as strange as his fiction: he is likely the plainest womanizer exported by Massachusetts; he gambled professionally for several years; he befriended, lived with, and co-wrote several short stories with the notorious bank robber Al Nussbaum; and late in life he developed memory loss and something called aphasia—“partial or total inability to write and understand words.”     
And all that is only the beginning.  Not to mention it was parroted from the introduction, written by Marlowe’s biographer Charles Kelly, to the new trade paperback double published by Stark House Press.  It features two of Marlowe’s best novels, which really, are two halves a single story: The Name of the Game is Death (Gold Medal 1962), and One Endless Hour(Gold Medal 1969).  
The novels tell the genesis story of Marlowe’s Earl Drake series character.  Drake is not a likable man.  He is a bank robber with a predilection for killing people.  He doesn’t kill simply to kill, but kill he does.  The Name of the Game is Death opens at the scene of a botched bank robbery with Drake shot in the escape.  He and his partner split up, and Drake finds a doctor and a dark place to hide until he is recuperated and the heat is off, which is when the story really begins.  His partner went missing with the money, and Drake is broke.  The rest of Name of the Game is Drake’s search for his partner, and the money, and One Endless Hour is the fallout.
The two novels merge into one complete and engrossing story, which is not to say either is dependent on the other; both are complete with beginning, middle, and end.  However the plot in One Endless Hour is built directly from Name of the Game.  In fact, the final chapter of Name of the Game is included, with a few adjustments as the Prologue to One Endless Hour.  


Name of the Game is the stronger of the two novels.  It includes an exposition of Drake’s childhood, explaining (without apologizing) for Drake’s seeming amoral character.  Its backstory emphasis and character development is reminiscent of John D. MacDonald, but only just.  Its prose is raw and hardboiled—
“I swear both his feet were off the ground when he fired at me.  The odds must have been sixty thousand to one, but he took me in the left upper arm.  It smashed me back against the car.  I steadied myself with a hand on the roof and put two a yard behind each other right through his belt buckle.  If they had their windows open they could have heard him across town.”
—and it is more thematically related to Jim Thompson than John D. 



 


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