Ed Gorman's Blog, page 262

Forgotten Books: The Man With The Iron-On Badge Lee Goldberg

The Man With The Iron-On Badge isn't Forgotten, it's just been neglected because so far the only edition has been a small hardcover printing with a large print version coming soon after. This is a book that deserves a trade paperback. With all the small presses so active I'm surprised that it isn't available in a new edition.

Iron-On is a book that will keep you laughing and smiling all the way through. If you have any affection for the private eye novel, this book should be required reading b...

TV Stuff

Last week I read at least a dozen articles touting this new TV season. Community got the most kudos, Glee running a distant second.

As I always say, and mean, maybe it's me. All I'm doing is giving you my reactions. Believe it or not, it's possible I'm full of beans.

I gave up on Community halfway through. It wasn't bad but it didn't have enough going to keep me interested. Joe McHale is good but his constant choice of responses is the smirk and that can get deadly; the Chevy Chase character ...

I hope Elmore Leonard sees this

Ed here: Salon has been running a series of articles about various injustices in our system of criminal justices. This one staggered me. This is straight out of an Elmore Leonard novel.


Ardor in the court, Part 3

A Texas court affirms the right of a judge and a prosecutor who slept together to condemn a man to death
By Alan Berlow

Editor's note: Read Part 1 and Part 2 of "Ardor in the Court."

Sep. 21, 2009 |

If anyone had any doubt that the Texas justice system operates in a parallel universe, look...

Casino

I watched Casino for the third or fourth time last night. This is remarkable for me because I'm not much for mob movies or mob fiction. As an audience member I usually want to see everybody in the movie die in the slowest and most savage way possible. The romance of the mob--of whatever configuration or ethnic persuasion--misses me. To me they're parasites and thugs and as such not interesting as human beings, even the new kind with Harvard MBAs.

But Casino and The Cooler cut through my prej...

Walter Hill Interview

Think Walter Hill and you likely think of his enormous hit 48 Hours or Brewster's Millions or Streets of Fire. Crowd pleasers for sure. But for me his more interesting work can be found in the more personal films he's done in the action genres. Southern Comfort, The Driver and Hard Times re a few of them. He's not always successful. I remember how disappointed I was sitting through Johnny Handsome. Most writers have had projects like that, where you just can't make the thing work the way y...

Alleys; Wolf Moon

I was writing a scene set in an alley of the kind most of us over fifty are probably familiar with when I realized that there are millions of people who probably won't have any real feel for what I'm describing. Most of the alleys I played in had weathered garages and dirt surfaces and an infinite number of places perfect for playing cowboys and Indians or war or even, if your mind was particularly inventive that day, buccaneers. Alleys were the preferred meeting place for my group of friend...

New Books Carolyn Hart-MERRY, MERRY GHOST

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MERRY, MERRY GHOST by Carolyn Hart

The late Bailey Ruth Raeburn from Adelaide, OK, has added a sparkle to my life. I enjoy lively, energetic Annie Darling in my Death on Demand series and acerbic, assertive retired reporter Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins in my Henrie O series, but now-you-see-her, now-you...

Story of Women - Isabelle Huppert

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Author: dbdumonteil From IMDB-Story of Women

"This is a true story and the heroine is not unlike Louis Malle's hero "Lacombe Lucien". They are too coarse, too immature to realize what they are doing.. (In the Story Of Women) Chabrol's heroine only wants to "help" her neighbors before she realizes she can earn a lot of dough with abortion.Chabrol watches his character as an entomologist, as she makes her way through those troubled times:the world has gone mad,and anyway is abortion worse than w...

The only person I didn't hear from was Serena Williams

I always forget that people are going to get mad when I talk politics. I get mad when I read the political sentiments of other people. Why shouldn't people get mad at me?

On line I was criticised by the right who seem to think I'm a big Obama fan. Off line I was criticised by the left who thought I was dumping on Obama.

1. I'm beginning to believe that Obama may have been a better candidate than a president. Read Frank Rich in the NY Times today. He seems to be wondering the same thing. That ...

Political-enter at your own risk

A lot of us who write westerns read a fair share of history about our country as it pushed west. I like to look through old journals in used bookstores because they often contain material you don't find in books. Today I was at Half Price and I found a Journal of Popular Culture from 76 that had a number of interesting articles in it. By far the most striking was "Racial Reservations: Indian and Blacks in American Magazines, 1865-1900" by Professor Charles R. Wilson. The piece introduced me t...