Ed Gorman's Blog, page 28

The Future of Late Night? The great Mark Evanier

The Future of Late Night?     http://www.newsfromme.comPublished Monday, August 3, 2015 at 2:55 AMAs this article notes, the viewership for late night talk shows is way, way down…in some cases, on a par with daytime soap operas, which are thought to be a kind of programming on the endangered species list. So will late night talk shows go away?At most, I can imagine them eventually going away from late night. With more and more people time-shifting their viewing these days, time slots don't matter as much as they once did. We might very well wake up one morning and find that the most-watched talk show on television is broadcast at 3:00 in the afternoon and viewed at all hours according to the viewers' convenience. But to the extent a large part of the audience is still watching shows when they're transmitted, I think talk shows will endure at 11:35 because that does seem to be a kind of programming people enjoy just before bedtime.And I sure don't think talk shows will ever go away. They're cheap to produce, easy to launch and unlike soap operas, they have promotional value for their networks. They also have a little more rerun value than soaps…not a lot but some. I do think we're going to see more cases where a show that initially airs at 11:35 is rebroadcast several times the next day the way Comedy Central runs each Daily Show umpteen times. No one has ever tried to do that with soap operas.I also think — and this is not so much a prediction as something I think is likely — that Stephen Colbert is going to be a real game-changer. I think his selection to succeed Letterman is the smartest programming decision CBS could have made. The guy has every single skill you need these days to be a successful late night host: He's funny. He's likeable. He can do characters and sketches. He can improvise. He can sing. He's smart, which matters especially in an interview situation. He also understands the Internet and has shown he can generate buzz on social media.Want more? He's respected in the business — the kind of star that other stars want to appear with not just because he has an audience to receive their plugs but because they want to be seen alongside someone they think is brilliantly talented. He's also very up on current authors, current shows, current music, current movies, etc. Also, someone once said that one of the secrets of Carson's appeal was that men found him funny but whereas women didn't want to look at a Buddy Hackett or a Don Rickles, they thought Johnny was cute. I think Colbert probably has some of that, too.This is not to say I'm certain the U.S. viewing public will embrace him. I don't think Conan O'Brien (a performer I used to love) ever found the right note to strike on his Tonight Show and Colbert could have the same problem. But I still think he was the smartest gamble CBS could have made. If anyone can bring new viewership to late night TV, that's the guy.

Gravetapping:Publicity Push: Robert J. Randisi's Joe Keough Novels

Posted: 02 Aug 2015 08:00 AM PDT[Publicity Push is a new feature highlighting a book, or a series of books. It is intended to introduce something interesting and new—without the necessity of writing a specific review.]  Robert J. Randisi writes in both the Western and mystery genres. He writes, under the name J. R. Roberts, The Gunsmith adult Western series and The Rat Pack mystery series—featuring the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. in supporting roles. I previously reviewed two Rat Pack novels: Luck Be a Lady, Don’t Die and  The Way You Die Tonight .  
In 1995 Mr. Randisi introduced a series character named Joe Keough—an NYPD homicide detective—in Alone with the Dead. The series ran five books, and Joe Keough, much like his creator, moved from New York to St. Louis for books two through five. The series has received critical praise—
“This is top-notch suspense, right from the chilling prologue to the brutal conclusion.” – Publishers Weeklyon Alone with the Dead
“Another exceptionally entertaining and riveting mystery from genre stalwart Randisi.” – Booklist on East of the Arch
“Set in St Louis, this efficient, no-nonsense mystery doesn't waste a phrase or a plot turn.” – Publishers Weekly on Blood on the Arch
“Randisi also writes successful series featuring Miles Jacoby and Nick Delvecchio, but Keough--analytical, intelligent, and emotionally vulnerable--could easily become the author's most enduring, endearing character.” – Booklist on In the Shadow of the Arch
Perfect Crime Books reissued each of the Joe Keough novels in paperback and ebook editions. The ebook editions are a scant $2.99, which is well worth the high quality entertainment. The novels are below—if you click the title you will be transported to each book’s Amazon page—with the publisher’s brief description and the first paragraph from each novel. 
Alone with the Dead  . 
Publisher’s description : New York cop Joe Keough races against time to crack the case of a serial killer who leaves a flower with each victim. Battling publicity-minded bureaucrats in his own department, Keough is convinced that he has to catch not one psycho but two . . . and the copycat killer is crazier than the original.
First paragraph : Kopykat opened the album.


In the Shadow of the Arch  .
Publisher’s description : Joe Keough, a transplanted New York cop, signs on with a small St. Louis area police department just in time to track a psycho who chooses his victims from among young mothers frequenting local shopping malls. Meanwhile there is the perplexing case of a toddler who has walked into the police station leaving bloody footprints. So much for Keough's new life in the tranquil Midwest.
First paragraph : He picked summer to start, because the young mothers wore shorts and sundresses in the summer. They walked through the malls, thinking nothing of showing acres of firm, young flesh. In fact, he had one spotted right now. She was blond, in her twenties, walking through the mall holding a young child by the hand. The child was a girl, also blond, about six or seven.
Blood on the Arch  .
Publisher’s description : When an influential politician and businessman is murdered, St. Louis police detective Joe Keough takes on a high-powered case that drags a lot of local dirt into the daylight. Dodging a trumped-up sexual harassment charge, Keough races to track down a professional assassin who has more targets on his to-do list--and to find the evil mastermind behind the bloodletting.
First paragraph : The sky was filled with kites of all sizes, shapes, and colors. It was the Forest Park Festival of Kites, the first one Keough had attended since moving to St. Louis a little over nine months ago.
East of the Arch  .
Publisher’s description : A monstrous killer is piling up the bodies of pregnant women along the Mississippi, and St. Louis cop Joe Keough is saddled with a female clerk and a Mark Twain-quoting young sidekick as his "task force" as he sets out to stop the slaughter. Fighting him every step of the way are two Internal Affairs cops bent on destroying Keough's career regardless of the cost.
First paragraph : The Mississippi River annually deposits four hundred and six million tons of mud into the Gulf of Mexico, causing one famous riverboat captain to dub it “The Great Sewer.” It is then reasonable to assume that, should one dump a body into the river—a body that one did not want found—it would end up mixed in with all that mud, never to be seen again. 
Arch Angels  .
Publisher’s description : In the fifth Joe Keough mystery, Keough and his partner Harriet Connors working on a federal task force confront serial murders of children in Chicago and St. Louis. Is one killer at work or two? Keough and Connors plunge into a world of insanity and evil, and the clock is ticking. 

From James Reasoner Gil Brewer Stark House

Forgotten Books: Gun the Dame Down - Gil Brewer
This is one of the three previously unpublished novels by Gil Brewer that Stark House is reprinting in a handsome new volume, and while the dates when Brewer wrote the books are unknown, GUN THE DAME DOWN seems very much like a Fifties novel, including that hardboiled title. It's also one of the few private eye novels Brewer ever wrote.

In fact, this book hits so many of the familiar private eye notes that at times it almost reads like a parody of the genre. There's the first-person narrator who's a somewhat seedy private shamus; the rich guy who has both a cheating wife and a beautiful blond nymphomaniac daughter; the private eye's buddy on the police force; the multiple murders; scenes set in squalid fishing camps and roadhouses; the private eye getting hit on the head and knocked out and taken for a ride by colorful but brutal hired goons...Well, you get the idea.

But what makes this stew of the familiar worth reading is that Brewer turns up the heat on it and lets it boil over by playing everything absolutely straight and compressing the action into a short period of time (part of one afternoon and a night). GUN THE DAME DOWN is short, maybe 35,000 words, and it's one of the fastest books you'll ever read. There's always something happening, and private eye Bill Death (yes, that's really his name) is nearly always in danger, whether he realizes it at the time or not. There are great noirish lines like the first one, "I walked into it with my eyes open", and great characters like the beautiful dogwalker Cadillac Smith, who may or may not have some deadly secrets of her own.

Given its length and pace, I'm surprised Brewer wasn't able to sell this book, maybe to Donald Wollheim for one of the Ace Double mysteries. There are several scenes that would have made great cover material for, say, Norman Saunders. But thanks to Stark House, we get to read it anyway. I'll be getting to the other two novels in this volume, but for now, GUN THE DAME DOWN is highly recommended.

Stark House: Great New Peter Rabe Trio, super intro by Rick Ollerman

  





The End of Daniel Portby Rick Ollerman
Peter Rabe ended his six-book saga of Daniel Port with 1959’s Time Enough to Die, a novel that both Rabe himself and Donald Westlake liked. From Westlake: “The plot is tricky without being artificial, and for once Rabe has surrounded Port with strong and interesting characters. Time Enough to Die is the last of the Port novels and the first of Rabe’s final cluster of five excellent books.”...The series thus far could be summed up like this: the first book is excellent, one of Rabe’s best, and it gives us a Daniel Port that is a very special and talented man who outwits the entire mob.The second book is interesting, as Port tries to help an old friend, and counts on his reputation as being a major factor in his ability to do so. He finds out how limiting and ineffective that can actually be.In the third, what is interesting is that once again Port is forced to help an old acquaintance. Again, the fact that a third-rate crook can strongarm Dan Port is almost incredible to him, and it’s his own ego that compromises his abilities.The fourth book shows what Port is like without that ego, without the self-confidence or exaggerated sense of his own abilities needed to get him through his situation. Sure, they kick in at the end, but he’s certainly far less exceptional than he ever thought he was before.The fifth book continues Port’s loss of influence over the events of his own life. He agrees to a job, and never really gets a handle on it. Again, he gets it in the end, but the superman Dan Port of book one certainly seems like a changed man.  Finally, the sixth book, Time Enough to Die (1959 ), seems to take Daniel Port and get him as far away from the old life as possible. It’s almost as though, if he can’t be Dan Port anymore–if other people won’t let him be Dan Port anymore–he’ll just fly further afield.The book is a fitting farewell to Danny Port. After having cooperated with the government in Bring Me Another Corpse, Port felt he had been pulled back into the world of organized crime that he’d tried so hard to leave behind. Again. It disgusted him, and the last book opens with Port in the very remote Mexican village of Guanadera. He thinks he’s there to sunbathe and make love to the beautiful Maria, but once again, despite how far he’s gone to get away once and for all and for good, he gets pulled back in….
[from the Introduction to]-- 
Peter RabeDaniel Port Omnibus 2: Cut of the Whip / Bring Me Another Corpse / Time Enough to Die978-1-933586-66-3  $23.95

soon on tv? remember those george gilman "edge"

88
Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski to star in Western pilot Edge for Amazon

DexterDexter
By William Hughes Jul 30, 2015 8:12 PM
88 Comments
Shop ▾
Yvonne Strahovski, star of NBC’s Chuck, and one of the few non-lumberjack survivors of Showtime’s  Dexter , has signed on for an Amazon pilot from Iron Man 3 director Shane Black. The new series,  Edge , is a post-Civil War-set Western, based on a series of pulpy oaters by novelist George G. Gilman. Strahovski will play Beth, a member of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, an organization better known for busting heads and breaking strikes than Sherlock Holmes-esque feats of deduction. Beth is a newcomer to the town of Seward, Kansas, where the various parties at play in Edge come together for their violent confrontations. She’ll be joined by Max Martini, playing Edge himself, a vengeance-seeker who comes to repay his brother’s death upon his former comrade, Meritt Harknett (Ryan Kwanten, from True Blood). Strahovski’s been working steadily since Chuck went off the air in 2012. Besides appearing as final-season love interest Hannah on Dexter, she’s since showed up on the 24 event series Live Another Day, and currently stars on ABC’s  The Astronaut Wives Club . Martini, meanwhile, is best known for small film roles in movies like Saving Private Ryan and  Pacific Rim , where he played back-up giant robot pilot Herc Hansen.Meanwhile, there are 61 novels in Gilman’s Edge series, meaning the Amazon show won’t lack for source material in the event that it’s picked up to series. Fingers crossed that Western fans will finally get to see A Town Called Hate, The Day Democracy Died, and, of course, Montana Melodrama all make their way to the screen.

PAPERBACK PARADE #89 New Issue Out!

PAPERBACK PARADE #89 New Issue Out!By Gary Lovisi    Issue #89 of my paperback book collector's magazine, Paperback Parade , has just come out. This 100+ page FULL COLOR trade paperback issue features articles on the Aussie "Bony" crime novels of Arthur Upfield, Ace Books Nurse paperbacks, Ten of the Greatest PBO crime authors, Robin Moore, gga sleaze Hustler Paperbacks, short-run series Checkerbooks, news, letters, ads and more. Each issue is a wonderful excursion into paperbacks of all kinds and great cover art and with 100+ color covers shown of rare and collectable paperbacks. Copies are available now for $15.00 + $3 postage from Gryphon Books, PO Box 280209, Brooklyn, NY 11228, or through our website at www.gryphonbooks.com.

Kevin Burton Smith review So Nude, So Dead Ed Mccain Hard Case Crime

So Nude,So Deadby Ed McBainHard Case Crime, July 2015/$9.95ISBN:978-1-781-16606-2
From small things, baby, big things one day come. And this,the first mystery novel by Ed McBain, originally published as The Evil Sleep! byEvan Hunter (one of his many aliases) certainly bears that out.
Not thatit’s a bad book — far from it. It’s just that it lacks the rich and incisivecharacterizations and roll-with-it storytelling voodoo that McBain would becomeknown for later in his long, long career.
You can definitely see hints of it,though, and almost imagine the young tyro, itching to break into then-new (andlucrative) paperback market, doubling down on all things dark and pulpy: thesleazy nightclubs and back alleys,  the damaged and busted dreamers waiting inthe shadows; the rough-edged cheap patter; the crimes, both petty and major; thebruised and battered lives going nowhere. Already McBain/Hunter is playing withform, upending stock characters, tripping up stereotypes of race and class,futzing around with plot.
And so we get Ray Stone, a former piano hotshot(and once-upon-a-time nice, middle-class kid) now living from fix to fix.

Yep, he’s a “junkie.”
He’s got a “monkey on his back.”
He’s hooked on“H.”
As in “Horse.”
As in “Heroin.”
As in “really going nowhere.”
Insome ways this is still pretty much a typically cheesy fifties drug novel, withmost of the expected tropes and lingo present and accounted for (a formula SaraGran later milked for all its worth in Dope). Ray’s career has been pretty muchpissed away and his relationship with a token “good girl” just a memory. Evenhis long-suffering father has more or less given up on him.
All that mattersfor Ray now is that next blessed fix, and he doesn’t much care how he gets it. Apickup in a bar leads to a night of sex and drugs and waking up in a strange bedbeside the “blonde” he followed home. She’s very nude, and very dead, of course,courtesy of a bullet hole or two. Significantly, her stash of heroin (a verylarge stash of heroin) is no longer around. Ray, of course, has no idea how anyof it happened, but knows he’ll  be the prime suspect in her murder. So heflees, figuring he’ll have to track down the real killer if he wants to clearhis name.
Naturally.
But first? He needs a fix.
Things go as expected —lies are exposed, people are betrayed, a few more bodies pile up, and Ray sweatsa lot. It’s all somehow pleasantly predictable. Yet Ray proves to be moreresourceful and tougher than he  — or the reader -- may have given him creditfor, and while some of the drug paranoia and knee-jerk moralizing of the eracreeps in, the author gets kudos for humanizing Ray, making him something morethan the two-dimensional patsy that usually comes with this territory. You canalmost feel McBain pushing and picking at the boundaries, trying to find a wayto — if not topple — at least bend those expectations towards the sort of storeshe wants to tell. And of course he nails New York City to the wall.
So, likeI said, a solid first effort, hinting of bigger things to come, and yetsatisfying in its own right; a strong example of a different time. Get your pulp
on, and enjoy.

Gravetapping reviews Elimination

ELIMINATION by Ed Gorman
























Elimination is the fifth novel featuring political consultant Dev Conrad, and, contrary to popular belief (I’ve always wanted to say that) not the last. It is election season, and Dev is in rural Illinois helping Representative Jessica Bradshaw win re-election. Ms. Bradshaw is in a dead heat with her far-right (read, Tea Party) opponent Trent Dorsey. Dorsey has a billionaire uncle—
“‘Uncle Ken,’ as Dorsey always referred to him…”
—funding television attack ads and robocalls claiming Representative Bradshaw as a drug addicted-Commie-lesbian. Dev’s appearance in Jessica’s district, and home town of Danton, Illinois, is to stop the bleeding and prepare for the final debate. Jessica wins the debate, but the celebration is cut short by a badly botched assassination attempt. An attempt so poorly executed the local law thinks it may have been staged. 
Elimination is a nicely twisted mystery, and a poignant commentary on the current political environment. Dev is a wearied political strategist who often finds his clients lacking—megalomaniacs, narcissists, jerks—who just happen to, mostly, vote the right way. Dev is a light-hearted cynic (dubious but cautiously optimistic) with a dry wit and a tendency of self-deprecation—
“A lie, but what the hell. God had personally given me a daily allotment of one hundred and twenty-three lies. I was, after all, in politics.”  
The political is the center of the story providing servings of both horror and humor, and there is enough middle class angst to make anyone nervous, but it is the mystery—who shot at Jessica Bradshaw, and why—and Dev’s voice that make it pleasurable.       

Purchase a copy of Elimination at Amazon.























Elimination is the fifth novel featuring political consultant Dev Conrad, and, contrary to popular belief (I’ve always wanted to say that) not the last. It is election season, and Dev is in rural Illinois helping Representative Jessica Bradshaw win re-election. Ms. Bradshaw is in a dead heat with her far-right (read, Tea Party) opponent Trent Dorsey. Dorsey has a billionaire uncle—

“‘Uncle Ken,’ as Dorsey always referred to him…”

—funding television attack ads and robocalls claiming Representative Bradshaw as a drug addicted-Commie-lesbian. Dev’s appearance in Jessica’s district, and home town of Danton, Illinois, is to stop the bleeding and prepare for the final debate. Jessica wins the debate, but the celebration is cut short by a badly botched assassination attempt. An attempt so poorly executed the local law thinks it may have been staged.

Elimination is a nicely twisted mystery, and a poignant commentary on the current political environment. Dev is a wearied political strategist who often finds his clients lacking—megalomaniacs, narcissists, jerks—who just happen to, mostly, vote the right way. Dev is a light-hearted cynic (dubious but cautiously optimistic) with a dry wit and a tendency of self-deprecation—

“A lie, but what the hell. God had personally given me a daily allotment of one hundred and twenty-three lies. I was, after all, in politics.”

The political is the center of the story providing servings of both horror and humor, and there is enough middle class angst to make anyone nervous, but it is the mystery—who shot at Jessica Bradshaw, and why—and Dev’s voice that make it pleasurable.    

Purchase a copy of Elimination at Amazon.

Gravitating reviews Elimination

ELIMINATION by Ed Gorman
























Elimination is the fifth novel featuring political consultant Dev Conrad, and, contrary to popular belief (I’ve always wanted to say that) not the last. It is election season, and Dev is in rural Illinois helping Representative Jessica Bradshaw win re-election. Ms. Bradshaw is in a dead heat with her far-right (read, Tea Party) opponent Trent Dorsey. Dorsey has a billionaire uncle—
“‘Uncle Ken,’ as Dorsey always referred to him…”
—funding television attack ads and robocalls claiming Representative Bradshaw as a drug addicted-Commie-lesbian. Dev’s appearance in Jessica’s district, and home town of Danton, Illinois, is to stop the bleeding and prepare for the final debate. Jessica wins the debate, but the celebration is cut short by a badly botched assassination attempt. An attempt so poorly executed the local law thinks it may have been staged. 
Elimination is a nicely twisted mystery, and a poignant commentary on the current political environment. Dev is a wearied political strategist who often finds his clients lacking—megalomaniacs, narcissists, jerks—who just happen to, mostly, vote the right way. Dev is a light-hearted cynic (dubious but cautiously optimistic) with a dry wit and a tendency of self-deprecation—
“A lie, but what the hell. God had personally given me a daily allotment of one hundred and twenty-three lies. I was, after all, in politics.”  
The political is the center of the story providing servings of both horror and humor, and there is enough middle class angst to make anyone nervous, but it is the mystery—who shot at Jessica Bradshaw, and why—and Dev’s voice that make it pleasurable.       

Purchase a copy of Elimination at Amazon.























Elimination is the fifth novel featuring political consultant Dev Conrad, and, contrary to popular belief (I’ve always wanted to say that) not the last. It is election season, and Dev is in rural Illinois helping Representative Jessica Bradshaw win re-election. Ms. Bradshaw is in a dead heat with her far-right (read, Tea Party) opponent Trent Dorsey. Dorsey has a billionaire uncle—

“‘Uncle Ken,’ as Dorsey always referred to him…”

—funding television attack ads and robocalls claiming Representative Bradshaw as a drug addicted-Commie-lesbian. Dev’s appearance in Jessica’s district, and home town of Danton, Illinois, is to stop the bleeding and prepare for the final debate. Jessica wins the debate, but the celebration is cut short by a badly botched assassination attempt. An attempt so poorly executed the local law thinks it may have been staged.

Elimination is a nicely twisted mystery, and a poignant commentary on the current political environment. Dev is a wearied political strategist who often finds his clients lacking—megalomaniacs, narcissists, jerks—who just happen to, mostly, vote the right way. Dev is a light-hearted cynic (dubious but cautiously optimistic) with a dry wit and a tendency of self-deprecation—

“A lie, but what the hell. God had personally given me a daily allotment of one hundred and twenty-three lies. I was, after all, in politics.”

The political is the center of the story providing servings of both horror and humor, and there is enough middle class angst to make anyone nervous, but it is the mystery—who shot at Jessica Bradshaw, and why—and Dev’s voice that make it pleasurable.    

Purchase a copy of Elimination at Amazon.

Outstanding new issue of Black Static

Current IssueBLACK STATIC 472nd Jul, 2015 Cover:
The front and back cover art is by Richard Wagner

Fiction:On the Road with the American Dead by James Van Pelt
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Jeremy Lowe rested his arm on the open window, enjoying vibration and rushing air, solitude, and early evening Kansas cornfields. Engine and tire noise echoed from telephone poles and fence posts, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. He smiled, tapping the steering wheel in accompaniment.
He liked solitary drives from client to client, sticking to two-lane roads when he could, half his backseat and trunk filled with sales brochures and toner cartridges and copier parts. He liked his window down, even when it grew cold in the fall. He smelled little creeks that ran through shallow gulches, of miles and miles of wild sunflowers along the fields, and bar-b-cue from unseen backyards. He liked stockyards and political signs, which he’d sometimes stop to photograph. This morning he’d snapped a shot of a Second Amendment billboard that said turn in your arms: the government will take care of you printed over a picture of Indians in headdresses.
 

All the Day You'll Have Good Luck by Kate Jonez

The sun sinks down behind a bank of puffy lavender clouds that are much prettier than dusty old broke-down Frederick, Oklahoma deserves. The carnival lights come on all at once like a mad scientist flipped one of those old-timey switches. This is the part of day I like best. Not too early; not too late.
There’s something about the way the yellow, red and white lights stand out against the sky that makes the scene feel more special than it is. Like this is a moment captured for a postcard that’s going to be sold at the newsstand up at the rest stop by the highway.

Razorshins by John Connolly
illustrated by Wayne Haag 

My grandfather’s name was Tendell Tucker, and he was a hard man. He ran liquor for King Solomon during Prohibition, taking care of the road runs from Canada through Maine, and down to Boston. Mostly he answered to Dan Carroll, who was Solomon’s partner, because my grand­father preferred dealing with the Irish to working with the Jews. He never said why. He was just that kind of fella.
A lot of people don’t know it, but Dan Carroll was a cautious man, which might explain why he lived so long. During Prohibition, most of his shipments came ashore from boats at night, and were met by trucks that brought his booze to warehouses for distribution, but he liked to cover his bets when he could. He wasn’t a gambler, not like Abe Rothstein, or even Solomon himself. Carroll would calculate his outlay, and the potential profit to be realized from each shipment, then split it accordingly. So if he’d invested $30,000 in Canadian liquor, and was looking at a return of $300,000, he would work out how many cases were needed to cover his initial costs, and then run them into Boston separately, usually in specially converted Cadillacs. That way, if the coast guard came sniffing, or the feds, and a shipment was seized, he wouldn’t be out of pocket.

The Devil's Hands by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

A monster lived in Cocoa’s bathroom. It emerged when the sun went down, and she couldn’t sleep for the deep, rattled heave of its breathing. In the night she heard the heavy clomp of its pacing, and if she watched closely she saw its curved claws wrap around the edge of the half-closed bathroom door. With her eyes clamped shut she saw in her mind those same claws creep toward her body. She could never help but look, even though she knew that looking meant not sleeping for another night. In the morning, once light brought with it the courage to peep behind the door, the creature was gone.

When the Devil's Driving by Ray Cluley
illustrated by Dave Senecal 

What Lucy liked most about hanging out at the Devil’s Basin was the privacy. Nobody went there. A cluster of trees in a dip between hills hid an area of mud and swampy ground, a still pool of green-scummed water that swelled with the rain but did little else, and that was it. It wasn’t pretty. The trees were stunted crippled shapes that leaned as if to get away from the fetid water. The air had a strangely sweaty tang to its odour. Clouds of tiny biting things hovered over every rank pool and puddle spread between clumps of greasy flat grass. Nobody visited the Devil’s Basin but Lucy, and yet every­one at school had a story for how it came to be: it was the crater from a meteorite; it was the blast hole of a bomb dropped during the second world war; there was a mine that split open one day and flooded. The devil was in all of them, of course, riding the meteorite down from the heavens, calling the bomb, stamping his hooves to open rock. Whatever.

A Case Study in Natural Selection and How it Applies to Love by Eric J. Guignard
illustrated by Jim Burns 

Yesterday I saw Jamie Goodwin burst into flame.
He was just sitting on one of those cheap aluminum-back chairs we all have, eyes closed in the shade of Hester’s old RV, trying to get some relief from the heat, same as everyone else. I was checking the stock of coolers, seeing if any held even a bit of water left to siphon out, when Jamie let out a tiny gasp like he woke from a bad dream. If it was a bad dream he had, he woke to something worse, ’cause little glints of light popped and fizzed off him like the sparklers we used to wave around on Fourth of July. Smoke or steam or something else rose up, then Jamie’s eyes went cartoon-big and he turned into a fireball.

Comment:Coffinmaker's Blues by Stephen Volk
ALFRED AND JACK: RIPPING YARNS
I re-watched Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) recently. Apart from rediscovering what a truly macabre delight it is, I was struck that, though based on a book (Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Arthur La Bern) this story of London in the grip of a serial killer, with its newspaper headlines, salacious gossip and heady mix of dread and titillation, reflects another more infamous killing spree perhaps closer to home, as far as the director was concerned. “Tourists expect London to be full of ripped whores” two city gents in a pub comment sardonically while waiting for their meat pies to arrive from the buxom barmaid, and “He’s a regular Jack the Ripper!” proclaims someone early in the movie, while Jon Finch’s character is known for beating his wife and becomes a suspect when she is murdered: exactly reminiscent of Joseph Barnett, common-law husband of Ripper victim Mary Kelly.

Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker
IT KNOWS WHAT SCARES YOU
Lately, I’ve been thinking about fear.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Or this one: “I recognise terror as the finest emotion…and so I will try to terrorise the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify him/her, I will try to horrify, and if I find I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out.” I’m willing to bet that few horror aficionados will fail to recognise the oft-repeated words of Mr Lovecraft and Mr King. But how is fear achieved in horror fiction, and what purpose does it serve?

Reviews:Case Notes: Book Reviews by Peter Tennant

A THREE COURSE FEAST: THE RECENT FICTION OF RAY CLULEY
Probably Monsters, The Curse of the Zombie, and Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow, plus a substantial interview with the author
GRAY FRIAR PRESS
Terror Tales of Wales, Terror Tales of Yorkshire, Horror Uncut
TANITH LEE
Blood 20: Tales of Vampire Horror, Death of the Day, Colder Greyer Stones
NOT SO SMALL BEGINNINGS
The Spectral Book of Horror Stories

Blood Spectrum: DVD/Blu-ray Reviews by Tony Lee

The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Miss Osbourne, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, The Haunting of Radcliffe House, The Sleeping Room, Dream Home, Whiplash, Kajaki, Twisted Tales, Can't Come Out to Play, Out of the Dark, Stonehearst Asylum, It Follows, The Voices, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence, Tusk, Home Sweet Hell, Island of Death, The Cutting Room, Zombieworld, Girls Against Boys, The Loft, Digging up the Marrow, Girlhouse, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Unhallowed Ground

Where To Buy Black Static:Black Static is available in good shops in the UK and many other countries, including the USA where it can be found in Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and elsewhere. If your local store (in any country) doesn't stock it they should easily be able to order it in for you so please don't hesitate to ask them. You can also buy the magazine from a variety of online retailers, or a version for e-readers from places like Weightless Books, Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, SpaceWitch etc.
The best thing though – for you and for us – is to follow any of the Shop/Buy Now/Subscribe links on this page and take out a subscription. You'll receive issues much cheaper and faster that way, and the magazine will receive a much higher percentage of the revenue.

Please Help Spread the Word:If you enjoy Black Static please blog about it, review it, or simply recommend it to your friends. Thank you!

Coming Soon:Novelettes by Jeffrey Thomas (illustrated by Joachim Luetke) and Ralph Robert Moore (illustrated by Ben Baldwin), stories by Simon Bestwick, Stephen Hargadon and others. Black Static 48 is out in September.Buy Black Static 47Subscribe to Black Static[Permalink]