Ed Gorman's Blog, page 40

Today Brash Books is releasing nine titles—one stunning new thriller and eight highly-acclaimed, award-winning novels.

Hi Ed,IT'S PUB DAYToday Brash Books is releasing nine titles—one stunning new thriller and eight highly-acclaimed, award-winning novels. Our motto is "we publish the best crime novels in existence." These books prove it: GO DOWN HARD
by Craig Faustus Buck
NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED! Craig Faustus Buck's first novel is a wildly inventive, relentlessly entertaining thriller about an ex-cop-turned-tabloid reporter who investigates the unsolved, 20-year-old murder of a legendary rock-n-roll Goddess...bringing the cold case to a fast boil. You won't want to miss this amazing debut!
"It's a crime novel dream, delightful and quirky."
—Booklist
“Sexy, tough and comic—and often all three at once.”
—T. Jefferson Parker, New York Times bestselling author FIFTEEN MINUTES TO LIVE
by Phoef Sutton
The brilliant new thriller from the multiple Emmy-Award winning writer of CHEERS and co-author of the upcoming WICKED CHARMS with Janet Evanovich. MEMPHIS RIBS
by Gerald Duff
"A tangy tale of murder, gang warfare, crack cocaine, and barbecue."
—Entertainment Weekly SUSANNAH SCREAMING
by Carolyn Weston
The second blockbuster thriller in the series that became the hit TV show "The Streets of San Francisco." HAIL STORME
by W.L Ripley
The first novel in the blockbuster series.
"Storme is one of my all-time favorite series characters, up there with Spenser and Dave Robicheaux."
—Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of Robert B. Parker's Kickback A WITNESS ABOVE
by Andy Straka
The first novel in the Shamus Award Winning and Anthony & Agatha Award nominated series.
"A breath of fresh air in the private eye fiction."
—Jeffery Deaver BLANCHE CLEANS UP
by Barbara Neely
The third, ground-breaking Blanche White mystery by the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Award winning author. A KILLING SKY
by Andy Straka
The Anthony Award-nominated second novel in the series thatNew York Times bestselling author Rick Riordan says makes Straka "one of the rising stars of the mystery genre." YESTERDAY IS DEAD
by Jack Lynch
The seventh book in the multiple Edgar and Shamus nominated series.
"The books are damn good, featuring a hard but believable hero."
—The Thrilling Detective

Blowback by Bill Pronzini (Random House, 1977) Pulp Serenade

"Blowback" by Bill Pronzini (Random House, 1977;
Cullen Gallagher:
Blowback finds Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective struggling with his own mortality. The fourth novel in the series, this story opens with Nameless quitting cigarettes cold turkey and waiting to hear whether the legions on his lungs are cancerous or not. Looking to pass the time as quickly as possible, Nameless decides to help out an old Army buddy, Harry, who now owns several lakeside cabins in the mountains. All the male vacationers are lusting after Angela Jarrold, a married woman with a violently jealous husband. Harry knows trouble is around the corner and wants Nameless on-hand in case anything happens.
Nameless isn’t your typical Private Eye. Forget about Bogart and Hollywood. The graying detective has a paunch, no love life to speak of, and a loneliness and depression that the threat of cancer only exacerbates. He respects and cooperates with the law (at least in Blowback he does). He also doesn’t throw punches and glib, cynical remarks like there’s no tomorrow. Perhaps that is because he knows there might not be too many tomorrows left. Nameless is modest and intelligent where many PI’s are brash and macho.
A lifelong collector of pulps (just like his creator), Nameless looks to his childhood heroes and professional idols for inspiration and strength in these hard times, but instead finds more questions and self-doubt. He recognizes that he’s not a superhero like many of them were – he’s flesh and blood, he makes errors in his work, he grows older and fatter every day, and every day is one step closer to the grave. This self-awareness is one of the qualities that makes Nameless so likeable, but also modern and innovative. Pronzini respects the tradition from which his creation comes, and he shows his respect by allowing the Private Investigator to grow beyond the pages of the pulps.

Blowback also has an engaging plot with lots of original touches. The cabins are set amongst the preserved remains of California’s gold rush days of the previous century. One of the more interesting tangents in the plot involves Oriental Rug thieves, and Pronizini seamlessly integrates this history into the plot without making it seem forced. Pronzini’s clever resolution manages to be satisfying without losing any of the book’s disillusionment.
In the course of the novel, Pronzini makes a strong defense for the pulp Private Eye. As insightful as it is endearing, Blowback illuminates why we love the PI, but also why the PI is so necessary and everlasting. Pronzini said it better than I ever could, so I’ll end this review by quoting his wise words:
“Maybe I was not much of a detective, and maybe my life and my work had no real importance or significance in the scheme of things, and maybe I had patterned myself in the mold of fictional creations who were far greater in their world than I could ever be in mine – but none of that was a lie. A lie was something that hurt other people… If I was a pulp private eye, at least in spirit, then so be it. It was nothing to apologize for, nothing to feel ashamed about, because it was an honest thing to be, and a decent one.”

"Desert Island Discs": Interview with Jack Higgins

This is from Ben Boulden at Gravetapping
Posted: 28 Apr 2015 12:41 PM PDTA few years ago I stumbled across an old BBC radio interview, or more accurately conversation, with writer Harry Patterson. It is from a program called “Desert Island Discs”. The host is a smooth voiced man named Roy Plomley, and it was broadcast December 18, 1981.
The conversation meanders across several topics, including Mr. Patterson’s early life, military service, and writings. The talk is done between short music pieces selected by Mr Patterson, and it includes a nice mixture of jazz, big band, and classical. The music is enjoyable, but the interview is a real treat.
A favorite moment is when Mr Patterson discusses his fondness for a band leader named Al Bowlly. Mr Patterson wrote Bowlly, as a background character, into his 1972 novel The Savage Day. The Savage Day was Mr Patterson’s first bestseller, and afterwards he included—at least through 1981—a cameo for Al Bowlly in each of his novels for luck. A recurring character I have never noticed.
A few interesting facts. The Eagle Has Landed was translated into 43 languages, including Welsh. The Harry Patterson novels published after The Eagle Has Landed—The Valhalla Exchange, and To Catch a King specifically—were written for his American publisher Stein and Day and could not include the Jack Higgins name, likely due to contractual issues. The book he would want on a deserted island: The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.
The interview runs approximately 48 minutes, and it is  well worth a listen . Mr Patterson also appeared in a “Desert Island Discs” episode broadcast March 5, 2006; unfortunately the online stream is currently unavailable. It is also very much worth seeking out.        You are subscribed to email updates from Gravetapping
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One of my favorite Bs "Crime Wave"

From Noir of The Week
Crime Wave (1954)ED HERE: ONE OF MY FAVORITE "LITTLE" BS. THIS IS FROM NOIR OF THE WEEK.Crime Wave (1954) Noir 101. The Essentials.Crime Wave.If this little policier from Warner Bros. (filmed in 1952, released in 1954) isn’t part of your vocabulary then it needs to be; and considering it was finally released on DVD a few years ago, there’s no excuse not to see it. Crime Wave doesn’t stand out from a narrative point of view (despite a bucket of writers); the plot is routine, like a million other second features cranked out during the fifties. Although the story and characters are heavily steeped in noir tropes, it’s André De Toth’s sharp direction that sets it apart from other low budget crime pictures and demands that it be seen by any enthusiast. It can be argued that no other film noir is as influential as it is unknown.
The story is old hat: Ex-con tries to go straight. His old crew breaks out of the Q and comes knocking. When he refuses to help, they hold his fresh new wife in order to force him to take part in one last caper. All the while, the cops are along for the ride, except they don’t believe for a second that our boy is on the up and up.

The cast here is special, and although Sterling Haydenisn’t (necessarily) the protagonist, he dominates the film. This is the sort of role the movie gods had in mind when they placed Hayden in front of a camera: LAPD Detective Lieutenant Sims, bigger and tougher than any hood in the mug book. For my money this is the role of Hayden’s career — not the meatiest or the most well known, but the one in which he leaves the impression of having been the part, rather than merely having played it. (Put it another way: during the DVD commentary, author James Ellroy asserts that Hayden in Crime Wavesimply is Bud White.) There are those that prefer him in The Asphalt Jungle or The Killing, but Hayden has a distinct vibe as a cop that isn’t there when he’s playing a crook: you can cross to the other side of the street and dodge a hoodlum (and it isn’t like you won’t see Hayden coming from a mile away) but you can’t avoid the police. With the force of law behind him, the prospect of cop Hayden looking for you is scary as hell. 

for the rest go here:(scroll down)ht http://www.noiroftheweek.com/search?u...

He Had It Comin’: Western-Style Revenge JAKE HINKSON

He Had It Comin’: Western-Style RevengeJAKE HINKSON  from Criminal Element







Not only men take revenge 

The starkness of the American west has always lent itself to tales of violence and retribution. This is the essence of the Western: men and women, squinting to the sun, square off against one another over primal issues. Love. Hate. Greed. And, of course, revenge.
Dramatically speaking, vengeance can be a one-note affair. As an idea, “I hate you, and I want to kill you” is fairly straightforward. And yet revenge stories often become complicated affairs (just ask Hamlet). Revenge may seem simple, may seem like it will solve everything, but it never really does. In the Bible, God warns against revenge, saying, “Vengeance is mine.” Why does the good lord hog all the retribution for himself? Because, as it turns out, human beings tend to make a mess of revenge.As a genre, the Western is uniquely suited to the subject of revenge. After all, the settling of the west was a bloody affair involving the decimation of societies, feuds between individuals, and disputes over land and material resources. There was a lot of revenge to go around.
You can see this in some of the genre’s premier works. Here’s a primer on revenge, western style:
Ringo Kid, the role that made John WayneSTAGECOACH (1939)—Director John Ford’s epic tale of a group of strangers traveling through hostile territory made a superstar out of a B-actor from Iowa named John Wayne. As the Ringo Kid, Wayne is hunting down the gang of brothers who killed his family. In keeping with the upbeat nature of the film, Wayne’s path to revenge is relatively uncomplicated, and his shoot-out with the brothers ends on a note of triumph. The path of revenge wouldn’t always be so easy for Duke, though.RED RIVER (1948)—Howard Hawks centered his Western masterpiece around the conflicts that emerge between middle-aged rancher John Wayne and his adoptive son Montgomery Clift on a long cattle drive from Texas to Missouri. Unable to pick a winner in this battle of wills, Hawks and his collaborators trip at the finish line and deliver a silly ending. Up until the last two minutes, though, this is probably John Wayne’s best movie. Obsessed with killing the son who has (in his mind) betrayed him, Wayne plays to the dark side of his own persona. He was never scarier, and yet he never seemed more like John Wayne.
Searching for vengeance...THE SEARCHERS (1956)—Not to be outdone, John Ford took Wayne to even darker places as a racist ex-Confederate soldier searching for his niece among the wives of an Indian chief named Scar. A flawed film in some ways, it deserves credit for letting Wayne’s hate burn hot and bright out there in the desert sun. The scene of Wayne scalping his enemy is, while not graphic, still shocking. The film’s closing shot of a “triumphant” Wayne walking dejectedly off into the empty desert is a haunting image of the futility of revenge.WINCHESTER ’73 (1950)—Anthony Mann, perhaps the master of Western violence, directed Jimmy Stewart in the stark tale of a man searching for the killer of his father. The film was to be the first in a series of five hard-hitting collaborations between the director and star. Like many of their films, Winchester ’73 is deceptively simple, but it grows in power the more you see it. Viewers familiar only with Stewart’s nice guy roles will be stunned to see how nasty the guy could be in a fight. See also: Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, The Man From Laramie, and The Far Country.
Not only men take revenge.THE FURIES (1950)—The same year he first teamed with Stewart, Mann also made this fascinating revenge tale starring Barbara Stanwyck as the daughter of land baron Walter Huston. When her father hangs her lover, Stanwyck swears to take away everything from the old man. And Barbra Stanwyck don’t make no idle threats. The father-daughter standoff is unique in Westerns, but the spare imagery and savage emotions make this a nice companion piece to Winchester ’73.THE GUNFIGHTER (1950)—Gregory Peck stars as a weary gunslinger being hunted by three vengeful brothers in this meditative “inside Western” from director Henry King. Rather than the outdoor epics of Ford, Hawks, and Mann, King essentially directs this as a chamber drama, with our hero quietly awaiting the death he knows is coming. An odd film in many ways, it gives a different spin to the usual revenge narrative.THE BRAVADOS (1958)—Peck and King teamed again for an even darker, more complicated look at vengeance with this tale of a widower hunting down the men who murdered his wife. He extracts his revenge, but he doesn’t get what he expects from it. Based on the novel by pulp writer Frank O’Rourke, this underrated gem is the rare Western that openly questions the ethics of revenge.
Vengeance under a high noon sun...THE SHOOTING (1966)—Director Monte Hellman directed this bare-bones production with a simple aesthetic in mind: all you need is a camera and some actors, a landscape and a story. Filmed in the rocky deserts of Utah with a crew of seven people, it tells the story of two men (one of whom is ex-gunslinger Warren Oates) hired to ride along with a strange young woman (Millie Perkins) through uncertain country. Then the boys notice they’re being followed by a stranger in black (Jack Nicholson). One of Hellman’s best films, and a revelation if you’re only familiar with late-career self-parody Nicholson. This guy used to be insanely good in movies.RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND (1966)—Shot at the same time as The Shooting, in the same Utah location, with some of the same actors, this is another stripped down revenge tale from Monte Hellman. The films stars Nicholson as one of three men unjustly being hunted by an angry lynch mob and co-stars Harry Dean Stanton as a bandit named Blind Dick. I’ll stop writing about the movie now, since I assume you’ve already hopped over to Netflix to order it.
Clint Eastwood, king of the revenge westernUNFORGIVEN (1992)—It’s hard to narrow down the Eastwood revenge-flick of choice since Clint spent most of his career vengefully blowing people away, including twice coming back from the dead to avenge his own murder (High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider). Having said that, Eastwood seemed to sum up everything that really needed to be said about revenge in his 1992 masterpiece, Unforgiven. Dark and violent, the film is also strangely haunting, a perfect marriage of acting, writing and directing. Unforgiven’s most iconic exchange seems to encapsulate the Western’s final take on revenge: when a callow gunslinger named the Schofield kid says of two murdered cowboys, “Well, I guess they had it comin’,” Eastwood simply responds, “We all got it comin’, kid.”

The great Ken Levine What Hollywood REALLY means when it says...

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/
Reader Eric J. has a Friday Question worthy of a Saturday post.
How about list of "Bullshit Hollywood Terms" writers should be familiar with? 

Most of the real creativity in Hollywood goes into positive spin. Here are some industry expressions and what they really mean:

“Hospitalized because the actor was simply feeling dizzy due to a medication he was taking for an ear infection” – drunk

“Hiatus” – cancelled

“Good Exit Numbers” – DOA at the boxoffice

“Highly qualified” – knows somebody

“They’re still good friends” – the ugly divorce settlement is still pending.

“They’re just good friends” – they’re humping nine times a day

“I want to spend more time with my family” –fired.

“I want to explore other exciting opportunities” – fired

“Creative differences” – fired

“Parting by mutual agreement” – fired

“We think the script needs a fresh eye” – the director will now destroy your screenplay

“They have a lot of respect for each other” – they despise each other

“No comment” -- he did it

“Fielding offers” – unemployed

“Projects in development” -- unemployed
“Looking into financing” – unemployed

“Tom Cruise is interested” – I’m a really bad liar

“Proactive” – active

“She’s a perfectionist” – she’s a bitch

“Entry level position” -- slave labor

“Thanks for coming by” – no sale, I hated it.

“I really liked it” – thanks for coming by.

“I really loved it!” -- it got good coverage

“He’s in a meeting” – you’re not important enough to talk to.

“Back end” – money you’ll never see

“It just needs a little polishing” -- page one rewrite

“We’re pleased with the demographics” – the ratings are shit

“Commands a great deal of respect” – he’s a fucking nightmare

“Do you have a card?” – I want to get away from you but don’t want to appear rude.

“Zitcom” – Any half hour on the Disney Channel

“Exhaustion” – overdose

“A private matter” – a public scandal

“I’ll give it a read” – I’m throwing it away

“The studio is really behind it” – it’s going straight to DVD.

“He’s taught me so much” – I’ll never work with that asshole again

“Freelance” – unemployed

“High concept” – gimmicky

“Actor’s Director” – he can’t shoot action movies

“Director’s Director” – his movies haven’t made a nickel.

“Emmy winning writer” -- blogger
By Ken Levine at 6:00 AM 
8 comments

I am a a huge fan of hers: Ruth Rendell, Best-Selling Crime Writer, Dies At 85

Ruth Rendell, Best-Selling Crime Writer, Dies At 85
Prolific crime and mystery writer Ruth Rendell, perhaps best known for her Chief Inspector Wexford novels, died Saturday, said her publisher, Penguin Random House. She was 85.
The cause of death was not announced, but Rendell had suffered a serious stroke in January.
SShe was one of Britain's most popular crime novelists and authored dozens of books, including many written under the pen name Barbara Vine.
Rendell was a member of the House of Lords who had received wide recognition and many awards throughout her long career. Her Inspector Wexford series was made into a popular TV series, winning her many new fans and accolades.
She began her literary efforts by writing some "very bad" novels that were never published, she told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview.
After these false starts, she found that "suspense and a sort of tension and a sort of mystery was my forte."
Once she found her way, Rendell produced novels at an astonishing pace — more than 60 books over four decades, including 20 featuring Chief Inspector Wexford.
She brought to the classic mystery a psychological depth that gave readers unusual access to the emotional makeup of seemingly ordinary people capable of foul deeds.
Rendell lived in recent years in the scenic Little Venice neighborhood of London, which is known for its canals and colorful houseboats, but the pleasant surroundings did not alter her hard-eyed view of human nature.
"I don't think the world is a particularly pleasant place," said Rendell. "It is, of course, for some people. But it is a hard place, and I don't think it's being cynical to say that."
The author was appointed to the House of Lords by Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government in 1997, and she spent many afternoons attending sessions in Parliament after she had finished her morning writing sessions. Her official title was Baroness Rendell of Babergh.
Rendell was conscious of the strong feelings many of her readers had for the fictional character.
"With a series character like Wexford, people do regard him as a real person that they become extremely attached to," she says. "Women have written to me over the years and said that they were in love with him and would I kill his wife because they'd like to marry him."
Rendell told The Independent newspaper in 2014 that her personal hero was South African Bishop Desmond Tutu "because he's such a good man and he's had a hard life and always looks so happy."
The same year, she told an audience at the Cheltenham Literary Festival that she shied away from writing about child murder for fear that writing about it might in some way show criminals how to do it.
"I would rather not be involved, rather not be responsible," she said.
The same concerns kept her from writing about cruelty to animals, she said.
She would spend long hours walking in London, taking in the sights and conversations and forming impressions for her book, and also was an opera fan.
Rendell's husband, Donald Rendell, died in 1999.MORE: Ruth Rendell Ruth Rendell Dead Ruth Rendell Dies Ruth Rendell Dead Dies Ruth Rendell Death Ruth Rendell Stroke Ruth Rendell Wexford
Suggest a correction

the great Jake Hinkson Husbands from Hell Criminal Element

Noir’s Husbands from Hell JAKE HINKSON from Criminal Element

Not your happy Hollywood family.Hollywood was selling an image of domestic bliss in the forties and fifties. In this soft-lit world of virtue and goodness, the husband was often a figure of stolid manliness, an affable fellow who went to work at the same time every morning, came home at the same time every night and was always on hand to dispense wise advice to youngsters or give the wife a little good-natured ribbing about her cooking. That was the image of the American husband that Hollywood invented and sold to the world.Even most crime films did little to challenge this perfect picture. If the detectives and cops in these movies had families, those families tended toward the ideal. Noir films, however, weren’t the average crime films. They focused on the sinister side of human nature, often putting the criminal at the center of the film. And it is these movies that give us some of darkest portraits of domestic terror from the classic era.The Husband As Scumbag
Sometimes a man goes wrong. Other times a man is just a natural born asshole. Either way, you don’t want to find yourself betrothed to any of the heels who make up this category of bad noir husband. These guys aren’t violent. They aren’t insane. They’re just really terrible at being human beings.The King Heel of them all is surely Monte Beragon in Michael Curtiz’s 1945 Mildred Pierce. Played with sleazy relish by Zachary Scott, Monte marries hardworking Mildred for her money, bleeds her dry and then puts the moves on her teenage daughter. The movie starts out with somebody pumping Monte full of lead, and while by the end you have to admit the bastard had it coming somehow he still emerges as the most charismatic person in the movie. Scott was so good in this role it basically sidelined the remainder of his career and condemned him to a lifetime of playing slimy charmers.
I wonder why not.Not far behind Monte in the sleaze department is the serial philanderer Larry Ballentine in 1947’s They Won’t Believe Me. This guy beds women about as often as most men change their socks, all the while keeping a rich wife dangling on the line. Like Monte Beragon, Larry ends up paying a heavy price for his indiscretions but not before he’s ruined a few lives. This vastly underrated film—surprisingly up front about the sexual nature of its storyline—is all the more interesting because Larry Ballentine is played by none other than Robert Young, the future star of Father Knows Best. The same quality that served Young well as the perfect sitcom dad, namely his total self-assurance in his own moral compass, here makes him wholly convincing as  a man lacking all moral compunction.Perhaps the best classic film noir about adultery is Andre De Toth’s 1948 Pitfall starring Dick Powell as John Forbes, a self described “average American” who is bored with his wife and kid and house in the suburbs. When he meets sexy Lizabeth Scott, he sees a last chance for some extra-martial adventure. Unfortunately, Scott is being stalked by a whack job private eye played by Raymond Burr who decides to either ruin Powell or kill him in order to get the girl. This film takes Powell’s iconic smugness and has it implode on him. This is a hard to find movie, but it’s one of the great unsung masterpieces of film noir.  The Husband As Psycho
Whereas the scumbag husband will sleep with your sister and steal all your money, he pales in comparison to the psycho. This guy is full-tilt batshit crazy. If you marry him, bring a gun to bed.
The title says it all.Interestingly, most of noir’s great leading men took a turn at playing the nutjob husband role. No less a star than Humphrey Bogart gave it a couple of go rounds. In 1945’s Conflict, he plays Richard Mason, a man who sets out to kill his unsuspecting wife, Alexis Smith. If the film is a little goofy in its plot machinations—the big twist at the end is so logically absurd it renders the whole thing slightly ridiculous—Bogart is great as the flinty-eyed husband. He’s equally good in the equally uneven 1947 thriller The Two Mrs. Carrolls. Here he plays a painter out to kill his wife, Barbara Stanwyck. The pairing of Bogart and Stanwyck sounds enticing but the film meanders rather than thrills. Still, when he gets that twitchy I’m-gonna-kill-her look, Bogart shows he could pull off crazy with the best of them.Likewise, the über-cool Robert Mitchum is clearly having a grand time as the wife-murdering preacher in Charles Laughton’s 1955 The Night Of The Hunter. With LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles, Mitchum would seem like a bad marriage prospect. But good old Shelly Winters (an actress preternaturally gifted at playing needy women) is the widow of a bank robber with two kids to care for. What she doesn’t know is that Mitchum is a sex-hating psycho who is just after some money her husband stole. He marries her and then goes after her kids. The film is a kind of dark fairy tale with Mitchum as the Evil Stepfather.
Robert Ryan in Caught. He doesn’t *look* so bad.Noir had no greater leading man than Robert Ryan (he was recently dubbed by the Film Noir Foundation as the King of Noir), so it’s only fitting that he delivered one of the scariest psycho husband performances on record. In Max Ophüls great 1949 Caught, he plays a sadistic Howard Hughes-type millionaire who marries poor girl Barbara Bel Geddes, gets her pregnant, and then proceeds to turn her new life into a gilded prison. It’s hard to think of a darker film from the Hollywood Dream machine, with Ryan fearless in the role of the ultimate nightmare husband.Other Men Not To Marry:Lawrence Tierney in Born To Kill: Has problems with impulse control. Wants to sleep with your sister.Steve Cochran in The Chase: Head case of the I’ll-Kill-You-If-You-Ever-Leave-Me variety.Charles Korvin in The Killer That Stalked New York: Will make a criminal out of you. Will also sleep with your sister.Van Heflin in The Prowler: Will murder your husband, then marry you to get at some money. Will leave you pregnant in a shack in the desert.Orson Welles in The Stranger: Ex-Nazi and Hitler’s BFF. Will kill your dog. Will try to kill you in a church.John Payne in The Boss: Will marry you when he’s drunk one night and spend the next twenty years telling you you’re ugly. A real charmer.Dana Andrews in Fallen Angel: Marrying you for the money. Wants to sleep with the girl who works the counter at the diner.Kirk Douglas in Detective Story: Rage-aholic. Has issues with the whole “You mean you’re not a virgin?” thing.

from Ken Levine how to make your parents proud

from Ken Levine how to make your parents proud

Girls, don't let this happen to YOU!
News story:Young woman angry because she walked up to guy at a rock concert and asked him if he was in the band. He said hell yeah. So according to her she "did him" and then found out he was just a bass player. She told the reporter later on: "I'f I'm going to sleep with someone they'd better be important.I mean I could find someone here in town as important as a bass player.". 
Ken Levine:Oh, the humanity!  The heartbreak!  Imagine if she had slept with a roadie.  Or worse -- a  writer. 
Let this be a cautionary tale.  Never sleep with a celebrity until you've determined he's important enough.   Now this poor girl has to go through life with the shame of knowing she only slept with a bass player.    Let the years of therapy begin.  
My favorite related concerns a certain character from the '60s and '70s.  He was in a series of commercials for a gasoline company.   At the same time he was acting in dinner theater.  One night he goes to bed with one of the ushers.  They're in the throes of passion and she yells out, "I'm fucking Mr. Dirt!"  
You gotta love show business! 

Strip for Murder Max Allan Collins Gravetapping

THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2015STRIP FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins



















From Ben Boulden GravetappingBen is New Improved's Co-ReviewerNo comments:

It is 1953, and comic strips are big business. Jack Starr, “vice president, chief troubleshooter and occasional bottle washer” for Starr Newspaper Syndication Company is on the job. Starr specializes in comic strips, and its biggest player is Sam Fizer’s Mugs O’Malley, but Starr is in negotiations to pick up a new strip from another big hitter named Hal Rapp, which could be a problem since Fizer and Rapp despise each other.
Things heat up when Fizer is found dead in his Waldorf-Astoria residential suite. It is staged as a suicide, and poorly at that; Fizer is right handed, but the gun is in his left, and the suicide note is a comics-style inked affair (making handwriting analysis useless). The obvious suspect is Rapp, but Jack is skeptical and with his “troubleshooter” fedora firmly in place, his private eye license in his back pocket, he starts his own investigation.
Strip for Murder is cleverly plotted, humorous—tongue firmly in cheek from beginning to end—whodunit with a twist that needs reading for believing. It is heavy on dialogue, in a good way, and the descriptions of 1950’s New York, Broadway in particular, and the syndication business are great fun. The prose is spirited in a smooth and whimsical manner—
“Maybe ten seconds later, Maggie stuck her head in; more than her head, the uppermost, most exposed part of her. Very distracting neckline, that red gown.”
Even more distracting, Maggie is his widowed step-mother, and President of Starr Syndicates. His boss, you could say. The characters—from Maggie to Hal Rapp to a Police Captain named Chandler—are charmingly eccentric and make a compelling juxtaposition to Jack’s hardboiled tendencies. A relationship that generates more humor than black eyes.       
Strip for Murder is the second in Max Allan Collins’ comic book trilogy; subsequent to A Killing in Comics (2007), and prior to Seduction of the Innocent (2014). It was originally published in 2008, and Dover Mystery Classics has brought it back as a very nice trade paperback with all the trimmings—fully, and very nicely, illustrated by Terry Beatty.Posted by Ben Boulden at 4:39 PM  [image error]
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