Ed Gorman's Blog, page 43

From Libby Hellman

Hi, everyone. I have some fun things for you this time: not one, but two stories each under a dollar, and I could use your help figuring out a new cover for one of my books... 
Find out what happens next here .















Little Molly Messenger is kidnapped on a sunny June morning. Three days later she’s returned, apparently unharmed. A few days later, the brakes go out on Molly’s mother’s car.An accident? Maybe. Except that it turns out that Chris, Molly’s mother, is the IT manager at a large Chicago bank and may have misappropriated three million dollars. Molly’s father hires PI Georgia Davis to follow the money and investigate Chris’s death.Doubleback reunites PI Georgia Davis (Easy Innocence) with video producer Ellie Foreman (An Eye For Murder, A Picture Of Guilt, An Image Of Death, A Shot To Die For). The two women track leads from Northern Wisconsin to an Arizona border town, where illegal immigrants, muggled drugs, and an independent contractor come into play.

















Imagine if your spouse 
got caught n a Ponzi scheme. 
This story is about just that: two women whose husbands are involved in a fraudulent investment operation. The couples vacation at a posh ski resort, where the women take matters into 
their own hands. 
Publishers Weekly called it “a fine story…”
This story was originally published in The Writes of Spring Anthology, Nodin Press, 2012, edited by Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze.  
Discover how the story unfolds at  Amazon ,   B&N ,  iBooks , and Kobo.

Imagine if your spouse got caught in a Ponzi scheme. 
This story is about just that: two women whose husbands are involved in a fraudulent investment operation. The couples vacation at a posh ski resort, where the women take matters into their own hands. 
Publishers Weekly called it “a fine story…”
This story was originally published in the Writes of Spring Anthology, Nodin Press, 2012, edited by Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze.  
Discover how the story unfolds at  Amazon ,  B&N ,  iBooks , and Kobo.
























Help a Graphically-Challenged Author Out?theMost of you already have the complimentary copy of An Image of Death I sent out a month or so ago. (If not, let me know, and I'll get it to you.)

Well... we now realize the cover looks too sweet and not enough like the thriller crime novel it is.

Have any suggestions for me? I'd love to hear them!  
Just email me back, or join the conversation on my Facebook video  here .   Finally, if you are Bouchercon-bound this fall, two of my works are eligible to be nominated for an Anthony Award (the deadline for nominations is in 2 weeks): 
--  Nobody's Child is eligible for Best Paperback Original 
-- "No Good Deed," about the unlikely friendship between a former KKK member and a young black boy in prison, is eligible for Best Short Story. It was published in the Fiction River Special Crime Edition, WGM       Publishing. If you'd like to read the story, let me know. I'll get it to you. 

Happy reading!

Warmly,

Libby 

New Books Memphis Ribs by Gerald Duff

GERALD DUFFGerald Duff is a winner of the Cohen Award for Fiction, the Philosophical Society of Texas Literary Award, and the Silver Medal for Fiction from the Independent Publishers Association.Memphis Ribs is his classic tale of deception, crime, and barbecue, earning him comparison to Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, Calvin Trillin, Flannery O’Connor, and even William Faulkner.


BRASH BOOKS




Booze, blues, and barbecue are the staples of my novel MEMPHIS RIBS. The hero of my story is a failed cotton farmer turned homicide detective in Memphis, J. W. Ragsdale, who gets his fill of all three of these main ingredients of life in the Bluff City as he pursues the killers of a drunken business traveler, the members of a local gang, and the patriarch of an old society family. In his efforts to get to the bottom of the killings, J.W. uncovers a conspiracy headed by a unusual crime syndicate peddling bad barbecue during the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest held on the banks of the Mississippi River.J.W. , recently divorced and long cut off from his landed Delta heritage, is a menthol-smoking, cat fishing frequenter of juke joints like the Vapors  and the  Owl Bar. In between bad times domestically and personally, J.W. works his way along with his partner Tyrone Walker through the depths and heights of Memphis society on the trail of the sinners against barbecue and the killers of tourists and natives of the big town on the big river. One reviewer called MEMPHIS RIBS so entertaining and suspenseful that readers could wonder if the author was once part of the action. With one hand on my heart and the other on a plate of ribs, I swear I’m just a gentle man telling a sweet story about a rough couple of months in a quaint location in Tennessee. Please believe me. Would I lie? Would J. W. Ragsdale lead you wrong? Not!           

An interview with Dean Wesley Smith- Smith's Monthly

Would you give us an overview of Smith's Monthly?Smith’s Monthly is my magazine, done in both electronic and trade paper editions. It has about 65,000 words of fiction in it per month which usually consists of about four or five short stories, a novel serial, and a full novel. I write it all. No other writer has ever been in the magazine.

The idea came from magazines like Ellery Queen and Asimov’s and other old digest magazines such as Zane Gray’s Western Magazine. But I wondered what would happen if I wrote everything in every issue. And when I mentioned that to Kris, she said “Sure, why not?”

I’m not sure if she actually heard my question. (grin)

Issue #17 is now out after a little delay, I’m finishing up #18 which will ship in a week, and will have #19 to the copyeditor by next week.  That’s the cut and dry of it, but the fun for me is writing the novel in varied genres every month. And then I do the cover and layout of the paper copy myself, which is great fun because I get to do the covers of the short stories and so on.

Smith’s monthly is just me having fun in this new world, but it has numbers of subscribers and the issues sell in both paper and electronic editions, and I publish the novels two or three months after each issue comes out as stand alone books. And a lot of the short stories are also out as stand-alone stories.

In the first 12 issues I had 14 novels (two were serial novels), one nonfiction golf book, a bunch of poems, and 51 short stories.


2. For some reason I don't associate genre writers with golf. But there you are.

Back in what seems like a distant past, meaning early 1970s before I started writing, I was a PGA Golf professional for a number of years. Yeah, I know, crazy, huh? And I did the golf nonfiction book, a humor book about getting to the first tee of any round of golf, plus three of my real-life stories from my days in golf.  And even stranger, starting in Smith’s Monthly #18 is a serial golf novel called “Easy Shot.”  It’s a thriller I published under a pen name a bunch of years back, and since the publisher died the week it came out, I figured I’d give it a new life.

And just last week I wrote a science fiction golf story for an editor at Baen Books.



3. Not only a golfer but also a poet.

Well, that was also in another life, although I still write a poem or two at times. Back when I started writing, I started with poems and sold a bunch of them. Thirty or more to literary magazines. I stopped mailing them out when my focus turned to fiction, but I still write them and at times, not every issue, but at times, there are my poems.

Again, the magazine is all mine, so I just get to play with what I want. I was nominated for a Hugo four times for my editing at Pulphouse, but when putting these issues together, I just play.

4. The Cold Poker Gang concept is cool. How did it evolve?

The Cold Poker Gang was an idea I had when writing a thriller a bunch of years back under a pen name. And as I got into the thriller, I realized having a bunch of retired detectives investigating cold cases didn’t fit in the thriller plot at all, so I cut it out. But the idea always sort of hung around.

Issue #18 will have the third novel with the gang called “Calling Dead.”  It’s got a pretty high body count. (grin) But cold cases often tend to be serial killers.  The secondary characters in this, Annie and Doc and Fleet, are the main characters in a political poker thriller I published last year called “Dead Money.” I’ve done a couple short stories with those two, but at the moment they are hanging around as support characters for the Cold Poker Gang.

Eventually I’ll write another thriller in the Dead Money world and the Cold Poker Gang will be support characters. I sure love the freedom of this new world.

5. This is the first issue I've seen. The stories are excellent. But a monthly pace?

Actually, the only time the monthly pace became a problem so far is when WMG Publishing shut down for December for the holidays. That got me off pace and I’m just now getting back on because I was sick part of March.  And compared to so many writers in the past that I admire, a novel or more per month isn’t a hard pace to keep up. And I tend to write enough short fiction each month, or have stories that need to be brought back that it will be years before those are an issue.

I’m not known for writing mystery novels or thrillers, since all that I wrote for traditional publishers were either ghost novels or secret pen names. But now with Smith’s Monthly I’m having a blast writing new mystery novels under my own name.


6. Where do you think Smith's Monthly will be a year from now? Any plans you care to discuss?

I see Smith’s Monthly a year from now hitting issue 30 or so and just continuing onward. Unless I get sick or fall over dead, I sure see no reason to slow this down. I’m having far, far too much fun. I wrote 18 novels in 16 months and a bunch of nonfiction books and am having a blast.

This new world of publishing, and WMG Publishing, allows me to do this crazy thing. And the subscribers support it, and so do my fans on my blog and on Patreon.  And then when the novels come out as stand alone novels, they sell as well. I’m making more money now and having more fun than I ever did in thirty-plus years and hundreds of novels in traditional publishing.

And in no world of traditional publishing did anyone ever think of having one writer fill every month, every story, of a 65,000 word magazine. At least not since Dent in the pulp era.  So I’m sure having fun.

A very good and talented man passes Ron Scheer

Sunday, April 12, 2015Ron Scheer
From Lynda Scheer:
Ron left us early yesterday morning. A blessing to know that he has flown high--like the hawk Anne recently watched in the desert, wheeling and turning on the wind--away from pain and struggle. My heart is shattered. He was the love of my life, but he meant so much to so many people. It is comforting to know my loss is shared with all of you who knew and loved him. Anne and Jeremy are on their way here, to the desert and the enormous sky Ron loved and took so many wonderful photos of, and I look forward to a little time with them, remembering.Thanks to you all for your kind messages.[For years Ron has supported the Behrhorst Clinic in Guatemala, where he spent a college summer volunteering. Should you wish to make a donation, the foundation's website is  aldeaguatemala.org/ ]
I'm devastated doesn't even begin to describe my feelings and I'm sure many of you are experiencing the same loss. I will have more thoughts to share on this extraordinary life very soon. Lynda has asked me to write a final blog post for Buddies in the Saddle which is a deep honor. Until then I am going to walk to the top of this mountain with my daughter, where we live, and look over country I know Ron would appreciate. Rolling land with trees and horses and a stream nearby. And I am going to think about that cowboy that has left us. Rest in peace, Ron. 

Sometime in 1992, probably late in the year, I devoured t...

Sometime in 1992, probably late in the year, I devoured the first three novels in William Shatner’s Tek series: TekWar (1989), TekLords (1991), and TekLab(1991). At the time, as a teenager, I was certain they were as original and exciting as anything ever published. As I’ve aged, become jaded by life, my opinion has changed a smidge; there probably are stories more original, more exciting. And, even worse, the Tek books will never be canonized, but—even after these truths were revealed—I still enjoy them. They are a sweetly inviting piece of candy—all sugary and sweet with no aftertaste, or calories. Maybe a shadow of guilt, literati induced guilt, but thankfully it passes with the first page.   
The first novel, TekWar, was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in hardcover. Ace reissued it as a mass market in 1990. Amazingly, I have read it three times. It introduces former police detective Jake Cardigan who was convicted of corruption. He was sentenced to fifteen years in the “Freezer,” which is a cryogenic suspended animation penitentiary. The world continues, but the convict sleeps it away. Jake is given parole after four years when an influential private detective agency, Cosmos, successfully lobbies for his release.
Cosmos wants Jake for his contacts in Mexico. A man named Leon Kittridge, along with his daughter Beth, have disappeared in Chihuahua where their skycar reportedly crashed. Professor Kittridge is developing a device that easily, and remotely, destroys tek; an illegal virtual reality device that creates the illusion of a perfect life. Cosmos has sent three operatives to Chihuahua in pursuit of the Kittridges and none have returned.
TekWar is a humorous, almost tongue-in-cheek, futuristic private eye novel. The setting is 22nd century, but the science fiction takes a backseat to the hardboiled detective story. There are robots, flying cars, and, of course, tek, but the “science” is decoration. Very good decoration and the novel is better for it, but still decoration. Change out tek for smack and flying cars for Chevys and it is a 20th century piece.
The humor is built in to the science fiction element of the story, which gives it the feeling of, “don’t take this too seriously.” In an early passage the warden, through his robot proxy, wishes Jake well and of his certainty Jake learned his lesson and will never return to the Freezer—
“Or, for that matter, to any of the fifty-three other prisons and correctional facilities in the State of Southern California…”
A platinum haired silver painted receptionist, going through life changes, confesses to Jake she has recently been mistaken for an android—
“‘…so far three clients have confused me with servomechs and a new ‘bot on the custodial staff tried to dust and polish me.’”
The action and humor are the novels strong points, and overshadow its weaknesses—there isn’t much doubt how the novel will end, and Jake Cardigan’s motive is exposed by his annoying habit of talking to himself. A habit, in my memory, that is reduced in the later series novels.  

the great jake hinkson one of my favorite Bs When Strangers Marry

The Movies of 1944: When Strangers MarryJAKE HINKSON   from Criminal Element
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of film noir’s landmark year, we’re looking at the six key noirs of 1944: Double Indemnity , Laura , Murder My Sweet , Phantom Lady , The Woman In the Window, and When Strangers Marry. Earlier this week we looked at Fritz Lang’s The Woman In the Window . Today we look at William Castle’s When Strangers Marry.While many scholars peg Double Indemnity as the first fully formed noir in terms of both style and theme, you can see the genre’s style and ethos taking shape in earlier films like Stranger On The Third Floor (1940), I Wake Up Screaming (1941) and Street Of Chance (1942). By 1944 you can see all of this coming together in the low-budget mystery-romance When Strangers Marry. The film is an interesting specimen of the emerging noir style, but it is of particular importance because it launched the criminal career of noir’s greatest leading man.The film stars a young Kim Hunter, in her first starring role, as a naïve newlywed named Millie Baxter. She’s newly arrived in New York City looking for her husband, a traveling salesman named Paul Baxter. This Baxter is a heck of a guy. He swept Millie off her feet, married her, and then beat it out of town. Now he’s sent for her, but when she arrives at the hotel, Baxter is nowhere around. He seems to be hiding out, and the film is not very subtle in suggesting that Baxter might have something to do with a recent murder in Philadelphia. Did Millie’s new husband—who is essentially a stranger to her—strangle another man with silk stockings in a hotel room and then make off with ten thousand dollars? I’ll leave that for the film to reveal, though I will say that it does not explore the kinky undertones implicit in the question.
Instead, the film directs us to the relationship between Millie and an old boyfriend, another traveling salesman named Fred Graham. (Millie is apparently a traveling salesman groupie.) Fred is supportive and understanding and clearly still in love with Millie. He’s also played by a young Robert Mitchum. Will he be the hero of the film? Let’s put it this way, in a movie like this, he’s either the hero or the villain waiting to reveal himself. There is really no other option.When Strangers Marry was written by Phillip Yordan—though it’s more correct to say that it was rewritten by Yordan since his usual practice was to farm out projects to underlings. On this film, he and director Castle came up with the story, then Yordan had a first time screenwriter named Dennis J. Cooper take a crack at it, at which point Yordan came in a did a rewrite. The results are not a high point in the history of noir screenwriting. The plot careens around like a drunk driver, while the dialog sometimes feels clunky and expository. And Millie, naïve to a fault, makes for a particularly hapless leading lady.Still, the noir ethos is already in place here. A mood of unease hovers over everything, and the plot and all the characters are driven by a single unifying principal: no one can really know anyone else. Moreover, the style of the film fits this theme, an early demonstration of noir moodiness. Shadows and low angle shots predominate, with human figures cut out of blackness by sheer white light. In the film’s best sequence, Millie stands in a cheap hotel room late at night while the flashing lights of the nightclub across the street plunge her in and out of darkness.The film was directed by William Castle, an often underestimated director who did his share of noir work before becoming famous later on as a producer/director of cheesy horror movies marketed with outrageous gimmicks. Perhaps in part to rectify the undervaluing of Castle’s work some critics have rather overpraised When Strangers Marry. (Film historian Don Miller called it the finest B-movie ever made.) While Castle’s accomplishment is impressive—all the more impressive when you consider that the movie was made for fifty grand over the course of a single week—it is not a masterpiece. It lacks the fierce fire in the belly of something like 1945’s low budget Detour. So while When Strangers Marry is a fun movie, and a notable addition to the body of noir, it doesn’t linger in the imagination in the manner of the best films.It is, however, a must for fans of Robert Mitchum—and who the hell isn’t a fan of Mitchum? Twenty-seven years old and still a relative newcomer to films (he was mostly shooting cheapie Westerns before this film), he strides through this movie like he was born inside a film noir. It’s not the best performance he ever gave, but one is struck by just how much he already seems like…well, Robert Mitchum. If this movie did nothing but launch the career of the King of Noir, it would be worth watching.
The critical reception of When Strangers Marry was excellent considering that the film had been distributed by the Poverty Row studio of Monogram. An early admirer of the movie was the writer/director/star of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles. Writing in his newspaper column Orson Welles’s Almanac, Welles declared the film better directed than either Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (Paramount) or Otto Preminger’s Laura (20th Century Fox). While that is a debatable assertion, Welles was correct to align the three films which—along with Robert Siodmak’s Phantom Lady (Universal), Fritz Lang’s The Woman in The Window (RKO) and Edward Dmytryk’s Murder My Sweet (RKO)—represented the full flowering of film noir over the course of 1944. Of the six films, Castle’s was the smallest in budget and scope, but this only goes to show the way the noir ethos permeated the business from the top (Paramount, Universal) to the middle (Fox, RKO) to the bottom (Monogram).By the end of 1944, film noir was in full bloom. In the years to come, many of the directors, writers, actors, cinematographers, and producers who made Double Indemnity, Laura, Murder My Sweet, Phantom Lady, The Woman In the Window, and When Strangers Marry would go on to create more masterpieces (or near masterpieces) of the genre. They would be joined by virtually all of Hollywood at one time or another, from the pinnacle of the power structure (MGM, the world’s most powerful studio, produced gems like 1949’s Act of Violence and 1950’s The Asphalt Jungle) to Poverty Row studios that shot movies for pennies (lowly PRC produced 1945’s Detour, perhaps the purest distillation of the noir ethos ever made). 1944 was just a harbinger of the dark—and darkly wonderful—movies still to come.

Longstreet: The Way of the Intercepting Fist

                                           James Fransicus  and Bruce Lee Longstreet: The Way of the Intercepting Fist from the great blog  http://www.classicfilmtvcafe.com/
In the 1971 made-for-TV movie Longstreet, James Franciscus played a insurance investigator who lost his wife and sight during an explosion intended to kill him. Determined to find the criminals responsible, Mike Longstreet has to learn first how to live with his blindness. He gets ample support from his assistant Nikki (Martine Beswick), best friend Duke (Bradford Dillman), and Pax, a white German Shepherd that becomes his seeing-eye dog.

Marilyn Mason and Franciscus.As was often ABC's practice, the movie doubled as a pilot for a prospective TV show. The regular series debuted that fall with Marilyn Mason replacing Martine Beswick and Peter Mark Richman taking over as Duke. Set in New Orleans, the premise had Longstreet investigating various cases, often for the Great Pacific Insurance Company (where Duke worked). Stirling Silliphant created the series, which was loosely inspired by a series of novels by Baynard Kendrick about a blind private detective.
A prolific script writer, Silliphant's best television work was on Route 66, which he co-created with Herbert B. Leonard. Silliphant's teleplays on that show featured some of the elegant (but far from realistic) prose ever written for the small screen. For the most part, Longstreet seems far too straightforward for a Silliphant series, but some episodes were exceptions and the best example is the first one: "The Way of the Intercepting Fist."

James Franciscus and Bruce Lee.It opens with Longstreet being assaulted in an alleyway by a crooked longshoreman and his cronies. A young Asian man named Li Tsung (Bruce Lee) fends off the attackers with an impressive display of martial arts. Later, Longstreet seeks out Li, an antiques dealer, and asks to become his martial arts student. Initially, Li refuses by saying: "The usefulness of a cup is its emptiness." However, he eventually relents and not only teaches Longstreet how to defend himself, but also about himself. The episode ends with Longstreet confronting and defeating the longshoreman. That act, we're led to believe, will end the villain's influence and lead the police to the businessman behind a large-scale hijacking scheme.

As with many of Silliphant's Route 66 episodes, the plot is secondary to the characters. It affords Lee the opportunity to describe jeet kune do, his "system" of martial arts and philosophy. In 1973's Enter the Dragon, Lee describes it succinctly as "the art of fighting without fighting." Still, it's this episode of Longstreet that includes perhaps Lee's best analogy: "Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now, if you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. Put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow, or creep or drip or crash. Be water, my friend."

Lee in Marlowe (1969).If there is much of Bruce Lee in "The Way of the Intercepting Fist," that's no surprise as he worked on the script with Silliphant. The two had becomne friends after Silliphant sought out Lee in the late 1960s to learn martial arts. In fact, it was Silliphant who had Lee hired as fight choreographer and henchman in 1969's Marlowe. (Lee isn't in much of the movie, but has a most memorable encounter with James Garner.)
Lee earned strong reviews for his guest appearance on Longstreet and reprised his role in three more episodes. Yet, despite a likable cast and interesting setting (though the show was not shot on location like Route 66), Longstreet only lasted one season. Television audiences just didn't seem that interested in insurance investigators. (Despite that, George Peppard played one the following year in Banacek, though it only lasted for two seasons totaling 17 episodes.)
Meanwhile, Bruce Lee--who had previously rejected offers to make Asian "kung fu" movies--signed a contract with Raymond Chow to make two films. The first one, The Big Boss (aka Fists of Fury), was released the same year as his Longstreet appearances. It became an unexpected worldwide smash and made Bruce Lee an international star.
James Franciscus starred in two subsequent short-lived TV series: Doc Elliot (1973-74) and Hunter (1976-77). Interestingly, he later played a crooked politician in Good Guys Wear Black (1978), one of Chuck Norris' first martial arts films. Franciscus worked steadily in film and television until his death in 1991 at age 57 due to emphysema.


Posted by Rick29 at 8:35 PM 5 comments 

Book 1 with Sheriff Dan Rhodes: Too Late to Die by Bill Crider

Book 1 with Sheriff Dan Rhodes: Too Late to Die by Bill CriderEDWARD A. GRAINGER Many readers develop a deep affinity for a continuing detective or mystery series beyond well-sculpted plots, fast action, and wisecracks, that is, if they are going to stick with it for the long read. I know I do. An emotional hook, so to speak, that I can identify with in the main and supporting characters. In The Crime of Our Lives, Lawrence Block says: “We make our way through a series of books because we want to enjoy the company of a favorite character in a new situation.” Examples for me include Robert B. Parker’sSpenser, who epitomizes that code of honor he wears on his sleeve, in part, by his devotion to Susan and Hawk. With Ross Macdonald’s world-weary protagonist Lew Archer, I’m there for his sermonizing against the ills of humanity and the solutions he offers. Heck, even a career criminal likeRichard Stark’s Parker gets my thumbs-up for his outsider stance and honorable dedication to the job at hand. My warmth for Bill Crider’sSheriff Dan Rhodes is quite simple: he is a good man.Sheriff Dan Rhodes is the kind of man I want for a neighbor and best friend. He’s a doting father to his daughter, Kathy and in this first novel, Too Late to Die, he’s still a husband grieving his late wife. As sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas, (near eight thousand residents, give or take), he keeps plugging forward to carry out the job he was hired to do. And, like in most municipalities, the community is rife with shortsighted bureaucrats that Sheriff Rhodes must wade through, politely cutting down to size if need be, just to persevere.He doesn’t take himself too seriously and lets the air out of other civil servants who think they are high and mighty. Like Archer and Spenser, Rhodes is a continuing rush of fresh air in a genre that can copy itself into almost-irrelevance.In Too Late to Die, we find Rhodes slightly out of step with the times when it comes to technology, but this is not out of ignorance:

Rhodes didn't mind taking the time, but he wasn't convinced that anything he found would be of help. He was a man who believed in his instincts. He liked to talk to people, listen to their stories, size them up. If they had anything to hide, he could usually find it out. But physical evidence didn't hurt anything when it was available.

And he will have to use all those instincts and more when a local, Jeanne Clinton, is murdered. The case couldn’t come at a worse time, professionally, for Rhodes who is up for re-election in less than a month. His opponent, Ralph Claymore, is a good-looking, political showboating bore, who is also merciless behind the scenes and won’t stop politicizing Jeanne’s death. Jeanne’s husband, Elmer, immediately clams up when Rhodes begins probing about the lady’s regular nighttime visitors, who came by their home while Elmer was working the night shift. From this straightforward setup, Crider adds textured layers that, before long, implicate various residents, including his political opponent. It also leads Rhodes into grave danger. As he is interviewing one potential suspect fishing along a stream, an assassin strikes:

What he remembered most, though, was the way that Bill Tompkin’s head just seemed to sort of come apart, and how Tomkins dropped like a rock, rolled a couple of times, and came to a stop in the water, with the red stain seeming quite brown as it widened around him.

Rhodes gives chase, losing the cutthroat. But rest assured, he will pick up the trail again, clear away some red herrings the author has planted, and finally confront a villain that I admit I didn’t see coming, though in retrospect, all the signs were there.A definite reward of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes mysteries — beyond the well-developed protagonist, the wry humor, and plots humming along with generous doses of action — is Crider’s deft handling of the vibrant cast who make up the universe of Blacklin County. Some include: his intuitive daughter Kathy, who cares deeply for her father’s happiness; his second wife Ivy, who won’t admit (later in the series) that their two dogs and a cat cause Rhodes’ sneezing fits; the police sidekicks Hack and Lawton and their comic riffs; various deputies over the years; and Deputy Ruth Grady, whose pragmatic support is tops; and finally a lethargic housecat named Sam who Rhodes says is the “very model of energy conservation.” Crider’s laid-back dialogue will leave the reader chuckling along as Sheriff Dan strides through the cornucopia of humanity in this picturesque small town.Too Late to Die is a top mystery, and I’d be surprised if this novel didn’t ignite a fire under you to burn through more of the twenty-two—and counting—books in this exceptional series.Comment below for a chance to win a digital copy of Bill Crider's Too Late to Die and two signed hardcovers in the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series:Red, White, and Blue Murder(#13) and A Mammoth Murder (#14)!To enter, make sure you're a registered member of the site and simply leave a comment below.TIP: Since only comments from registered users will be tabulated, if youruser name appears in red above your comment—STOP—go log in, then try commenting again. If your user name appears in black above your comment, You’re In!Too Late to Die Comment Sweepstakes: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN.  A purchase does not improve your chances of winning.  Sweepstakes open to legal residents of 50 United States, D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec), who are 18 years or older as of the date of entry.  To enter, complete the “Post a Comment” entry athttp://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2015/04/too-late-to-die-by-bill-crider-first-in-series-edward-a-grainger-sweepstakes beginning at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) April 9, 2015. Sweepstakes ends 2:59 p.m. ET April 16, 2015. Void outside the United States and Canada and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Macmillan, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

From Pulp Serenade: "Cruel Poetry" by Vicki Hendricks (Seprent's Tail, 2007)

"Cruel Poetry" by Vicki Hendricks (Seprent's Tail, 2007)
Cullen Gallagher:
Vicki Hendricks’ earlier novels excelled at capturing single protagonists caught in insatiable and increasingly tightening vices. The protagonists of Miami Purity , Iguana Love , Voluntary Madness and Sky Blues all wanted a euphoric kick to jumpstart their dull lives—and they got it tenfold. With open arms, they welcomed sex, thrills, danger, and murder. Hendricks’ fifth novel, the Edgar-nominated Cruel Poetry, stands amongst her most sophisticated and complex works to date. Hendricks has expanded her view to encompass three narrators whose lives, desires, and crimes are intertwined into a thick knot of noir that can’t be undone.
Renata is what she calls a “pleasure enabler.” Residing in the Tropic Moons Hotel on Miami Beach, Renata lives on a steady stream of sex. Some are lovers, some are clients. It seems to make little difference to Renata. Among her clients is Richard, a married poetry professor whose addiction to Renata is jeopardizing his family and career. Next door to Renata is Julie, a young aspiring writer who listens through the wall and writes about what she hears. She, too, develops an obsession with Renata, and will do anything to protect her, even murder. Soon this trio finds themselves dodging cops, private eyes, drug dealers, jealous lovers, and even hungry, man-eating gators.
The plot set-up may sound typical, but once the story is in motion, Hendricks steps away from the beaten path and goes into some very unusual directions. It would be criminal to spoil the twists that Hendricks has in store for readers, but those are even hardly the best parts of the book. As the title indicates, there’s a larger effect at work in Cruel Poetry (a title which, by the way, would befit any of Hendricks’ other novels). The real mystery is how long will they last before their decadence lead them to irreversible self-destruction. It’s not the path that’s so gripping as the people on the path. Hendricks has crafted her richest cast yet, and by expanding the narrative to include three narrators and about a half-dozen strong supporting characters she’s also created her most engrossing and dramatic narrative.

Renata is anything but your ordinary femme fatale. (In fact, I wouldn’t apply this tag to her at all, as she turns out to be the least deadly of the bunch.) Hendricks imbues Renata with an unusual and compelling psychological make-up. Unlike her many companions, Renata does not live for pleasure: she lives to give pleasure. The absence of this key drive (which was crucial to so many of Hendricks’ previous books) takes the character in many surprising directions, and shows how Hendricks continues to push the traditions of noir into new territories and puts her distinctive mark on the genre.
From the very start of Cruel Poetry, Renata tells both Julie and Richard, “I’m a bad influence. I don’t love anybody.” Throughout the novel, she repeats this sentiment in any number of variations: “I’m not worth it” and “I’ll hurt you. I don’t know how to love anybody, any one person.” Renata is graced with an uncanny self-knowledge that reminds of Gloria Grahame. In movies like The Big Heat and Human Desire, Gloria stands alone in her understanding of how the world works, the path she is on, and how badly she will probably end up. Julie and Richard suffer from a classic case of “noir blindness,” in which the truth is right in front of them the whole time, not that they care to pay attention to it. As Rival Schools sing in their song “Shot After Shot,” “Love doesn't know anything / Only believes when it believes / Our thoughts don't know anything.” Julie and Richard’s quest for love leads to oblivion and obliteration. They want control not companionship, and their fantasies are defined by prisons rather than pleasures. They each only see themselves and Renata: there is nothing beyond the two of them. (This should be a clear indication that their dreams could never be realized. Chalk it up again to “noir blindness” that this lack of any rational future doesn’t ring any warning bells for anyone except for Renata.)
There’s something tragic about Renata’s honesty—she never deceives anybody, and yet nearly every character in the book tries to manipulate her in one way or another: through love, sex, murder, blackmail, promises of grandeur that could never be fulfilled. This makes Renata’s devotion to her “intimates” all the more sincere and, in a way, pathological. In a world as corrupt and duplicitous as noir, Renata is a rare symbol of virtue, a perfect embodiment of that contradictory “Miami Purity” (to allude to Hendricks’ earlier novel).
Julie and Richard—along with their predecessors in Miami Purity, Iguana Love and Sky Blues—are dreamers. They may also be delusional, self-centered, and unrealistic. Ok, yes, they’re all of those things, but they’re also driven by very normal desires of fulfillment, excitement, and companionship (sometimes love, sometimes just sex). Renata, on the other hand, is not a dreamer. She lives permanently in the now. Her talent for pleasure can be partially explained by this focused concentration on each individual moment, living it to the fullest without fear of consequence. She’s a pragmatist, and therefore the only one of her bunch capable of dealing with the problems that they put forth upon her. A dead body? She knows what to do. Pissed off drug dealers wanting more money? No problem. No money to give them? Even less of a problem. It’s no wonder that Julie and Richard are dependent on Renata. Though they both long to take her away and care for her like a lost child, more often than not they are the ones in need of Renata’s parenting. And as someone professionally skilled in both comfort and discipline, Renata can play the parts of both mother and father.
Renata’s absence of dreams, however, is a double-edged sword There’s a nihilistic impulse to her actions, an admission that her choices are ultimately meaningless and that tomorrow isn’t worth living for—only today is. We also see this same desire for oblivion in the skydiving of Sky Blues and the scuba diving of Iguana Love. In those previous books, the characters achieved it through complete sublimation into sensation—the ripping wind of a freefall, the liquid touch of the water. Cruel Poetry is Hendricks’ most bodily narrative yet. She’s never shied away from eroticism in her work, but in Cruel Poetry there’s something unusually intense about physical contact, even when they have their clothes on. (Renata’s are usually off, but Julie is rather reluctant to act on her feelings and jump out of her pants.)
Hendricks has been compared with James M. Cain, particularly his novel The Postman Always Rings Twice with its doomed trajectory from desire to death. At first glance, Renata’s declaration, “We’ll figure something out. We’re together in this,” reminds of the iconic line from Double Indemnity: “Straight down the line.” A closer examination, however, shows the dialogue to be quite different. Hendricks is able to innovatively rework noir traditions into something very much her own. There’s something selfish and self-destructive about the lovers of Double Indemnity: if one is going down, so is the other. On the contrary, there is something decidedly selfless about Renata. She’s right that she doesn’t love anyone, but she’s one of the most faithful and giving characters I’ve encountered in noir. She doesn’t bring down those around her; she holds them up while they try to drag her down. Her strength, acumen, and insight into human weakness (even her own), is to be admired. With Renata, Hendricks has crafted an original and haunting character that defies stereotype and breaks the mould.
Cruel Poetry unfolds in a rapturous haze of pleasure and paranoia. This sordid Miami noir is infectious, delirious, and totally gripping.
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"Iguana Love" by Vicki Hendricks (Serpent's Tail, 1999)
"Sky Blues" by Vicki Hendricks (Minotaur, 2002)
"Florida Gothic Stories" by Vicki Hendricks (Kitsune Books, ...

"Miami Purity" by Vicki Hendricks (Busted Flush Press, 2007)

George RR Martin says right-wing lobby has 'broken' Hugo awards

George RR Martin says right-wing lobby has 'broken' Hugo awardsNovelist says that group orchestrating readers’ votes for conservative ‘swashbuckling fun’ is trying to take ownership of the science fiction prizesFrom the Guardian UK

The Guardian:4George RR Martin has waded into the “nasty, nasty fight” surrounding this year’s Hugo awards, laying out why he believes that a group of right-wing science fiction writers have “broken” the prestigious prize beyond repair.
The shortlists for the long-running American genre awards, won in the past by names from Kurt Vonnegut to Ursula K Le Guin and voted for by fans, were announced this weekend to uproar in the science fiction community, after it emerged that the line-up corresponded closely with the slates of titles backed by certain conservative writers. The self-styled “Sad Puppies” campaigners had set out to combat what orchestrator and writer Brad Torgersen had criticised as the Hugos’ tendency to reward “literary” and “ideological” works.
Today’s Hugos, Torgersen has blogged, “have lost cachet, because at the same time SF/F has exploded popularly – with larger-than-life, exciting, entertaining franchises and products – the voting body of ‘fandom’ have tended to go in the opposite direction: niche, academic, overtly to the Left in ideology and flavor, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun”.
Twenty years ago, he writes, “if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds”. Nowadays, he claims, the same jacket is likely to be a story “merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings”.
The writers’ campaign to get the authors they believe deserve rewarding onto the Hugo shortlists has been eminently successful: three of the five best novel candidates appear on the Sad Puppies list, books by Kevin J Anderson, Jim Butcher and Marko Kloos.
John C Wright, a writer known for his homophobic views and backed by Sad Puppies for the best novella and best related work awards, has three nominations for best novella, one for best novelette and one for best related work. Activist website The Mary Sue pointed up Wright’s description of the Legend of Korra creators as “‘disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth’ for writing a romantic relationship between two women”.
Another group of allied right-wing campaigners, dubbing themselves the Rabid Puppies and led by Vox Day, real name Theodore Beale, have also added their voices to the block-voting campaign against what Day called “the left-wing control freaks who have subjected science fiction to ideological control for two decades and are now attempting to do the same thing in the game industry”.Advertisement
The shortlist announcement has unleashed waves of vitriol within the science fiction community, with some nominated writers withdrawing from the shortlists. As one of the biggest names in the field, however, Martin’s comments bear particular weight. The Song of Ice and Fire novelist writes on his blog that “a wiser man would probably just keep quiet, and let this storm pass him by” because “ this is a nasty, nasty fight, and anyone who speaks up, on either side of this, risks being savaged”.
“Call it block voting. Call it ballot stuffing. Call it gaming the system. There’s truth to all of those characterisations. You can’t call it cheating, though. It was all within the rules. But many things can be legal, and still bad … and this is one of those, from where I sit. I think the Sad Puppies have broken the Hugo awards, and I am not sure they can ever be repaired,” he wrote.
Admitting that the Sad Puppies did not invent Hugo campaigning, “but they escalated it”, which means that other factions will have to do the same thing next year, he says the direction cheapens the Hugos. “Will future winners actually be the best books or stories? Or only the books and stories that ran the best campaigns? Can all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put the Hugos back together again? I don’t see how. And that makes me sadder than all those puppies put together,” he blogged on Thursday morning.
“If the Sad Puppies wanted to start their own award … for Best Conservative SF, or Best Space Opera, or Best Military SF, or Best Old-Fashioned SF the Way It Used to Be … whatever it is they are actually looking for … hey, I don’t think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn’t. More power to them,” he added. “But that’s not what they are doing here, it seems to me. Instead they seem to want to take the Hugos and turn them into their own awards.”