Ed Gorman's Blog, page 80

Pro-File: Mary Kennedy Nightmares Can Be Murder

1. Tell us about your current novel/collection.
      
        The release date for NIGHTMARES CAN BE MURDER, the first in the Dream Club Mysteries, is just around the corner. (Sept 2, 2014, Penguin). The series is about a group of Savannah women who form a dream club and meet once a week to analyze their dreams and solve a murder or two. Business consultant Taylor Blake returns to Savannah to help her sister Allison run Oldies But Goodies, a vintage candy store. Ali is the founder of the dream club and brings a reluctant Taylor into the fold. Do the women actually uncover clues in their dreams that help identify the killers, or is it just coincidence? I let the readers decide. 

. 2. Can you give a sense of what you're working on now?  I've already turned in book 2, DREAM A LITTLE SCREAM, of the Dream Club Mysteries and am working hard on book three. No title yet, so it's up for grabs. I'm also working on The Talk Radio Mysteries. In the Talk Radio mysteries, "Dr. Maggie" closes up her Manhattan psychotherapy practice to move to sunny Florida to become a radio psychologist. (and she solves a murder in every book). My agent sold it to Penguin with five words, "Frasier Meets Murder She Wrote." I'm working on book 4 and hope to have it available by the end of the year.
      

3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career? Spending time with my characters (any my 8 cats who are non-readers, but like to hang out with me). And of course I love meeting mystery lovers, both in person and online.

4. What is the greatest DISpleasure?  Deadlines, the bane of my existence! (I bet every writer says that.)

5 . If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?  I think of those old world maps that say, "Beyond here, there be dragons." It's a whole new world than when I started writing 25 years ago. Today, writers have to be social-media savvy and weigh the pros and cons of indie publishing.

6.  Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to see
in print again?  Ellery Queen, Dorothy L.Sayers and John Dickson Carr.

7.  Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget
that moment . Well, I have to confess, I never planned on being a novelist and it was all a fluke. No years of rejection slips, no starving in a garret.  I did have a background in writing, first as a radio copywriter and then a  television news writer. Someone called me and offered me a nice sum of money to write a teen novel for a major New York publishing house. The caveat was that I only had 8 weeks to write it. Could I do it?  A no-brainer! It was touch and go as I'd just accepted a job as PR Director for a travel company.  But I said yes, kept the PR job and sold 8 books that year. I don't think I slept more than 5 hours a night for that entire year! 
Mary Kennedy is a licensed psychologist in private practice on the east coast, where she lives with her husband and eight neurotic cats. The cats have resisted all her attempts to psychoanalyze them but she remains optimistic. You can learn more atwww.marykennedy.net or at the Cozy Chicks where she blogs every Saturday. www.cozychicksblog.com 
 

 


 

Raymond Chandler Was An Asshole

Ed here: I thought that headline might get your attention. The writer Stephen Blackmoore is somebody I only recently started reading him. Damned if he's not as good as his reviews insist. “Eric Carter’s adventures are bleak, witty, and as twisty as a fire-blasted madrone, told in prose as sharp as a razor. Blackmoore is the rising star of pitch-black paranormal noir. A must-read series.” – Kat Richardson, Author of the Greywalker series


Raymond Chandler
Was An Asshole
By Stephen Blackmoore
from Thrilling Detective

This piece originally appeared, in a slightly different form, on L.A. Noir, the author's blog, upon the occasion of Raymond Chandler's 123rd birthday. It is reprinted with permission.

JULY 23, 2011Today is Raymond Chandler's 123rd birthday.Last week a friend of mine said, "You're pretty hard on L.A."

"What do you mean? I love this town. It's so fucked up."

"That," he said. "That's what I'm talking about."

I look at Chandler the same way.And so I can say, with great respect, Raymond Chandler was an asshole.

Before he created Philip Marlowe, penned the script for Strangers On A Train, or even had his first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot". published in Black Mask, he was an alcoholic executive for the Dabney Oil Company in Downtown L.A. getting shitfaced every day at lunch while playing gin at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

He was fired in 1932, a year before Prohibition was repealed. The reason? Excessive drinking.

Of course, Prohibition meant fuck all out here. The City of Los Angeles was running all the rackets out of Mayor Frank Shaw's office using city bureaucracy and infrastructure to coordinate it. It did it so well, in fact, that there wasn't anything for the mobsters to do.

We didn't have organized crime, we had city government.

Kind of like today. *rimshot*

Chandler published his first novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939 when he was 50 years old. He got his first Hollywood gig in 1943 writing the script for Double Indemnity with Billy Wilder. Just before the script was to be finished he threw a tantrum and made a bunch of stupid, whiny demands that would shame a five-year-old.

for the rest go here: http://www.thrillingdetective.com/non...
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/non...

Well Read, Then Dead by Terrie Moran Farley

Despite what Oscar Wilde said about wishing ill on good friends,  I'm always happy when I see a friend succeed (well, almost always; I am after all human, at least sort of).

I have reference here to one of the most enjoyable novels I've read in quite awhile and yes I do mean Well Read, Then Dead by Terrie Farley Moran published by Berkley Prime Crime no less.  Terrie is a good friend of mine.

I grew up on science fiction so I have a particular fondness for visiting different worlds. Our voyagers here are Mary "Sassy" Cabot and Bridget "Bridgy" Mayfield who transplant themselves from NYC to Fort Myers, Florida.

The explanations for their move are believable--a cheating husband for one, an employer relocating for the other--as are their lives running a combination cafe and bookstore, a place where outsize but realistic characters bring charm and dazzle to Terrie's world.

One of the aspects I really admired about Well Read was the complexity of the story elements. Their Chef has an accident so Aunt Sophie comes to the rescue; "wreckers" who hope to find treasure in shipwrecks add not only color but suspense; the social life  includes everything from the protocols of book clubs to proper way to deal with customers..in less skilled hands the numerous aspects of the novel would overwhelm the reader.

But Terrie's smart, snappy prose and ability to propel a story through memorable scene after memorable  scene keeps the reader turning the pages and enjoying all the plot twists she has so carefully constructed.

If you get the idea that I like this novel very much, you are correct. Paperback or Kindle, do yourself a favor and get it now. This will definitely be up for all the relevant awards.

Headlines that shouldn't be true but are

CEO of Baptist center fired after arrest for arranging dog sex
encounter on Craigslist

Mom Calls Cops On Son After Finding Porn

Ted Nugent mocks ‘unclean dipsh*t’ Native Americans: Whites ‘stole
their land’ is ‘bullsh*t’

N.C. Town Councilman Who Resigned In Klingon Now Running For Senate

Monkeys Take 'Selfies,' Sparking Copyright Dispute

TN mom charged with assault for taking meth while pregnant is going to
rehab: officials

Tea party threatens agency that helps small businesses

Michigan zoo sells exotic animal dung
(Get some early for holiday gifts)

NYU pushing sex therapy on porn-addicted freshmen...

Thieves Case Funerals, Break Into Vehicles During Burials...

Man Fined For Pretending To Be A Ghost At Cemetery...

Man Armed With Leaf Blower Arrested For Doing Yard Work In Nude...

Florida church cancels ‘blasphemous’ funeral after learning man was gay

CO man’s lawsuit claims unwitting county fair weed overdose made him
‘projectile vomit’

Forgotten Books: A Hidden Place by Robert Charles Wilson

Forgotten Books: A Hidden Place by Robert Charles WilsonForgotten Books: A Hidden Place by Robert Charles Wilson

In the course of a year I usually read twenty or twenty five novels that impress me. Some for characterization, some for story, some for milieu. But I rarely read a novel that astonishes me.

When Robert Charles Wilson's first novel A Hidden Place appeared as a Bantam paperback original in 1986, I wasn't sure what to make of it. I received it along with three or four other science fiction Bantams. I think I put it on the bottom of the stack. The other novels were by writers I knew. Whatever reluctance I felt vanished when I read the first page.

The story here concerns a young man named Travis Fisher who is sent to live with his aunt because his mother, a troubled woman, has died. What he finds in his aunt's house is an intolerable uncle who demands that Travis lives by steely rules he himself frequently breaks. He also finds Anna, the strange beautiful woman who boards upstairs. Travis is so stunned by her he can barely form sentences. He also takes up Nancy Wilcox, a smart, witty girl who is bursting to escape the brutal social order of this small town.

Parallel to this story line is the one of the odd hobo Bone. Because the novel is set in the worst years of the Depression, Bone becomes our tour guide, showing us exactly how people of various kinds behaved during this time. Bone is a transfixing figure, as mysterious as Anna and perhaps linked to her in some way.

I don't want to start listing plot twists here. All I'll say is that each is cleverly set up and magnificently sprung on the reader. What I'd rather talk about is the writing. In the course of reading A Hidden Place, I heard many voices--among them Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner and the Theodore Dreiser who wrote An American Tragedy. The irony is that Wilson is a Canadian. He may or may not have read any of these writers. But except for John Steinbeck, I've never read place description to equal the power and poetry of Wilson's shantytowns or railroad goons; nor have I encountered a better picture of the small towns of that era.

But most of all the book is about people. Wilson's characters will take up permanent residence in your memory. So many of them ache for things they can't have, for things they don't even understand. Wilson writes with a razor.

Twenty years later we find that Robert Charles Wilson is a highly regarded science fiction writer, winner of many awards and several lengthy studies. I believe I've read every novel he's published. But much as I love them I always go back to this one. In its sorrows and its griefs and the beauties of its writing, we find a rare kind of truth, a statement about what it means to be human.

Shout out to Bill Crider-Headlines That Shouldn't Be True But Are

I wanted to say that Bill Crider has been doing similar headlines on his fine blog for years. I got the idea for doing my political blog  headlines from him. Thank you, Bill. Ed


Teacher Turns Up Drunk And Pantsless On First Day: Cops

Miley Cyrus Poses In Ninja Turtle Undies, Continues To Document Her
Hygiene Habits

MI Christian’s antigay rant caught on video: ‘F*cking f*ggot — you
should be put to death!’

Calif. man gets death threats for hosting refugee kids: ‘They’re going
to kill my family’

‘Fed up’ FL woman fatally stabs 7-year-old grandson as he begs for his
life

Tulsa cop kicks out daughter over bad ‘life decisions,’ then guns down
her boyfriend

NJ cop goes rogue: Since Obama ‘doesn’t follow Constitution, we don’t
have to’

Great Duane Swierczynski take on Heist novels from Alan Guthrie's NOIR ORIGINALS

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2011


LET'S BOOK 'EM: A SURE-FIRE SURVEY OF BANK ROBBERY NOVELS FROM 'THIS HERE'S A STICK-UP'

by Duane Swierczynski



"Parker is very popular in prison," wrote 1960s-era bank robber Al Nussbaum. "Despite the fact that almost everyone can find some nit to pick with the criminal methods he describes, the strength of the Parker character overshadows any small flaws." Nussbaum was referring to the hardboiled crime series by Richard Stark (a pseudonym of mystery writer Donald Westlake) featuring a professional heister named Parker—no first name, thankyouverymuch. The Parker novels are crisp, cold, suspenseful—and apparently, inspirational. "I’ve not only read them," wrote Nussbaum, "I’ve even tried to live a couple of them."

Of course, Nussbaum wasn’t your average crime buff—he had a vested interest in the topic. But what might modern-day Nussbaums be reading in the slammer these days?

Blood Money (1927) by Dashiell Hammett. The hero of this short novel—and many other short stories, first published in Black Mask magazine during the 1920s—is a balding, middle aged operative who works for the Continental Detective Agency (think: Pinkerton Agency). In Blood Money—which is actually two related novellas, "The Big Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money"—the Continental Op tangles with a criminal mastermind named Popadopalous who organizes an audacious double-bank heist perpetrated by no less than 150 (!) criminals. The $106,000 refers not to the take from the robbery, but rather the bounty on Popadopalous's head. Hammett's seminal hardboiled novel Red Harvest also features a bank robbery as a subplot.

Thieves Like Us (1937) by Edward Anderson. Three escaped convicts resume their careers as bank robbers in Oklahoma, but things become complicated when the youngest bandit, Bowie A. Bowers, falls in love with a cousin of one of the older robbers and decides to make a run at the straight life. Anderson got the idea for the novel after interviewing his cousin Roy Johnson, who was in the Huntsville State Penitentiary for armed robbery; the original title was They’re Thieves Like Us. The novel was later filmed as Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night (1949) and Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us (1974), starring Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall.

Hell Hath No Fury (1953) by Charles Williams. A drifter named Madox wanders into a small town and finds work at a used car lot, but is just biding his time until he can devise the perfect bank robbery by setting diversion fires all over town. But someone’s already set a fire for Madox: the used car lot owner’s wife. In 1990, Hell was turned into a Dennis Hopper-directed movie called The Hot Spot starring Don Johnson (as Madox), and Virginia Madsen (as the boss’s wife, Dolly Harshaw).

The Big Caper (1955) and Steal Big (1960) by Lionel White. White was the king of pulp caper novels—his racetrack robbery thriller, Clean Break, was the basis for Stanley Kubrick's early film noir The Killing. In The Big Caper, White details a complex bank heist, complete with a safecracker, an arsonist, a pair of tough guys, and a phony husband and wife whose job it is to case the bank. But what happens when that couple decides they'd rather live as man and wife for real than pull the bank job? White described another bank heist gone south five years later in Steal Big, where a hardened con named Donovan puts together what he considers the ultimate bank robbing gang—but all of them turn out to be the ultimate collection of sociopathic losers. White has some fun with in-jokes; one Manhattan black market gun dealer operates under the front, "Kubric Novelty Company."

The Getaway (1958) by Jim Thompson. A bank heist perpetrated by a pair of married ex-cons—Doc and Carol McCoy—goes sour, and suddenly a clean getaway is the only thing that matters. Of course, this is a Jim Thompson novel, and in Thompson’s sordid little corner of the universe, nothing is clean or easy. Still, Doc McCoy has a few clever heist techniques up his sleeve. Explains one thug named Rudy early in the novel: "First, [Doc] looks for a bank that ain’t a member of the Federal Reserve System."

"Oh. Oh, I see," says another criminal. "The Feds don’t come in on the case, right, Rudy?"

"Right," says Rudy. "So anyway, he checks that angle, and then he checks on interest rates. If a bank’s paying little or nothing on savings, y’see, it means they got a lot more dough than they can loan out. So that tips Doc off on the most likely prospects, and all he has to do then is check their statements of condition—you’ve seen them printed in the newspapers, haven’t you?"

for the rest of this vey groovy (that's right--I said groovy) article go here http://www.allanguthrie.co.uk/pages/n...


POSTED BY ED GORMAN AT 10:33 AM 1 COMMENT: LINKS TO THIS POST 

headkines that shouldn't be true but are

Philly cops shoot woman after hail of bullets meant for unruly dog goes
wrong

Vengeful insurance company pays $21K claim in loose change

Naked, drunk Oregon man falls into river while masturbating...

Woman sneaks into Zoo seal pool for swim...

Cops: Thief posed for store photo holding stolen credit card...

PAYBACK: Moscow may force European airlines to fly around Russia...

Drunken woman crashed into firehouse, had snake around neck...

Suspected Teen Murderer Also Kept A Cat's Head In The Fridge: Cop

Flea Infestation Shuts Down New York Courthouse

Calif. condo residents decry nearby rooftop funeral

From Gravetapping: The Library of Congress edition of Elmore Leonard

Ed here: Am I right to assume that there may someday be another volume of his later work?
Actually I've always preferred Leonard's earlier work. Fifty Two Pick-Up and Unknown Man are for me more important novels than his more heralded later ones. The vaunted George Higgins influence ran thin for me and rather quickly. Same for his shorter work. His western short stories are so superior to his crime short stories they might have been written by different people. And my all-time favorite Leonard novels remains Valdez Is Coming. The only novel I've ever read--other than The Great Gatsby--I would call perfect. 



From Ben Boulden:
Library of America Scheduled to Release Elmore Leonard Omnibus This is kind of cool news. Library of America is welcoming the work of Elmore Leonard to its series of high quality hardcover omnibus editions. It is includes four of Mr Leonard’s early novels: Fifty-Two Pickup (1974), Swag (1976),Unknown Man No. 89 (1977), and The Switch(1978). Its scheduled release date is August 28, 2014.


Library of America traditionally publishes classic American literature—Walt Whitman, Sherwood Anderson, Edith Wharton, etc.—and over the last several years it has begun publishing genre writers from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, including work by Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Leigh Brackett, Richard Matheson, David Goodis, Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, and Charles Willeford.Posted by Ben Boulden at 4:19 PM 
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Labels: Elmore Leonard, Library of AmericaNo comments:

Headlines That Shouldn't Be True But Are

Ed here: I have a political blog. I file new Weird headlines four or five days a week. Thought I'd try them here. And they are true.

5 August



Dog That Walked 30 Miles Just To Get Rejected By Owner Now Getting 5-Star Treatment And New Home

Found in University Basement: 250 Corpses

 Cop Jumps Off Bridge to Avoid Being Hit by Own Car

 Cops: Man Tried to Have Sex With ATM

Teens Break Into Home, Bake Pot Brownies: Cops

Religious scholar Reza Aslan destroys ‘charlatan’ Joel Osteen: Jesus
hated wealth

Michele Bachmann: Tax immigrants at 100% to stop them from sending
money to families

Louisiana church posts video of standing ovation for priest after child
sex accusations

Ohio judge brutally beats wife; police find 2,300 rounds, semi-auto
rifles, sword, smoke grenades

NYC police union chief denies officers used choke hold on man who died

Religious scholar Reza Aslan destroys ‘charlatan’ Joel Osteen: Jesus
hated wealth

Michele Bachmann: Tax immigrants at 100% to stop them from sending
money to families

Florida cop fired for taunting hungry inmate with french fries, then
threatening to Tase him

Appeals court: Forcing kids to do chores is not child slavery, even if
abuse involved

 Sex Toy Stuck In Woman's Vagina For 10 YEARS


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