Ed Gorman's Blog, page 88

From Brash Books: Bill Crider Tells the story behind his great novel Outrage At Blanco

06.09.14 THE STORY BEHIND “OUTRAGE AT BLANCO”








Bill Crider reveals the story behind his novels Outrage at Blanco and Texas Vigilante





Outrage at Blanco has an interesting history.  What I set out to do was to write a western novel like the kind I admired so much by people like Harry Whittington, Donald Hamilton, Clifton Adams, Marvin H. Albert, and many others who wrote what were essentially crime novels with a western setting.  The books were fast-paced fiction, lean and tough. I loved reading them, and I wanted to write something similar.When I began the book, I didn’t know that Ellie Taine was the main character.  What I had in mind was something else entirely.  By the end of the first chapter, however, Ellie had pretty much taken over.  I couldn’t think of any westerns with a woman like her in the lead, so I tried to shut her down.  Didn’t work.  She was a strong woman, and if she was going to take over, I figured I’d better just get out of her way.  The resulting book wasn’t what I’d thought it would be, exactly. It was even better, or so I thought.My agent thought so, too, and she sold it to the first editor who saw it.  It was going to appear as part of the long-running Double D series of westerns published by Doubleday, and I couldn’t have been happier.  The series had been around for many years.  Louis L’Amour had written Hopalong Cassidy novels for it as Tex Burns.  Elmer Kelton had written for it.  So had just about every other western writer you can name.But not me.  Before the book appeared, the line was killed.  I like to think that the decision to publish my book had nothing to do with that.  I as disappointed, but I was paid the full advance, and the rights to the book reverted to me.A couple of years later I had a new agent, and he asked me if I had any unsold manuscripts.  I told him about Outrage at Blanco, and he asked to see it.  The next thing I knew, he’d sold it to Dell Books, a Doubleday imprint, for more than the original advance.  I liked the irony. Not only that, but the editor wanted to do a two-book contract with the second book being a sequel featuring Ellie Taine.  I was more than happy to take the deal, and so Texas Vigilantecame to be.  The editor was pleased with that one, too, and talked to me about a third book with Ellie.  I worked on an outline, but before I turned it in, the editor had moved on and the deal was off.  So the world was spared a trilogy.Lee Goldberg, one of the publishers of Brash Books, liked the novels, too.  He thought they’d make a great western movie and asked about writing a screenplay based on them.  We came to an agreement, and he did a terrific job.  There were a couple of times when I even thought the movie might get made. It came very close to becoming a four-part TV miniseries for a cable network until some key financing fell through.  It would have been great, but it didn’t happen. As Maxwell Smart would say while holding his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart, “Missed it by that much.” That doesn’t mean you can’t read the screenplay, however.  If all goes well, Brash Books will eventually publish a special edition of both Ellie Taine novels that includes the screenplay.  I’m really looking forward to that.

A Great Post from Mystery*File-Raymond Chandler's unfavorite and favorite mystery writers-

RAYMOND CHANDLER’S FAVOURITE CRIME WRITERS AND CRIME NOVELS – A List by Josef Hoffmann.Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists
[2] Comments Ed here: His favorites include some lesser knowns I hold in great regard--Charlotte Armstrong, Norbert Davis, Bill Gault and Wm.O'Farrell. Unfortunately several of his UNfavorites I also hold in high regard. :) 




RAYMOND CHANDLER’S FAVOURITE CRIME WRITERS AND CRIME NOVELS – A List by Josef Hoffmann.
   In his letters and essays Chandler frequently made sharp comments about his colleagues and their literary output. He disliked and sharply criticized such famous crime writers like Eric Ambler, Nicholas Blake, W. R. Burnett, James M. Cain, John Dickson Carr, James Hadley Chase, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Mickey Spillane, Rex Stout, S. S. Van Dine, Edgar Wallace. A lot of Chandler’s criticism was negative, but he also esteemed some writers and books. So let’s see, which these are.   A problem is that he sometimes had a mixed or even inconsistent opinion. When the positive aspects predominate the negative ones I have taken the writer or book on my list.   The list follows the alphabetical order of the names of the mystery writers. Each name is combined with (only) one source (letter, essay) for Chandler’s statement. I refer to the following books:  Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler , edited by Frank MacShane, Columbia University Press 1981 (SL);  Raymond Chandler Speaking , edited by Dorothy Gardiner & Kathrine Sorley Walker, University of California Press 1997 (RCS);  The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-Fiction  1909 – 1959, edited by Tom Hiney & Frank MacShane, Penguin 2001 (RCP); “ The Simple Art of Murder ,” in:  The Art of the Mystery Story , edited by Howard Haycraft, Carroll & Graf 1992.   I am rather sure that the list is not complete: It does not include all available sources nor all possible writers and books.         THE LIST:
Adams, Cleve, letter to Erle Stanley Gardner, Jan. 29, 1946 (SL)Anderson, Edward: Thieves Like Us, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Sep. 27, 1954 (SL)Armstrong, Charlotte: Mischief, letter to Frederic Dannay, Jul. 10, 1951 (SL)Balchin, Nigel: The Small Back Room, letter to James Sandoe, Aug. 18, 1945 (SL)Buchan, John: The 39 Steps, letter to James Sandoe, Dec. 28, 1949 (RCS)Cheyney, Peter: Dark Duet, letter to James Sandoe, Oct. 14, 1949 (RCS)Coxe, George Harmon, letter to George Harmon Coxe, Dec. 19, 1939 (SL)Crofts, Freeman Wills, letter to Alex Barris, Apr. 16, 1949 (RCS)Davis, Norbert, letter to Erle Stanley Gardner, Jan. 29, 1946 (SL)Faulkner, William: Intruder in the Dust, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Nov. 11, 1949 (SL)Fearing, Kenneth: The Big Clock, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Mar. 12, 1949 (SL); The Dagger of the Mind, The Simple Art of MurderFleming, Ian, letter to Ian Fleming, Apr. 11, 1956 (SL)Freeman, R. Austin: Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight; The Stoneware Monkey; Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke, letter to James Keddie, Sep. 29, 1950 (SL)Gardner, Erle Stanley, letter to Erle Stanley Gardner, Jan. 29, 1946 (but not as A. A. Fair, letter to George Harmon Coxe, Dec. 19, 1939) (SL)Gault, William, letter to William Gault, Apr. 1955 (SL)Hammett, Dashiell, The Simple Art of MurderHenderson, Donald: Mr. Bowling Buys a Newspaper, letter to fredeeric Dannay, Jul. 10, 1951 (SL)Holding , Elisabeth Sanxay: Net of Cobwebs, The Innocent Mrs. Duff, The Blank Wall, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Oct. 13, 1950 (RCS)Hughes, Dorothy, letter to Alex Barris, Apr. 16, 1949 (RCS)Irish, William (Cornell Woolrich): Phantom Lady, letter to Blanche Knopf, Oct. 22, 1942 (SL)Krasner , William: Walk the Dark Streets, letter to Frederic Dannay, Jul. 10, 1951 (SL)Macdonald, Philip, letter to Alex Barris, Apr. 16, 1949 (RCS)Macdonald, John Ross: The Moving Target, letter to James Sandoe, Apr. 14, 1949 (SL)Maugham, Somerset: Ashenden, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Dec. 4, 1949 (SL)Millar, Margaret: Wall of Eyes, letter to Alex Barris, Apr. 16, 1949 (RCS)Nebel, Frederick, letter to George Harmon Coxe, Dec. 19, 1939 (SL)O’Farrell, William: Thin Edge of Violence, letter to James Sandoe, Aug. 15, 1949 (SL)Postgate, Raymond: Verdict of Twelve, The Simple Art of MurderRoss, James: They don’t dance much, letter to Hamish Hamilton, Sep. 27, 1954 (SL)Sale, Richard: Lazarus No. 7, The Simple Art of MurderSmith, Shelley: The Woman in the Sea, letter to James Sandoe, Sep. 23, 1948 (SL)Symons, Julian: The 31st of February, letter to Frederic Dannay, Jul. 10, 1951 (SL)Tey, Josephine: The Franchise Affair, letter to James Sandoe, Oct. 17, 1948 (RCS)Waugh, Hillary: Last Seen Wearing, letter to Luther Nichols, Sep. 1958 (SL)Whitfield, Raoul: letter to George Harmon Coxe, Dec. 19, 1939 (SL)Wilde, Percival: Inquest, The Simple Art of Murder. 

Annabelle Gurwitch Still f-ckble at Fifty - The Night I Slept With Samuel Jackson

Ed here: In Annabelle Guriwitch's new book she says as a single working
mother one of her desires was to remain f-ckable at fifty. She said going three years
without sex was getting her down. As Bill Maher pointed out when
she was on his show a few weeks ago (she was hilarious as always) she
certainly made it. She would doubtless be a fun date and she's very attractive
in her smart girl way. Much more appealing to me than all the sex bombs.
More seriously she talked about how single working mothers
fare in the culture of LA. And the struggles of being a free lance
comedy writer for almost thirty years. A funny bright sweet woman. She
as also, as she doeshere, about he lunacy of social media and its effect on TV shows.


Annabelle:

The Night I Slept With Samuel Jackson
Plus, my ideas for how we should have gotten Bowe Bergdahl back; and my
glee at Marianne Williamson’s un-miraculous political career.
I couldn’t sleep last night. I was up thinking about the latest sign of
the coming apocalypse. It did not take the form of seeing the author of
The Law of Divine Compensation, Marianne Williamson, who in that tome
reveals that “faith in God's promise of prosperity for all means no one
has to worry ever again,” on my primary ballot here in Los Angeles.
No, the sign I was worried about was that a major part of her campaign
strategy was letting folks know that she was endorsed by celebrities
including Nicole Richie.

Richie is a lovely woman, I’m sure. I am very fond of her new lilac
locks, and if I were looking for someone to take me shopping for a
handbag, she’d be my go-to girl. But when seeking political leadership,
she’s not the first person who comes to mind. But, oh, that’s right—Ms.
Williamson also got a thumbs up from that great philanthropist and
constitutional scholar, Kim Kardashian. Williamson’s supporters
reminded people on social media that the framers of the Constitution
envisioned citizen-legislators who served part time and then went back
to life in their communities. That may be so; however, most of them
studied Greek, Latin, law, and philosophy, and none were returning home
to lead workshops on A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for
Surrendering Your Weight Forever. One can only hope that at least one
of those Lessons is to eat less and exercise more.

But that’s not it either.  This week there was news, if one can call it
news, that a program titled I Slept with a Celebrity was being shopped
around to media outlets.

I’m old enough to remember that once upon a time, artists were famous
for achieving greatness in their field, like Robert Mapplethorpe or Ice
Cube; or someone might achieve a kind of notoriety for doing something
dubious but of interest to a niche audience, like Joey Chestnut, the
reigning hot-dog eating champion.  It’s not news that the term
“celebrity” is now a catch-all for any number of personalities who
happen to have been born into wealth, competed to eat insects on a
tropical island, or married a stranger who bears a resemblance to a
member of the British royal family. The only prerequisite to qualify is
someone whose raison d’etre is to be in front of a camera at all times.
Is it possible that back in 1991, Warren Beatty uttered the most
prescient indictment of our current cultural trends  in Truth or Dare ,
the Madonna-mentary, in which Beatty said of the singer, “She doesn't
want to live off-camera, much less talk. There's nothing to say
off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point
is there existing?”

Bravo has apparently passed on the idea, but I think we’ll hear it
finds a home and I predict we’ll soon be regularly hearing
announcements that herald this and other programs that will be “coming
to a phone near you.”  I am haunted by a related phrase that will
probably blossom into wide use: “please welcome, star of stage and
phone...”

To paraphrase author Dan Savage: It only gets lower.  And how low will
it go?  One can imagine a season two featuring porn stars who slept
with Charlie Sheen, followed season three that will be populated by the
people who slept with the people who become celebrities from having
made appearances on I Slept with a Celebrity.

I am haunted by a phrase that will probably blossom into wide use:
“please welcome, star of stage and phone...”
I suppose if I get really strapped for cash, I will also go on the
show, as I have slept with a celebrity myself. Samuel Jackson and I
were seated next to each other on a red-eye two years ago and we slept
together in and over both New York and Los Angeles for five hours,
which is longer than most Hollywood marriages.

Another thing keeping me awake at night has been the announcement from
Nielsen that a record 9.1 million people were so into the Breaking Bad
finale that they were not only following it on TV but on Twitter as
well, and that Nielsen is going to be keeping track of this second
screen viewing from now on. Entertainment companies are so desperate to
up the viewer engagement level, some are offering contests to receive
phone calls from cast members  But how short are our attention spans
that we must flit from screen to screen? So short that I just forgot
what I was writing because I was checking my email in the middle of
composing that sentence.

I also marveled that the NSA allowed Nielsen  to make this
info public. Learning that the American people were transfixed by two
screens at the same time, we’re talking about live viewing, leads me to
consider the kind of security breaches that could take place on that
sad evening next year when Madmen comes to an end and most of America
will be slack-jawed and inert in front of our televisions
sets/tablets/phones waiting to find out if we will be lucky enough to
receive a call from Pete or Roger exhorting us to follow them on
Instagram. Another sign of the apocalypse? The Matrix was real.

I was also kept awake by the second-guessing over the trade for
Sergeant Bergdahl that started almost the moment the trade was
announced and, although I try to avoid such things, I did have a few
suggestions on what have made for valuable negotiations instead.
Homeland was real!

First, with summer approaching, it might have been a great idea to
offer the Taliban leaders what is one of the most coveted “gets” at
this time of year—a summer internship for their kids. As the mother of
a teenager, I am here to tell you that there are few things I wouldn’t
part with, including a kidney, if I could find someone to hire him.

  Second: Marc Zuckerberg. No matter how infuriated I get with
exhortations to play Hugs or Jackpot Party Casino Slots I haven’t quit
Facebook yet. Zuckerberg is a genius.  But last week Facebook started
asking me how I know my friends and if I socialize with them outside of
Facebook, so I’m ready to give him up.

Finally, instead of trading for Bergdahl, we could have sent in someone
to retrieve him who appears to have mastered the art of covert
operations—celebrity prankster Vitalii Sediuk, who ambushed America
Ferrera’s dress, occupied Bradley Cooper’s crotch, and invaded Brad
Pitt’s face. Before you roll your eyes, you should know that security
is so tight at these events it’s truly incredible that he’s managed
these feats. There have been times when I could barely gain access to
movie openings for films I was in.

Sediuk is also probably fielding an offer from Andy Cohen, because
having once kissed Will Smith on the mouth probably qualifies him to be
on I Slept with a Celebrity. In fact, Cohen is probably getting a call
  from someone who slept with Sediuk who wants to be on the show as
well.
At least his name wasn’t listed along with the other endorsements for
Williamson, but the results are now in, and celebrity influence is
real! I’s clear her running helped fragment the vote and put Republican
Elan Carr in the number one spot in the primary race to replace
retiring Democrat Henry Waxman.

Williamson is most famous or notorious for her lectures on the
self-help gobbledy-gook, A Course in Miracles, but the election results
were nothing miraculous. It was just plain old math.

SHEBA by Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson) from Gravetapping

From Gravetapping by Ben Boulden
It is 1939. Gavin Kane is a former archaeologist turned smuggler. He operates a launch from the small port of Dahrein, a fictional place that is likely somewhere in real world Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula. Kane’s professional interest and greed is piqued when he is approached by an alluring woman with a tale. Her husband is a lecturer of archaeology, and he disappeared after coming to Arabia searching for the Temple of Sheba. The temple is believed to be in Rub’ Al Khali, The Empty Quarter, which is a no man’s land filled with criminals and wanderers. She offers Kane $5,000 in advance, and another $5,000 when her husband is found, and he will earn every penny.
Shebais a smoothly told adventure yarn. The plot is linear and clever. There are no dangling devices, and one scene leads exactly to the next. The prose is vintage Harry Patterson: stark, succinct, and, in places, eloquent. Everything works, but the setting really shines. The heat and dust and thirst are palpable. An early paragraph describing the harbor is particularly nice—
“The Catalina swung in across the town and splashed into the waters of the harbor. Beyond it a freighter moved slowly across the horizon toward the Indian Ocean, and three dhows in formation swooped in toward the harbor like great birds.”
Sheba has the feel of the Indiana Jones movies. It includes a Nazi plot device, archaeology, and a bunch of action. There are damsels in distress, traitors, and very bad guys. 
I haven’t read Seven Pillars to Hell and I consciously attempted to identify both the new and the old (or what seemed to be the new and the old) in Sheba. The new: the Nazi plot—including Admiral Canaris of Abwehr and a battle injured officer named Captain Hans Ritter who is suspiciously similar to The Eagle Has Landed’s Oberst Radl—was likely added to the original story. The old: Everything else. It is plotted much like many of Mr Patterson's early work, including Sad Wind from the Sea and The Khufra Run.  
Interestingly, Kane refers to Dehrain as “Arabia Felix,” which is a Latin term used by the Romans to describe the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula. “Felix” is translated as “happy”.

Forgotten Books: The Crime Lover's Casebook edited by Jerome Charyn

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 03, 2010
The genre is represented here by such excellent writers (with excellent stories) as Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Harlan Ellison (Not that Ellison can comfortably be claimed by any genre; he is unto himself), Tony Hillerman, Walter Mosley, Ross Thomas, George C. Chesbro and several others. Since the anthology was published first in 1993 it was nearly a decade ahead of the next group/generation up. There is no Megan Abbott, Marcus Sakey, Ken Bruen, Daniel Woodrell, etc. Be interesting to update the book with some of these new editions.

The literary writers range from Joyce Carol Oates to Italo Calvino to Flannery O'Connor to Manuel Vasquez Montalban among many others.

For me the two outstanding literary pieces are the excerpt from Don DeLillo's novel Libra and Raymond Carver's famous Cathedral. The DeLillo piece demonstrates how effective backstory can be. Yes, even though it's fallen into disrepute in some quarters, DeLillo uses it here to create a character and a world as unexpected and grim as any apocalyptic fiction. Stunning work.

Cathedral is arguably Raymond Carver's finest story. His version of the unreliable narrator is masterful. We don't challenge his veracity as a reporter--it's his attitude toward the dark tale he's relating. This is a story you can read a dozen times without mastering.

The Casebook was first published by the late (and much missed) Byron Preiss and is a great example of his taste in literature.POSTED BY ED GORMAN AT 12:37 PM 7 COMMENTS: LINKS TO THIS POST 

PRO-FILE: KATHERINE HALL PAGE

PRO-FILE: KATHERINE HALL PAGE

“A tasty introduction to Agatha Award–winner Page’s popular mystery
series.”
(Publishers Weekly)

“A variety of tasty short morsels that will whet [Page’s] fans’
appetites...Well paced and will leave the reader satisfied, as a good short story
should...[A] delectable treat.” (Library Journal)

1.Tell us about your current novel/collection.

Small Plates, a collection of short fiction, went on sale May 27th. I
have always found writing short stories much more difficult than
writing a full-length work of fiction. In the introduction I quote
Henry David Thoreau: “ Not that the story need be long, but it will
take a long while to make it short and Edgar Allan Poe’s  “A short
story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards
it.” Taken together, these are a fine summation of the challenge posed
by short story writing: that paring-down process, the examination of
each word essential for a satisfactory result. I’d also add a reminder
based on Strunk & White—nowhere is omitting needless words more
essential!

The brevity of a short story gives mystery writers a change to pack a
wallop. In the traditional mystery novel, the pace is more leisurely,
albeit suspenseful. The denouement comes at the end and the hope is
that readers will be stunned. Yet, the end of each chapter has a
tantalizing hook baited to keep those pages turning. In the short
story, all this must be compressed. Poe, Saki, and Robert Barnard did
it best.

My series character, Faith Fairchild appears in some of the stories,
but not all. Having said how hard I find it, I also need to say how
much I enjoyed writing these—and also found it freeing. I think readers
will be surprised, and I hope delighted, by the tone of some of the
stories. Dark—I like to think of them as Agatha Christie and Shirley
Jackson sitting down together for a stiff drink.

2.Can you give a sense of what you're working on now?

I’m finishing up one of the series books, The Body in the Birches,
which will be out in late May next year from Morrow. It takes place on
a fictitious island in Penobscot Bay, Maine. I’ve set some of the
series there before and although there is a bridge to the mainland, the
setting provides a locked room feel. In this case, real estate is
murder. More particularly, what happens in families when it comes time
for the older generation to designate who will inherit the much loved
summer place. Simplest solution is to only have one child. I will also
be working on a stand alone (or as the British say “One Off”, like that
term better) starting in the fall. Set in the 1960s, it involves a
woman who runs away from home.

3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?

Oh gosh, at the risk of sounding like a total prat, I would have to say
the act of writing itself. Madeleine L’Engle described the process as
“taking dictation from one’s imagination”. This is the best description
of how I feel when I am immersed in putting one word after
another—alive in the moments. I also quite like it that people read my
books and tell me they do, write nice notes in mostly cyberspace now,
but snail mail earlier.

4.What is the greatest DISpleasure?

I’m tempted to write the same thing—the act of writing, because as Mary
Roberts Rinehart so aptly put it in her slender volume, Writing is
Work. It’s hard work. Writing to contract, having a deadline—in
essence, always having a paper due—goes along with this.

 Another displeasure is more difficult to describe. I always say I, and
the other writers who started publishing in the late 1980s and earlier,
had the best of it. So many wonderful Indies and their owners, but even
more the mystery community itself was a tightly knit one—authors,
editors, agents, the sales reps. And we talked about books, most
especially not ours. It wasn’t all about “me”.


5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is
it?

Don’t spend so much on promoting the big names, who don’t need that
full-page ad in the Times etc. Use the money to increase advances
across the board. Support the mid-list, and dare I say even those
selling below that? Over the years I have watched terrific writers cut
because of less than stellar sales figures who had so much to say and
with proper promotion the word would have eventually got around! This
hurts readers most of all. (One of my favorite fiction writers was told
he would continue to be published if he adopted a nom de plume. He
refused. Did not think his particular rose would smell as sweet…)

6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to see
in print again?

The name that immediately springs to mind like Athena from the foot of
Zeus is James Corbett, brought to our attention by my dear, much-missed
friend, Bill Deeck. This link will provides enlightenment:
http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testi...
I would also direct readers to Bill’s book, The Complete Deeck on
Corbett.
  I believe someone is reprinting John Stephen Strange (Dorothy
Stockbridge Tillet), but do not see my favorite one, The Bell in the
Fog. I am also sorry that most of Jane Langton’s Homer Kellys are now
out-of-print.


7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget.

I was in New Jersey for a family event and gave my parents’ number to
my agent, Faith Hamlin (I wrote The Body in the Belfry with sleuth
Faith Fairchild before signing with this other Faith, who is happily
still my agent) since I planned to be there for some time. I dearly
love the convenience of my iPhone, but nothing with ever replace that
black, dial, wall mounted phone in my family’s kitchen for memorable
conversations. The cord was long enough so that as a teen, I could
create some privacy by ducking into the pantry. My mother answered the
phone and said it was for me. Expecting my husband, who had had to stay
in Massachusetts to work; instead it was Faith. I had yet to meet her
in person. Three publishers were interested! I actually felt faint. She
repeated the news. I found my voice and tried to express what it felt
like to have all the holidays, one’s birthday, even the moment not that
long ago when I’d said “I Do” all rolled into one. We went with SMP and
Ruth Cavin. Could there have been a better choice? Another much missed
friend. My sister went out and got a bottle of champagne. 21 books in
the series later and it still feels the same each and every time.

Great Jack Hinkson post LEIGH BRACKETT

HALL OF FAMERSAdventures In Screenwriting: The Amazing Leigh BrackettJAKE HINKSON
for the entire post go here:
http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/...

Jake Hinkson:Pop quiz: What do The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, The Long Goodbye, and The Empire Strikes Back have in common?Answer: They were all written or co-written by the same woman, the amazingLeigh Brackett.How does one person knock down both the ultimate private eye movie andthe ultimate deconstruction of the private eye movie? And how does that same person write what is considered by some fans to be the best western of all time and a remake of that same movie? And how does the person who pulled off those two neat tricks write, in her sixties no less, the ultimate pop sci-fi flick of all time? Well, the answer to all these questions is that Leigh Brackett was awesome. 









Of course, the most famous story about The Big Sleep is how damn confusing the plot was for everyone involved. Bogart asked Brackett who killed Owen Taylor, the chauffeur, and she told him she didn’t know. They asked Hawks, who said he didn’t know either. So they sent Chandler a wire, and the author wrote back and said he was as lost as everyone else. Brackett explained with a sly dismissal “The forward momentum is so tremendous and the characters are so interesting that you really don't care.” Which, it must be said, is true.

TARZAN IN THE CITY OF GOLD TITAN BOOKS

Tarzan - In The City of Gold (Vol. 1) TITAN BOOKS


SYNOPSIS

I SPENT THE WEEKEND READING THIS BEAUTIFULLY MADE BOOK. THE ILLUSTRATIONS TRULY CAPTURE THESPRIT OF EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS AND THE STORY LINES AREEXCELLENT. A TRUE COLLECTORS' EDITION.
 FROM TITAN BOOKS
This is the first of four exclusive volumes that will collect all of Hogarth’s newspaper strips. Beginning with the adventures “Tarzan in the City of Gold” and continuing with “Tarzan and the Boers,” Hogarth and writer Don Garden hit the ground running, and produced some of the most acclaimed stories ever to appear in the pages of newspapers worldwide.

PRODUCT DETAILS•    ISBN: 9781781163177•    Dimensions: 9.5“ x 12.75“•    Hardback: 168pp•    Publication date: May 13 2014•    All authors: 
Don Garden , Burne HogarthTarzan - In The City of Gold (Vol. 1)
The Complete Burne Hogarth Sundays and Dailies Library Don Garden Burne Hogarth RRP $39.95BUY NOW

Titan Books--James Reasoner as Gabriel Hunt At The Well of Eternity

In 2008 I received an e-mail from Charles Ardai, the founder of the Hard Case Crime line. I was a fan of the imprint and had traded several e-mails with Charles in the past. Now he was asking me if I'd be interested in contributing to a new project he was starting, a series of novels about a globe-trotting adventurer named Gabriel Hunt. The series was inspired by Charles' love of adventure fiction, the sort of yarns spun by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Lester Dent, and countless other authors who rose to prominence in the pulps and whose work was reprinted voluminously in paperback during the Sixties and Seventies. Although Gabriel Hunt's exploits would be set in the present day, he was cut from the same cloth as Doc Savage, John Carter, El Borak, James Bond, Simon Templar...That was the rich vein of breathtaking adventures and hair's-breadth escapes into which Charles intended to tap with the Gabriel Hunt series. So, would I be interested?
I emailed him back right away and said, "Charles, I was born to write Gabriel Hunt."

That was the beginning of one of the most enjoyable projects I've ever been involved in. It was Charles' intention to write one of the books himself, and he was recruiting other authors to write the other five volumes in the initial contract with Leisure Books, the company that also published the Hard Case Crime books. He had gotten Glen Orbik, who had done some wonderful covers for HCC, to provide covers for the Gabriel Hunt books, so he sent me the rough cover sketches Glen had done and told me I could pick one of them to be the cover of my entry in the series. One of them featured Gabriel in a life-and-death struggle with a villain on a rope bridge over a deep chasm in a jungle. That one practically shouted at me that I should pick it, so I did. Knowing my story would need to involve that scene helped me come up with the plot. It looked like a Central or South American setting to me, so that started me thinking about something in one of those areas that could involve Gabriel. From there it was a matter of writing an outline, getting Charles' input on the story, and then launching into the manuscript, which was great fun to write. It's rather blatantly structured like one of the Doc Savage novels, with something happening in Gabriel's home base of New York City that draws him into an intriguing mystery, leading him to follow a trail packed with peril from Florida to Mexico to a lost valley in Central America.

See, I told you I was born to write this stuff.

So the book was finished, the cover was beautiful, Leisure published it as the first book in the series, which pleased me very much...and that was pretty much the end of it. Burdened by financial problems, Leisure's distribution wasn't great at this point, so a lot of potential readers never even saw the book. The reviews were mostly good—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY even gave it a starred review and put it on their list of best paperbacks of the year—but sales were anemic. The other books in the series followed, excellent tales by Charles Ardai, Christa Faust, David J. Schow, Raymond Benson, and Nicholas Kauffman, but then Leisure went under and the series was trapped in limbo for a while.

But Charles never gave up on it, and now the books are being reissued by Titan Books in beautiful new editions that we all hope will allow the readers to have better luck finding them. I'm thrilled that HUNT AT THE WELL OF ETERNITY is available again. It's one of my favorites of all the books I've written. I grew up reading adventure fiction in pulps and paperbacks, and while I was writing that book, I almost felt like I was back on my parents' front porch, stretched out in a lounge chair with a summer breeze blowing over me, AM radio rock'n'roll coming from a little transistor radio beside me while I dived into the latest pulse-pounding yarn I'd picked up from the spinner rack at the drugstore.

If I can recreate something of that feeling in today's readers (with more modern trappings, of course), then my efforts have been well repaid.

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN:

TERROR'S CRADLE by Duncan Kyle from Gravetapping

The genre also cultivated other writers who, while not quite consistent enough to break into the top level, wrote some pretty damn good novels. One such writer is Duncan Kyle. Mr Kyle, which is a pseudonym for one John Franklin Broxholme, published 15 novels between 1970 and 1993. He was a bestseller in the United Kingdom, but his work never quite paid out in the United States. I recently read Mr Broxholme’s fifth Kyle novel, Terror’s Cradle, published by William Collins in 1975.
John Sellers is a British newspaperman in Washington D. C. covering a Senate corruption case that may implicate an English politician. It is a bust, but before Sellers can fly home to London he is sent on a junket to Las Vegas where a starlet, who is a magnet for trouble, is in more when a man is found dead in her hotel bathroom. His Las Vegas trip is cut short when he is first threatened, and then actually chased by armed gunmen. When Sellers returns to England he learns his coworker and friend, Alison Hay, has disappeared after a seemingly successful assignment in the Soviet Union.
Terror’s Cradle is a slick adventure novel. The protagonist is both strong and vulnerable, and even better, stubborn. He quits his job and plays a harrowing game with both the KGB and CIA. His mission is to find Alison Hay, and he will do anything to do it. The locales are exotic from the desert landscape of Lake Meade in Las Vegas to Gothenburg, Sweden to the Shetland Islands in the North Atlantic. The pace is smooth and quick; it charges out of the gate and never slows. The action scenes are believable, and even better, exciting. There is a chase scene in the opening pages that transitions from Lake Meade to the barren desert landscape of its shores, and it is really one of the better I have read.
“As I stumbled quickly between the sheltering rocks, I heard the car stop and doors open and close. Then there was silence. I kept going, frantic to get space and distance between myself and the road.”
Terror’s Cradle is on par with the best of the genre. It is literate, intelligent, and exciting. The prose is sharp, the plot is straight-forward and smoothly perfect. There isn’t much mystery about where the story is going, but it is so concise and exciting it doesn’t matter. If this is an example of the quality of Mr Broxholme’s Duncan Kyle novels, there very well may be an addition to the top tier of suspense adventure writers.