Oliver Clarke's Blog: Little Slices of Nasty, page 27

The 87th Precinct Project - the full list

As described in this post The 87th Precinct Project, I'm trying to collect paperback editions of all of Ed McBain's wonderful 87th Precinct mysteries.

I thought it would be useful to post the full list so I can mark them off as I go. Titles in bold are ones that I have managed to track down.

I'll also re-note here the rules I'm sticking to:
1) Books must be softcover
2) Books must be secondhand
3) I'm not after first editions but the closer I can get to the original publishing date the better
4) My preference will always be to buy from a brick and mortar store. I'm only going to resort to the interwebs when I really start to struggle.


Cop Hater (1956)
The Mugger (1956)
The Pusher (1956)
The Con Man (1957)
Killer's Choice (1957)
Killer's Payoff (1958)
Lady Killer (1958)
Killer's Wedge (1959)
'til Death (1959)
King's Ransom (1959)
Give the Boys a Great Big Hand (1960)
The Heckler (1960)
See Them Die (1960)
Lady, Lady I Did It (1961)
The Empty Hours (1962) - collection of three short novellas
Like Love (1962)
Ten Plus One (1963)
Ax (1964)
He Who Hesitates (1964)
Doll (1965)
80 Million Eyes (1966)
Fuzz (1968)
Shotgun (1969)
Jigsaw (1970)
Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here (1971)
Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (1972)
Sadie When She Died (1972)
Hail to the Chief (1973)
Bread (1974)
Blood Relatives (1975)
So Long as You Both Shall Live (1976)
Long Time No See (1977)
Calypso (1979)
Ghosts (1980)
Heat (1981)
Ice (1983)
Lightning (1984)
Eight Black Horses (1985)
Poison (1987)
Tricks (1987)
Lullaby (1989)
Vespers (1990)
Widows (1991)
Kiss (1992)
Mischief (1993)
Romance (1995)
Nocturne (1997)
The Big Bad City (1999)
The Last Dance (2000)
Money, Money, Money (2001)
Fat Ollie's Book (2002)
The Frumious Bandersnatch (2003)
Hark! (2004)
Fiddlers (2005)



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Elmore Leonard's 10 rules of writing and how badly I break them

I'm a huge fan of Elmore Leonard, the American crime and western writer, and read with interest his 10 rules of writing when I stumbled across them recently. I break many of them in Sunliner so reviewing them, especially when I admire Leonard's work so much, was something of a sobering experience.

Here they are, with notes to indicate how badly I've strayed from them.


 1. Never open a book with weather.
Phew - this one I didn't do.

 2. Avoid prologues.
Whoops - although in my defence the prologue was on the advice of someone who works in publishing and I think it works.

 3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
This is a great one and something I'll definitely do in future...I really didn't in Sunliner though.

 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
Another black mark for me and Sunliner...

 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
That ratio would mean I could have no more than 3 in Sunliner. Pretty sure it's more than that! Way more!!!

 6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
Bollocks, I think I even have a "suddenly all hell broke loose"

 7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
I don't think I break this one, unless you count the 50s hardboiled style of speaking that everyone in the book uses as a regional dialect.

 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
I spend a bit of time describing JJ when we first meet him but not, I hope, too much.

 9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
Woohoo - I stuck to this one.

 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
I think (and hope) I managed this one. Unless my readers like to skip car chases.

I'm going to give myself 5 out of 10.
MUST TRY HARDER.

The 87th Precinct Project

Over the years I've read and loved many (probably most) of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels.
For anyone who doesn't know them the books, written over 49 years (from 1956 to 2005) are police procedurals set in a fictional (and never named) city which bears many similarities to New York.
The books are all short (just right for a crime novel in my opinion), snappy and written with humour and a wonderful sense of character. Every one of them starts with the wonderful disclaimer:

The city in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique.


I've just remembered that I used to have that photocopied and up on my bedroom wall. :)

I've owned a good few of them in my time but currently own none, having had a massive book clearout a few years ago. Recently I've had a hankering to read them again and, probably coincidentally, a desire to read physical books again after a couple of years reading ebooks almost exclusively. There's something about the feeling of a paperback in my back pocket that I miss.
These two notions conspired together in my brain and meshed themselves together into the idea that I should try and reacquire all of the books and reread them in order. Given that there are 54 of them (feel free to correct me on that but I think it's correct) and that I refuse to pay full price for any of them there's likely to be a bit of legwork involved in this quest, but no more than McBain's fictional detectives regularly indulged in.

I started this search just over a week ago, visiting every place that sells second-hand books in the town I live in and turning up not one of them.
Earlier this week I walked from work down to the main street and searched over a dozen charity shops with no luck. I did find one hardback copy of 'Mischief' but I'm only interested in paperbacks. I never said this project was logical. I was pretty dejected about the whole thing at that point and then today I got a message from someone with a copy of 'The Big Bad City' that needs a good home. This random act of kindness has got me into the whole idea again...

So that's what I'm doing and I'll post weekly updates for anyone who is interested...

Preview of my new story - Dear Suzanna

10th April

S,

I don't know what's happening but I'm scared. I'm really honestly fucking terrified like I haven't been since I was a kid.
They're outside. A lot of them. Outside the cottage.
I don't think they know I'm here. Not yet. But there's no way I can get out past them. And even if I was I don't know what I'd be getting out to.
I don't know what to do.

F



_________________________________________________________________



Rabbit Warren Cottage
Suffolk


2nd April

Dear Suzanna,

This isn't a love letter.

You know, I don't remember the last time I actually wrote a letter. Sat down and wrote a proper honest to goodness put it in an envelope missive. I don't remember for sure but I think the last one probably was a love letter. To you.
Writing is a lost art I think. A nice pen on nice paper rather than notes scribbled hastily in biro in a cheap notepad during some pointless meeting or other. I have found it nice to actually take the time to write. Sit in the solitude of this lovely rural setting and actually think about what I want to say to you. Think about it and then take the time to form the letters carefully and properly on the page.

But this isn't a love letter. In fact it might be a suicide note.

After you did what you did I needed to think. Which is why I've come away here. You'll have seen where I am from the address at the top of the page. I picked up the phone to Charles as soon as I found your letter. I told him what you'd done, how it made me feel. We spoke for an hour or more, the longest I've spent talking to him in years I suspect.
At the end of the conversation he offered me this place for as I need it for. To get away from all the distractions of life. To think. To get my head together.
I've done the first two. You remember this place; you couldn't get much more away from "it" if you went to the Highlands. It's so peaceful here and that peace is wonderful. It's lonely too, but I suppose loneliness is something I need to get used to.
I've thought a lot too. Precious little else to do here as you'll remember; although I seem to recall we found plenty of things to do to entertain ourselves on the occasions we stayed here.
I've brought some books with me of course, but mhy mind won't let me settle on them for more than a minute before flitting back to you. Always back to you.
The lack of a TV or radio here always appealed to me before but now I long for their easy distraction.

Why did you do it, Suzanna? I still can't understand. I know you tried to explain in your letter but I'm afraid, my dear, that you failed. Why throw away everything we had? Why hurt me so much that I want to die?
The oven here is electric so that's no good. There are aspirin in the bathroom cupboard but probably not enough. Can you even overdose on aspirin?
I have a razor, but I'd have to tear it to bits to get at the blades and I'm sure they'd be tiny, too tiny to hold probably. That leaves the breadknife, which just seems....messy.
I suppose I should have planned this trip better.

Oh Christ, I still love you so much.

Frank

The Doorbell

I've started a new short story about a haunted doorbell. Not sure if its a good idea or a terrible one.
Here's a preview.


It started as a bit of a joke. Emma was going to bed one night when she looked up at the bell that hung on the wall high up to the right of the front door. The main light was off and the hallway was lit only by the glow of the TV her boyfriend was watching in the living room. The dimness made the tiny red light stand out more. The tiny red light staring down at her from box on the wall.
It seemed...wrong. Was it normally on? She didn't think so. She thought it only lit up when someone pressed that button outside and the doorbell rang. A visual cue to go along with the sound. A bit pointless really because you'd have to be looking at it to see it and when would you stand there staring at the doorbell waiting for it to ring?
She was sure it wasn't always lit though, because if it was, why was she noticing it now. It was creepy that red light, threatening somehow. Red was the colour of danger wasn't it, the colour of stop signs and warnings. She turned round and walked back to the living room.
"Come and look at this," she said. Her boyfriend sighed from the sofa.
"Look at what?"
"The doorbell.
"What?"
"The light on it is on. It's not normally on is it?" She was sure it wasn't but she wanted his reasurrance that she wasn't going nuts.
He didn't get up. "Don't worry. It probably just means that the batteries are running down. I'll change them tomorrow."
She opened her mouth to say something back but couldn't think of anything. What he said made perfect sense. So she kissed him goodnight and walked back out into the hallway again. Just as she was leaving the room he laughed and said, "Either that or something is constantly ringing the bell and we just can't hear it." He put on a corny Bela Lugosi accent, "Something trying to get through from the other side...."
She laughed back. "Batteries tomorrow, don't fucking forget."
She looked up at it as she walked back through the hallway to the stairs. The thing on the wall...what did you call it? Not a doorbell because wasn't that the thing on the outside of the house? Besides, it wasn't a bell at all, not anymore. It would have been when she was a kid, a proper bell that got struck somehow and chimed. Now though it was a little speaker with circuit boards and wires inside it that received a wireless signal when the button on the outside of the house was pressed. All very clever but lacking in soul somehow. There was something so simple and pure about a proper bell.
She looked up at the box on the wall again, wishing pointlessly for a simpler time. The box stared back at her with its one red eye. She knew in her head that it was an inanimate object. Just another collection of plastic and wiring that performed a simple task that made he life easier. In that moment though it felt like maybe it wasn't souless after all. It felt as if it had a soul all of its own, a particularly malevolent soul that wished her no good at all.
She shooked her head and yawned, god she must to be thinking up this nonsense. Bed now for sure, and a stern telling off for him on the sofa if he didn't sort out the batteries tomorrow.

Doll Eyes by Lancome - the first time a mascara has made me angry

This is something of a departure for me, on this blog at least, but I saw something in a magazine yesterday that made me angry. It may have been written about elsewhere but a quick Google search yielded nothing.
This blog is supposed to be about my writing, and this post doesn't sit well with that, but there is enough of a cross over with one of the central themes of Sunliner that I could justify the post to myself. What theme am I talking about? Well, a reader asked me the other day what I thought the message of the book was. My reply was this, the message is contained in something Rachel says to Curtis:

"This kind of corruption rots away at you, I saw it at home. You make little concessions because they appeal to some thing inside youthat you should be fighting rather than nurturing. You give the devil some little thing and before you know it he's taken more, and more until you've given everything and the devil owns you."

It's a bit of an overdone paragraph and probably a touch hokey but it's one I like. The notion of zero tolerance is a strong and appealing one in many ways. It's certainly something that politicians fall back on from time to time, often with results that ignore humanity in favour of vote grabbing headlines. Despite the negative aspects of it as a political policy I think it does have a personal appeal. It's like giving something up for Lent: simple, decisive and satisfying if you manage to stick to it.

So why am I talking about zero tolerance here? I'm a firm opponent of censorship but fall into that muddy liberal mire of also believing that the media can have an adverse influence on society by perpetuating negative stereotypes or pushing certain agendas. In recent years, for instance, there has been a definite focus on the influence of the fashion industry on young women, particularly around body image and anorexia. I don't believe in state sanctioned censorship, but I do believe that in a consumer society we, as the customers of the companies that produce the things we consume, can and should complain when those companies overstep the mark.
And boy have Lancome overstepped the mark.

The advert I saw wasn't one for discussion in that debate though, it was an ad for mascara. Here it is.



What is offensive about it is not just the advert but the marketing concept behind the product itself. It's called Doll Eyes and it's designed to make a woman's eye lashes look like those of a doll. Not longer or fuller or lusher but more doll-like.
Why am I appalled by that? Because it suggests that natural isn't good enough. That fake is better. That women should hide their natural beauty with layers of plastic rather than let it shine through. Most of all it suggests that there is one standard for what is beautiful and that standard is Barbie.

The Lancome publicity machine has in fact gone one step further and is running a game on the company's Facebook page allowing women to create virtual dolls of themselves. Nice, huh?




This notion of the superiority of falsehood isn't one that I find abhorrent only when attached to feminine beauty, it's one I dislike full stop. It seems to me to be dehumanising wherever you apply it and the women in the add certainly bear more than a passing resemblance to The Stepford Wives with their perfect plastic faces and their empty plastic eyes.
Is this mascara the thin end of the wedge then in driving into our brains the concept that fake beats real? Sadly not, its probably towards the thicker end, but it does seem to me to be something that we, as humans, should oppose. Because we're not dolls, we're better than that. More beautiful, more real and more alive.
.

Sunliner 2 prologue preview

So here it is folks, by popular demand and hot off the presses, the prologue of the currently untitled sequel to Sunliner. Strictly first draft but I know there are at least a few people out there who want to see it.
Enjoy and please do let me know what you think.

_________________________________

When Rachel and I left LA I thought we'd left the violence behind but within a month I'd killed again. The man I killed didn't give me any choice but I still felt bad about it. Bad for him and bad for me because killing was starting to feel like something did rather than something I'd done.
The last man I'd killed was one who I'd hated with a passion as strong as the love a man feels for his wife and family. This man, the man in Nebraska, I didn't give two hoots about, didn't like him, didn't hate him, just knew he needed killing.
I'll get to the why in time. First let me tell you the how, because although I had no reason to expect that would make a blind bit of difference it proved to be important. I did it on blind instinct, the killing, when I walked into that room and found him doing what he was doing. I guess a shrink would say I had some kind of knight in shining armour complex. That I need to keep saving damsels in distress because I couldn't save my wife. I think that's BS. I saw a man doing something horrific to someone smaller and weaker than him and it was in my power to stop him. So I did.
The events in LA had changed me, made me harder. I suppose it's what happens to a man when he finally finds the balls to stand up to his nemesis. What I'd gone through had taken me to the edge of hell and back but like a snake sheddding its skin I'd come out of it renewed, better somehow. Would the man I'd been before that horrible night with JJ and the car and the Freak have reacted the way I did when I walked into that small, stinking room? I doubt it. He would have turned and run. Done the the right thing of course, found a payphone and called the cops, but by then it would have been too late for the girl.
So I didn't run and I certainly didn't call the cops; I still held a healthy respect for them, a respect that meant I wanted to stay as far away from them as possible. I walked forward rather than back.
The man turned when he heard the door open and saw me at the same moment as I saw him. Rachel and I had heard the screams from outside so we knew something bad was going down in there. The girl on the table in front of him went quiet at the sight of me. The scream that had been tumbling from her mouth and echoing off the wooden walls stopping as abruptly as if someone had put their hand over her mouth. Her eyes locked on mine and the terror in them was replaced with hope. I think that faith she had in me gave me the extra strength I needed to do what I did next. He was a big bastard and I doubt I could have taken him without the knowledge that if I didn't the girl would be done for. I might be tougher than I'd been a month ago but I was still no Rocky Marciano and I needed every advantage I could find.
My first thought was that I needed to find a weapon. The guy was 6 foot 6 if he was an inch and he had a knife in his hand. I could see a shovel leaning against the wall by the side of the table the girl was on. On the other side of the room. On the other side of the giant with the knife. That meant a weapon was out of the equation for now and there was no way I was going to beat him in a fair fight so I fought dirty.
I lashed out with my foot and caught him in the knee, he was big but he was slow and the toe of my shoe connected hard with his knee cap. He didn't even notice. For all my bravado I guess I wasn't such a touch guy after all. His right hand, the one holding the knife, swung round in a wild arc and he caught on the side of the head with his fist and the base of the knife handle. My head rocked from the blow and my legs went weak beneath me. I knew I was going down and there was nothing I could do about it.

New Cover

Well the new cover is done and I adore it. It has completely captured the pulpy, 50s feel I wanted and fits the book like a glove.

Many, many thanks to Thyme at http://sweetjamgraphics.com/

Advertising

Having done okay sales-wise so far I've decided to do a but of a publicity push on Sunliner. This is going to go in 2 phases:
Phase 1 is to get some posters up in the office I work in - this feels like a quick win, I can produce and print the posters easily enough myself and  for people who know me and see my name on the poster there's an extra hook that might make them want to give the book a try.
Phase 2 is get some post cards and business cards professionally printed and distribute these in coffee shops, books shops, etc. Using offers from VistaPrint I should be able to get this done very cheaply.

Here's poster version 1 - I'm going to do a more colourful version when the new cover is ready.

New cover (update)

As I mentioned in my previous post about the cover of Sunliner (here), a professional graphic designer has very kindly offered to do a new one for me. I've seen the first version (not sure what the right word is, I want to say draft, but that doesn't sound right) and it's wonderful, with the lovely hand-painted feel of a 50s pulp paperback. I've come up with a new tag line as well, which I rather like. "He thought he wanted to know the truth...he was dead wrong."

:-)