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Do Not Pass Go
These five crime stories dive into the shady undertow of Britain’s second city, walking with characters you might well want to cross the road to avoid. Lane’s prose is never less than deft, subtle and impressive, the stories taut and teeming with urban detail, always on the brink of either violence or revelation.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
42 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 17, 2013
3 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Joel Lane
128 books57 followersJoel Lane was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, critic and anthology editor. He received the World Fantasy Award in 2013 and the British Fantasy Award twice.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane was living in south Birmingham, where he worked in health industry-related publishing. His location frequently provided settings for his fiction.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane was living in south Birmingham, where he worked in health industry-related publishing. His location frequently provided settings for his fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 15, 2021
Obviously I'm delighted that every time I poke around, more Joel Lane becomes available. My copy of The Anniversary of Never should arrive in a week, yesssss. Now if only they'll reissue The Terrible Changes...
Do Not Pass Go contains five very short crime stories. I've read "This Night Last Woman" and "Rituals" in Scar City. "No More the Blues" packs so much into two pages! The realistic description of the blues gig, with just the right details; the encounter in the restroom; the open-ended close. I'm almost gasping for breath when it ends. "The Blue Mirror" is practically a rehearsal for (or outtake of?) From Blue to Black. Can't say I'm a fan of "The Black Dog", though it's entertaining enough.
Do Not Pass Go contains five very short crime stories. I've read "This Night Last Woman" and "Rituals" in Scar City. "No More the Blues" packs so much into two pages! The realistic description of the blues gig, with just the right details; the encounter in the restroom; the open-ended close. I'm almost gasping for breath when it ends. "The Blue Mirror" is practically a rehearsal for (or outtake of?) From Blue to Black. Can't say I'm a fan of "The Black Dog", though it's entertaining enough.
January 15, 2021
An aesthetically tough red pamphlet with quality white page-paper to die for. And black end-papers.
This Night Last Woman
“I always like to finish the drink before the ice is melted.”
Normally when I read the first story in a collection while in real-time reviewing mode, I know what to say. Here the sad atmospheric night-life of Birmingham in days when LPs are to be riffled through in someone’s flat – albeit dusty LPs – makes me think I am mouthing someone else’s song. This is a dark conundrum of a mood-piece where the mood is one of action when two self-attenuated paper-printed figures (one of which is shown in detailed silhouette miming the story on the front cover) come to life for the nonce and touch base – not a whodunnit so much as a whosaid itwasneverdoneanyway? (28 Jul 11)
[Cf: cover with that of the HA of HA]. (29 Jul 11)
No More the Blues
“They’ve seen it all and they still feel something. Maybe I do too.”
Over-dosing on under-dosing. This is life, partly in a latrinal China whitediamond cushion of anti-synaesthesia: a brilliantly evoked band in a (keep quiet for the) music club of forty-something “Brummies” and a weknewwhoditbecausewebelievtheauthorifnotthe narrator. This is the stuff of dreams that poke their lasting reality into life. (29 Jul 11 – 45 minutes later)
The Black Dog
“…distorting the neat pattern…”
An ostensibly initial forensic, clinical account in and around a genuine whodunnit – not Churchill’s Black Dog or something far more intangibly fluid? – whereby the true narrative author’s narrator eventually reveals a steady “I” upon events / clues / mis-intentions / motives after emerging black-shaped from the tar-thickened ink or ink-thinned tar of the page-print at the end. (29 Jul 11 – another 4 hours later)
Blue Mirror
“…said through a mouthful of blotting-paper…”
A towhomwasittobedone with the lateral ambiance of this gorgeous pamphlet’s first story – plus the latrinal one from the second – transfixed by the theme of exploitation (artistically, sexually, or with mind-tar substances (my expression, not the story’s)) concerning, just as one example, the lyrics of songs for the group Blue Mirror. And the singular third-person point-of view ‘Narrator’ abandons his own version of ‘omniscience’ to the author at the end half way between new-build and dereliction – obviously so … by dint of where and how we readers lose him. Or perhaps the only other way this swooping prestidigitation of resisted loss could be achieved was by use of a mirror or as a dark city’s mock super-hero? “…taken his words and turned them to shit.” — “…picked himself up from the tarmac…” (29 Jul 11 – another 90 minutes later)
Rituals
“The unlit doorway beside the bar was curtained with black crêpe paper.”
A powerful tale of boy-slaughter – that resonates with the city – soon to become a cathedral window of light around New Street Station – has hair-trigger guns cocked …………. whereby – as I said earlier with some premonition? – ‘the stuff of dreams that poke their lasting reality into life’ – o too easily poke. Here, there is a sign of shame or compunction – yet all is subsumed somehow. Yet we sense, too, that the head-lease narrator is sadly methodical in making a snuff movie by means of print stains as text – because of simply needing to.
The rhythms or rituals of an existential Birmingham ‘in camera’.
NB: Any head-lease narrator is not necessarily the text’s author-‘god’, although it’s possible they are identical, given the ungluing of narrative layers one by one, peeling them back till one reaches the inevitably black-molten gestalt of stained-glass leitmotifs. Gestalt or guilt. (29 Jul 11 – another hour later)
END
This Night Last Woman
“I always like to finish the drink before the ice is melted.”
Normally when I read the first story in a collection while in real-time reviewing mode, I know what to say. Here the sad atmospheric night-life of Birmingham in days when LPs are to be riffled through in someone’s flat – albeit dusty LPs – makes me think I am mouthing someone else’s song. This is a dark conundrum of a mood-piece where the mood is one of action when two self-attenuated paper-printed figures (one of which is shown in detailed silhouette miming the story on the front cover) come to life for the nonce and touch base – not a whodunnit so much as a whosaid itwasneverdoneanyway? (28 Jul 11)
[Cf: cover with that of the HA of HA]. (29 Jul 11)
No More the Blues
“They’ve seen it all and they still feel something. Maybe I do too.”
Over-dosing on under-dosing. This is life, partly in a latrinal China whitediamond cushion of anti-synaesthesia: a brilliantly evoked band in a (keep quiet for the) music club of forty-something “Brummies” and a weknewwhoditbecausewebelievtheauthorifnotthe narrator. This is the stuff of dreams that poke their lasting reality into life. (29 Jul 11 – 45 minutes later)
The Black Dog
“…distorting the neat pattern…”
An ostensibly initial forensic, clinical account in and around a genuine whodunnit – not Churchill’s Black Dog or something far more intangibly fluid? – whereby the true narrative author’s narrator eventually reveals a steady “I” upon events / clues / mis-intentions / motives after emerging black-shaped from the tar-thickened ink or ink-thinned tar of the page-print at the end. (29 Jul 11 – another 4 hours later)
Blue Mirror
“…said through a mouthful of blotting-paper…”
A towhomwasittobedone with the lateral ambiance of this gorgeous pamphlet’s first story – plus the latrinal one from the second – transfixed by the theme of exploitation (artistically, sexually, or with mind-tar substances (my expression, not the story’s)) concerning, just as one example, the lyrics of songs for the group Blue Mirror. And the singular third-person point-of view ‘Narrator’ abandons his own version of ‘omniscience’ to the author at the end half way between new-build and dereliction – obviously so … by dint of where and how we readers lose him. Or perhaps the only other way this swooping prestidigitation of resisted loss could be achieved was by use of a mirror or as a dark city’s mock super-hero? “…taken his words and turned them to shit.” — “…picked himself up from the tarmac…” (29 Jul 11 – another 90 minutes later)
Rituals
“The unlit doorway beside the bar was curtained with black crêpe paper.”
A powerful tale of boy-slaughter – that resonates with the city – soon to become a cathedral window of light around New Street Station – has hair-trigger guns cocked …………. whereby – as I said earlier with some premonition? – ‘the stuff of dreams that poke their lasting reality into life’ – o too easily poke. Here, there is a sign of shame or compunction – yet all is subsumed somehow. Yet we sense, too, that the head-lease narrator is sadly methodical in making a snuff movie by means of print stains as text – because of simply needing to.
The rhythms or rituals of an existential Birmingham ‘in camera’.
NB: Any head-lease narrator is not necessarily the text’s author-‘god’, although it’s possible they are identical, given the ungluing of narrative layers one by one, peeling them back till one reaches the inevitably black-molten gestalt of stained-glass leitmotifs. Gestalt or guilt. (29 Jul 11 – another hour later)
END
April 18, 2016
A fiction pamphlet, about the first I've seen. The pieces are described as crime stories, though the focus is psychological. Ben Wilkinson in the TLS recently reviewed The Autumn Myth, Lane's latest poetry collection, writing that it's "sometimes bleak for bleakness' sake". I don't feel that with this book, though Blues and blackness are never far away, and punishment is often self-inflicted, albeit indirectly. The text is fast-moving, atmospheric and strong-voiced with lots about music, pubs and clubs. There's view-point variety in the 5 stories - 1st person (potential victim); 1st person (criminal); 1st person (detective?); 3rd person (victim); 3rd person (criminal/victim). They have strong first paragraphs. Here's the start of "Blue Mirror" - "The bedroom was cold when John woke up. It was nearly ten o'clock. Dave was lying wrapped in the stained blanket of his own dreams. A small trickle of saliva had escaped from one corner of his mouth. John could hear the faint wheezing sound of Dave's cigarette-laden breath. Even in sleep, he couldn't shut the fuck up."
As a poem might be held together by a sonic texture, so a story might be unified by interlocking symbolism. In "This Night Last Woman", the karaoke, the songs, and the middle-aged people's preoccupations help sustain the sense of nostalgia, of lost opportunity. The persona escapes being murdered because the mass murderer thought he was already dying. An opportunity or something to regret?
In "The Black Dog" there's a symbolic leitmotif too. A pile of tarmac "looked like a huge sleeping dog". Later, the murderer confesses that "The black dog won't leave me alone". It's not just depression; there's a body under the tarmac. At the end the tarmac dominates as the detective walks - "The road was covered with fresh tarmac ... I felt sick and cold, unable to move. I looked for some kind of mark in the fresh tarmac. What did I expect: feet running away, paws following? The surface was unblemished.".
"Rituals" is my favorite - it's about what to do with guilt, the risks one takes when trying to belong. 4 men (one of them Finlay, who's armed) are taking Dalton to a disused factory to teach him a lesson, but the place is double-booked - a gay porn film's being made. In the chaos Finlay kills an actor. Dalton escapes, beaten to death days later. Finlay, lying low, has trouble sleeping. He recalls as a child thinking that the city turns into a forest in the night. He remembers a folk-tale called 'Finlay the Hunter' where the lost hunter is eaten by man-wolves. Suddenly Finlay's in a gay bar where he finds his forest. In the final paragraph 4 young men who'd been waiting for him drive him away. "Probably they weren't even aware why they were going to do it. They were just beginners, keen to belong, to uphold the rituals".
As a poem might be held together by a sonic texture, so a story might be unified by interlocking symbolism. In "This Night Last Woman", the karaoke, the songs, and the middle-aged people's preoccupations help sustain the sense of nostalgia, of lost opportunity. The persona escapes being murdered because the mass murderer thought he was already dying. An opportunity or something to regret?
In "The Black Dog" there's a symbolic leitmotif too. A pile of tarmac "looked like a huge sleeping dog". Later, the murderer confesses that "The black dog won't leave me alone". It's not just depression; there's a body under the tarmac. At the end the tarmac dominates as the detective walks - "The road was covered with fresh tarmac ... I felt sick and cold, unable to move. I looked for some kind of mark in the fresh tarmac. What did I expect: feet running away, paws following? The surface was unblemished.".
"Rituals" is my favorite - it's about what to do with guilt, the risks one takes when trying to belong. 4 men (one of them Finlay, who's armed) are taking Dalton to a disused factory to teach him a lesson, but the place is double-booked - a gay porn film's being made. In the chaos Finlay kills an actor. Dalton escapes, beaten to death days later. Finlay, lying low, has trouble sleeping. He recalls as a child thinking that the city turns into a forest in the night. He remembers a folk-tale called 'Finlay the Hunter' where the lost hunter is eaten by man-wolves. Suddenly Finlay's in a gay bar where he finds his forest. In the final paragraph 4 young men who'd been waiting for him drive him away. "Probably they weren't even aware why they were going to do it. They were just beginners, keen to belong, to uphold the rituals".
November 10, 2011
Joel is my mate and in my group so I am inclined to give it five*. Also I read at the launch, as a kind of warm up act. It's a beautifully produced booklet of five crime stories, as black as they come, and written with Lane's usual tight, fierce style. I'll put a few quotes in below when I get home.
*Those of you who are old and British may remember the 60s panel show 'thank Your Lucky Stars' where the Brummie girl would say 'I'll give it foive' and became a minor celebrity for about a week and even had a single out with that title (great lyrics: Mantovani drives me barmy, Shirley Bassey much too classy etc). Can you imagine me saying it in that accent please?
Oh yes, if you're wondering why it is called 'Do Not Pass Go' Joel said it was because he wouldn't collect £200.
*Those of you who are old and British may remember the 60s panel show 'thank Your Lucky Stars' where the Brummie girl would say 'I'll give it foive' and became a minor celebrity for about a week and even had a single out with that title (great lyrics: Mantovani drives me barmy, Shirley Bassey much too classy etc). Can you imagine me saying it in that accent please?
Oh yes, if you're wondering why it is called 'Do Not Pass Go' Joel said it was because he wouldn't collect £200.
February 21, 2022
A short pamphlet of crime-related stories, now available only on Kindle. Two of the pieces went on to appear in the book-length collection Scar City, which only appeared after Lane's death, though it seems he did the selecting. Unsurprisingly, he made the right choice: 'This Night Last Woman' and 'Rituals' are incendiary pieces - close to Lane at his best. But the other three are by no means ineffective. There's little of the implied supernatural that's so often an important a part of Lane's effect - though Carly (Carmilla?) in 'This Night Last Woman' surely sees herself as a vampire. Most people who've read Lane don't stop until they've read the lot and there's enough here to show why.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 6, 2020
Five short stories, all featuring a crime or two, and set in and around Birmingham. They're all pretty short, so there isn't much mystery, it's more about mood, and overall it makes a pretty good argument for staying at home after bedtime.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews