The Thrilling Detective Blog

Raymond Chandler on Self-Publishing

2011-10-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

May 22, 1950
To: Hardwick Mosely

I have a note... that Houghton-Mifflin would like formal consent from me for... reprint editions of The Little Sister and The Simple Art of Murder. Please take this as my consent. Please send me my end of the take as soon as possible as the cat needs a new basket.

I had of course originally planned to republish these books myself. A close friend... has a small hand press and a fair supply of deckle-edged vellum, and also a font or so of 24-point Goudy Lombardi capitals. We thought we could turn out something really quite nice, say in a limited edition of nine copies, handsomely autographed by the author during a rare moment of sobriety, and retailing at about $65 a copy. We were quite confident of the result, but I shall not specify what result...

-- from Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962), a fascinating collection of correspondence from possibly the crankiest crime writer who ever lived. He would have burned through the mumbled mouthed primordial forest of discussion groups, blogs and Twitter like Napalm.

Bring Editing Back (Please?)

2011-08-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

The on-going self-publishing orgy that started twenty or so years ago with the arrival of a viable POD technology has now reached some kind of apex (or nadir, depending on your viewpoint) with the almost onanistic instant gratification of one-handed ebook publication.

Hooray, say the countless hordes of writers who might otherwise have never seen publication, but can now bask in the adoration of the masses who will certainly rush en masse to buy their 99 cent self-published ebooks, available at finer (online) retailers everywhere.

Not so fast, say old nit-picking cranks like me. What's good for self-proclaimed "writers" may not be all that great for those of us who still appreciate good writing. Because surely one of the casualties of the afore-mentioned orgy has been the denigration of such quaint, old-fashioned ideas as editing and criticism.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in fact, both mattered.

In fact, the quest to "get it right" once drove many a writer to drink. (Or at least that was their excuse).

Now dubiously talented, pudgy schlumps in sweat pants can swig giant sodas, hit "SEND" with a single Dorito-stained digit and give not a single iota of thought as to whether their latest masterpiece, to be available digitally within a matter of hours, could have been a little better. Being "published" has surpassed being "good."

In fact, a quick perusal of writers' blogs, message boards and discussion lists soon reveals a dishearteningly large number of newbies who sneer at the very notion of someone daring to tell them how to write, relying instead on SpellCheck and the blind encouragement of a small body of fellow would-be literary titans, dubious beta readers and other enablers. As though the only possible thing that could go wrong with one's writing might be a misspelling or a wayward comma. And those are invariably shrugged off as "typos."

Likewise, the once respected endeavor of literary criticism has been rendered almost meaningless -- at least online -- by an epidemic of enthusiastic but not particularly skilled online reviewers -- often the very same fellow titans, beta readers and enablers -- whose grasp of literary technique, history or even basic grammar and spelling is at best tentative. And often totally missing in action.

Cliff loves Earl's book. Earl loves Davey's book. Davey loves Cliff's book. And the beat goes on...

"It was an awesome roller coster of a thriller that I could not put down and it kept me turning the pages of this book and it kept me reading and thrilled until the verry, verry last page. Five stars!"

Really? Is that what passes as "criticism"these days?

The fact the self-published brigade will actually gleefully use these dubious recommendations (often, astonishingly, without correction) from Bob in Squamishville or flaming_love_wombat2087@aol.com as blurbs in their own publicity shows how far we've fallen.

Granted, even in the imaginary good old days, there were howling boners of both editing and criticism. But there were (or I'd like to believe there were) standards and a consensus of respect for them. And there are certainly still reviews, both online and in print, and a slowly growing number of self-published books that display great merit and literary style and technique. But the current fandango of ego-driven self-entitlement ("I DESERVE to be published!") that turns a blind eye to the falling standards of good writing is a tragedy to those of us for whom words matter.

More frightening is that this disrespect for quality seems to slowly spreading, like an inoperable tumor, from the self-publishing extremities towards the heart of the mainstream.

Which is why I'm so bummed when I come across something like this in a starred review in Publisher's Weekly of John Huston: Courage and Art by Jeffrey Meyers:

"In his detailed, absorbing portrait of Huston (1906-1987), biographer Meyers (George Orwell, Samuel Johnson, and Somerset Maugham) captures the remarkable parallels between these two men as he narrates the life and compelling work of one of the world's greatest filmmakers."

Huh?

Granted, PW is not the epitome of criticism -- their reviews are more like retailer-friendly quickie book reports -- but for the most part they've always been cogent and useful, regardless of their ultimate verdict on the cited work. So a train wreck of a sentence like that is not a pretty or encouraging thing to see.

In this case, I can understand why PW's reviews are anonymous. I wouldn't put my name to a sentence like that either.

Nor does the later bold and annoying statement that Huston's 1941 classic, The Maltese Falcon, is where "all of his talents as a writer, actor and director finally came together" fill me with much respect for a) the reviewer who didn't read the book, or possibly b) the author, who has his head up his ass.

I'm assuming, though, that Meyers got it right in his book (it was Huston's father, Walter, who had a brief, uncredited cameo in the film, not John) and that it was the anonymous reviewer who got it wrong. But where on earth was the editor?

Even if the editor wasn't up to snuff on movie trivia, did he or she really think that first sentence was fine? Or was there even an editor? Was the reviewer -- like so many self-published authors these days -- simply given carte blanche; trusted by his or her publisher to deliver the goods without any need for any sort of time and money-wasting filter or overview?

Lord knows, my own writing is prone to embarrassing gaffes, arguable declarations and dubious sentence structure -- which is why I myself rely so heavily on the kindness of editors. And you should too.

You think your writing doesn't need editing?

You think "typos" don't matter?

You think a gushing, barely-literate review is really something worth boasting about?

Think again.

Any suggestions on how to finance large, sprawling crime fiction web site?

2011-07-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

Sigh...

Just tinkering on the site on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and force of habit, I'm looking up ISBNs for Amazon buy links, which of course is a complete waste of time, since I've been shitcanned by them thanks to their on-going pissing contest with California over sales taxes (see below).

Unfortunately, B&N (which already does collect sales tax on online orders), has such a convoluted process for creating buy links that's not really worth the effort. I was able to create Amazon links by simply cutting and pasting an ISBN (or ASIN) into a simple strip of code; B&N requires a visit to a third-party site, and searching for a book or other product. then clicking a button that will then theoretically generate chunk of html code which I then can cut and paste into my web page. What used to take seconds now takes several minutes; a substantial amount of time when you're talking about a site that -- I kid you not -- has tens of thousands of links.

And so far, I can't even get the damn third party search engine to turn up something as obvious as THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler.

So that's pretty much out.

Begging for donations actually makes me feel a little queasy. And truthfully, most people talk a good game, but the cheque never quite arrives. And seriously, I need a solid, reliable method of financing the site that doesn't rely on the (sporadic) kindness of strangers.

So that's out.

More advertising? Sure. But how do I attract more advertisers? Any suggestions?

Charge admission? For this stuff? I'm not exactly the New York Times here. Or the Wall Street Journal. People won't pay just to see what I think about some obscure gumshoe.

Move back to Canada? (Where, surprise, surprise, Amazon does collect sales tax and is somehow still able to turn a large profit)

Hmmmm.....

I'm looking for real suggestions here; not more whining and crackpot conspiracy theories from corporate apologists, tax evaders, and other cheapskates...

Mother of Mercy, could this be the end of the Thrilling Detective Web Site?

2011-07-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, but I've got a little news....

I've been fired. By Amazon.

The recent law passed by the California government that dares to suggest that Amazon collect sales tax on purchases made online by residents of California (just like the store around the corner) has provoked Amazon into firing all its affiliates in California. Not right away, mind you, but soon. September, it looks like.

Regardless of what you think of the government's action, it's worth noting that Amazon didn't simply stop doing business in California -- no, they would never risk losing millions and millions of dollars of revenue simply on a matter of principle. Rather, they've sacrificed their affiliates (most of them small mom-and-poppers like me) and expect them to get pissed off enough to do their fighting for them.

Great plan, that.

Because, yeah, I'm angry. But not at California.

Sorry, Amazon, we've had a long and beautiful relationship over the years, and I really don't mind collecting (or paying) sales taxes. It's a consumption tax, after all, and let's face it, somebody has to pay for roads, schools and the like. I think it's my duty as a citizen to pay such taxes, even while reserving the right to complain when I'm not fond of what they're sometimes used for, and I've never bought into the notion that penny-pinching and greed (or tax evasion) is a sign of patriotism.

We'll leave that sort of revisionist history for those who think Paul Revere was a cowboy serial killer who freed the slaves or whatever.

Nope, penny-pinching and greed are simply signs of penny-pinching and greed, and hiding behind an antiquated, pre-internet loophole in the tax laws to avoid paying your fair share, whether you're a fat ass corporation or simply a cheapskate, is just wrong.

C'mon, Amazon. Do you really think your business will collapse if people have to pay sales tax on the items they purchase from you? Other online entities do it, and have been doing it for years, and they're at least as obsessed with the bottom line as you are.

And I laugh at the notion of you blaming the law on pressure from big box stores, as you did in one of your letters to me. That's like the Russian Mob demanding the cops arrest pickpockets.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of politicians in office (and plenty just dying to get in) who think anything good for big companies will automatically be good for all of us (or at least their re-election coffers).

But after years of waiting for some pie-in-the-sky trickle down theory to actually start working, it's clear it never will. The rich have steadily become richer in this country (despite their constantly whining ) while the average working family's spendable income has been stagnant (at best) for over thirty or forty years (most of it under "business-friendly" administrations), their manufacturing jobs have been outsourced (thanks, GOP!) and what little protections and services they/we once could counted on have been gutted to appease the corporate overlords. (Do we really need to know if our food is safe or our coal mines won't collapse? Do we really need to look after our soldiers?)

Here's a clue. That isn't wealth that's trickling down on us from the fat cats.

All that's left, for those of us lucky enough to still be employed, are poorly paid jobs in the service and retail industries, the only part of the economy to show any real growth over the years, and now on-line desperadoes like Amazon, who make zillions off working Americans, feel they don't have to follow the same rules as the little shop (or even the big store) around the corner does. And expect those same small shop owners, who may have once supplemented their income by being an Amazon affiliate, to take up arms in the name of corporate profits?

Yeah, so who cares if some local store goes out of business? Most Americans don't really care, despite all the flag waving and rhetoric. What really counts, apparently, is that someone saves 30 cents sales tax on a used book from Amazon.

Say what you like about big box stores (I work for one, and I could say plenty), but at least they hire LOCAL people.

But I digress....

In case you haven't quite figured out what this has to do with anything, well, the Amazon affiliate program is essentially what keeps THRILLING DETECTIVE WEB SITE going.

Sure, I accept advertising, and occasionally someone slips me a few bucks, courtesy of PayPal, but without Amazon, I'm not sure if I'll be able to justify the time and resources the site requires. And yes, I would gladly collect sales taxes, just as I gladly pay them.

But Amazon wants to use me and thousands of affiliates just like me in their pissing contest with California, so I'm not even being given the chance to be a good little tax-paying, law-abiding citizen.

Hell, just venting may be dangerous. Amazon may have me deported.

I'm looking at alternative affiliate programs now (B&N wants a DNA sample from my great-great grandmother) but Daddy Warbucks, if you're out there, now's your turn to speak up.

All Hail Mordecai!

2011-04-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

Sigh.

It's a cliché. "I laughed, I cried."

But I did.

I've just finished re-reading Barney's Version by the late, great Mordecai Richler for my mystery reading group at the local Barnes & Noble, and I'm wrecked.

Yeah, it was my choice. And damn it, it IS a mystery, after all. Or at least there's a murder that lies at the great, wild heart of it.
But I forgot how fucking good it is.

What I really want to say is that Barney's Version is by far the best book I've ever read. It's got everything in it. Tears. Laughter. Murder. Family. Children. Bars. Honour. Love. Montreal.

And real style. A real voice. Barney Panofsky has simply one of the most distinctive, memorable narrative voices in fiction; even more vivid than Philip Marlowe's.

And anyone reading this blog knows how I love my Chandler. He was great; one of the funniest, wittiest and most distinctive writers ever, not just in crime fiction but in literature. But Chandler never made me cry.

But Barney Panofsky did.

It's a clever premise: Barney, an aging, rich Canadian TV producer (mostly, he admits, of schlock), looks back on his life. His childhood growing up in Montreal, the son of a rough-and-tumble cop, his wild years in Paris poking around the edges of a circle of ex-pat writers and artists, his three marriages and, of course, the suspicion of that he murdered his best friend that has hung over him for over thirty years. Along the way, Barney rambles and digresses (and his son contradicts him in a series of nitpicking footnotes) and Richler gets to poke fun at his usual favourite targets with his usual take-no-prisoners wit. Suffice it to say that nationalists of all stripes, racists and the over-earnest and the pretentious do not come off well. In fact, if the reader doesn't squirm at least once in self-recognition, they're probably not paying attention. Although perhaps the biggest target of Barney's scorn is himself.

Along the way a lot of cigars are smoked and booze is swallowed. Opinions are expressed and stories are told. Hearts are broken, petty scores settled and inflated egos punctured. It's hard not to be drawn into Barney's world -- he's alternately nasty, noble, loyal, self-serving, shallow, faithful and a cad, but somehow, despite himself, always honest. And, as his faculties slowly desert him, it's difficult not to feel something for the poor son of a bitch. Or laugh at the blackly humourous bitch slap of an ending.

(Hell, I'd even call those last few paragraphs noir, if that meant anything anymore to anyone but a few malcontents and professional cynics cranking out torture porn pulp in their basements.)

They've recently made a movie of Barney's Version, starring Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Minnie Driver and Rosamund Pike. It was released in Canada and briefly, oh so briefly, in the States. I haven't seen it yet (I think it only played for a week in LA and New York) but no matter how good it might be, it could never be as effective as the novel, or touch what I'm feeling right now.

Shit. I need to get home to Montreal this year. Hug my kids. Walk Ste. Catherine. Have a medium fat at Schwarz's...

The 13th Anniversary "Issue" is Up

2011-04-01T11:23:00.001-07:00

And So it goes...

2011-03-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

Some joke.

April Fool’s Day and me reviewing a book of poetry.

But once upon a time…

* * * * *

High school. Mrs. Ticehurst’s English class.

Skeptical, enthusiastic, passionate, crazy Mrs. Ticehurst loved the written word.

With her wild, prematurely graying hair and her peace sign pendant, she defied us to love it too. She turned us on to books. To drama. To poetry. To writing.

But the class held another, more important attraction to me.

A pretty classmate, slim, brunette. Always wore a man’s flannel shirt a few sizes too large.

Wasn’t always good about doing up her top buttons. Boys notice that kind of thing.

She leaned over my desk to read my poetry assignment.

“This is good,” she said. “Really good,” and looked at me with a look I’d never seen before

From anyone.

And so I wrote poetry.

A lot of it. Angsty stuff. Sensitive. But mostly bad. Truly bad.

But she loved it. And sometimes so did Mrs. Ticehurst.

* * * * *

There’s no bad poetry in The Lineup 4.

Bad people, sure. Bad situations. Bad decisions. Bad luck.

But not bad poetry.

A lot of free verse, scattershot rhythms, off-kilter random thoughts and phrases with miles of space in between.

Spaces to fill with dread. Unease. An ominous foreboding.

The telling detail that nails the sucker to your brain.

There are no faerie queens or talking trees here. Just real human beings.

Victims. Victimizers. Humans.

The casual name dropping of Bundy, of Manson, of others, doesn’t shock me.

The off-hand gore and vivisection clamors for attention, but I shrug it off. Adolescent.

But those are few and far between.

And even those have their moments of disturbing beauty.

* * * * *

And so, I may not know poetry after all.

But I know what I like.

And I like most of these poems. These sad, mournful poems.

Of revenge.

Like, “Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72” by Charles Harper Webb.

Or the grim beauty of unleashed violence.

Like “The Balance Lost” by Steve Weddle.

Or the point where being hard-boiled becomes simply damned.

Like Reed Farrell Coleman’s “Slider, Part 7.”

And so it goes. This is power and truth and beauty and ugliness here.

Odes to disconnection.

Broken dreams.

Broken promises.

Broken lives.

By Ken Bruen. By David Corbett. By Keith Rawson.

Terrible, adult stuff, that holds a mirror up to us and offers an unflinching reflection.

Of how we live. And how we die.

It will make you squirm, at times.

It made me squirm.

It will make you look over your shoulder.

It made me look over my shouldrer.

But I kept on reading.

These are vignettes from Hell.

But it’s our Hell.

I bet Mrs. Ticehurst would have loved it.

THE LINEUP 4, edited by Gerald So, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez and R. Narvaez, is available from Poetic Justice Press.

Québec's secret influence on Ontario...

2011-03-03T09:35:00.000-08:00

Like Ross Macdonald, another lost Canadian, I too feel the pull of the Great White North tugging at me, always tugging. And being a Montrealer (a distinct society within a distinct society within a distinct society) the gravity can get particularly fierce.

That's why I got such a hoot out of this photo my friend Bruce sent me. It was taken in predominantly English-speaking Ontario...

Not from Québec? Basically, French swear words in Québec are very idiomatic, rotted in history and culture, and many of them are based on the sacraments of the Catholic Church. To utter the French words for "tabernacle" or "chalice" or "the host" is just rude, the equivalent of saying "shit" or "fuck" or "hell" or whatever. But with the very real sin of blasphemy added to the mix.

So, just like in English, people uses slightly less offensive euphemisms: sugar, fudge, heck. Stuff like that.

"Câline des bin" is a popular phrase, generally acceptable even in polite company. Sort of the equivalent of "What the heck!" or maybe "Darn!" Literally, it almost translates as "cup of beans", but whatever, it's pretty harmless.

My mom even used to say it, and she didn't even speak French. My dad, who learned his French in the VanDoos, a French-Canadian regiment of the regiment, would use something considerably stronger.

Yeah, it's a long walk for a short laugh, but that picture made my day.

This Just In...

2011-01-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the info dump, but for those of you who have lives and haven't been following me on Tweeter or don't religiously visit the This Just In... portion of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, I thought I'd re-post some of my recent ramblings and stray thoughts...

Joe Gores Passes Away

Sad news to report. Joe Gores, the Edgar-winning creator of the astounding DKA series, and the man behind Spade & Archer, Interface, Hammett, Cases and a slew of other great detective and crime fiction, both in print and on television, passed away a few days ago. I had the chance to meet him a few years back, in a bar at Bouchercon, and we killed a little time while we waited for our wives. He was charming and gracious, and a full-tilt storyteller 24/7. He will be missed.

The Bitter and the Sweet

Joe Gores passes away, and a new short story by his hero is discovered. "So I Shot Him" by Dashiell Hammett is scheduled to be published in the Winter/Spring issue of The Strand Magazine.

New Law Passed by United Nations

Unanimously, in fact. Joe Pike and Jack Reacher are prohibited by international law from being in same time zone simultaneously. Something about disrupting the time/space/testosterone continuum, evidently...

NBC Closes Drawer on New Rockford Files!

Good News! The suits at NBC have decided to pass (for now) on the "reimagining" of America's most beloved private eye, and a grateful nation heaves a collective sigh of relief. But we're not out of the soup yet. Last year's unaired pilot, starring Dermot Mulroney and scripted by "House" creator David Shore wasn't picked up, but it's still kicking around, and while NBC has dropped plans to rework it, it may be only temporary. I'm sorry, but given how popular the original series was, and how respected and admired James Garner is, remaking this series would be like NBC pissing on a whole country. Don't do it, NBC! Remake something that was crappy to begin with. Or -- gosh! -- come up with a NEW idea.

In Bed with Laura Lippman

It sounds sexier than it is, but still... By the way, her new Tess Monaghan novella The Girl in the Green Raincoat is now out: as neat as reworking of Rear Window as I've seen, and about as respectful and graceful an exit as an author could give a beloved character, if Lippman decides to let Tess go. Although I hope she doesn't.

The First Fictional Private Eye?

Okay, "private eye" might be a little bit of a stretch, but insurance investigator Ralph Henderson, who appeared in the 1862 serial The Notting Hill Mystery, which predates The Moonstone, Lecoq and Sherlock Holmes himself, sure qualifies as a private detective. In fact, I'm so jazzed by this one that I've done a new cover!

Going Global

The Pulp/Noir issue of India's Tehelka Magazine is now available online featuring stories, videos and all sorts of goodies. And let's face it, where else are you going to read lines like this one from "Damsel in Distress" by Siddharta Chowdbury: "the girl sitting diagonally opposite me at Pindi Sweet House in Kilokri near Maharani Bagh had tits that would delight even the great Jogen Chowdhury." Hey, I read 'em all.

Getting the Needle

How the Hell did I miss this? One of the pitfalls of my wilderness year is how much flew right by me. Anyway, it looks like plenty of folks have rushed in to pick up the slack since we dropped fiction at Thrilling Detective. One of the very best I've seen is Needle, an honest-to-God-damn print magazine, which bills itself as "a magazine of noir." Many of the contributors will be familiar to readers here, including old pals like Ray Banks, Kieran Shea, Patti Abbott, Dave Zeltserman, Sandra Seamans, Sarah Weinman, Stephen Blackmoore, Anthony Neil Smith, Libby Cudmore and Graham Powell. Check it out!

Because the Night Belongs to Gumshoes?

In the December 26's New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd talks of rocker Patti Smith's passion for "writing detective novels." Evidently, something about the writing of the National Book award-winning Just Kids has evidently unlocked Smith's inner Mike Hammer? Stay tuned...

Sitting there playing solitaire with your pearl-handled deck?

2011-01-07T14:44:00.000-08:00

This one's for all you Zevonphiles out there, or anyone who loves a good cover.

Canadian singer/songwriter Murray McLauchlan, probably best known for "The Farmer's Song," actually recorded the classic junkie lament "Carmelita" in 1972. Four years before Zevon before it finally landed on a Zevon album. So I knew the song years before I'd ever heard of Zevon. Or even, for that matter, Linda Ronstadt.

In fact, when I was growing up, McLauchlan was pretty hot stuff, and he's still one of my favorite songwriters. Scottish-born, he grew up in Toronto, and racked up a slew of AM hits and FM radio picks in the seventies, marked by a dour skepticism and street level pessimism leavened by a scruffy sense of wit and observation that marked him as an original, even as he was borrowing liberally from country, folk and rock influences.

He may have never been really cool (his first big hit was a tribute to farmers, fer cryin' out loud), but he was all over the radio:

"Maybe, Tonight" A lonely traveling salesman looking for some...

"Down by the Henry Moore" Captureing the whirl of early seventies Toronto better than just about anything).

"Honky Red" The classic wino lament with the immortal lines: "I fought in your wars/Now I sleep in your doors/And I left my leg in France."

"On the Boulevard" Working man blues. Lou Reed without the contempt.

"You Need a New Lover Now" Which at least one Canadian mystery writer swore to me is all about her.

"Hard Rock Town" An ode to the mining town of Sudbury, Ontario, and still as good a study of kids growing up in a dead-end town as there's been. "The kids grow up too fast inside/Now they're spitting in the high school halls..."

"Child's Song" Also recorded by folkie Tom Bush, mapped out the whole angsty father/son battlefield Springsteen would later ride to glory.

The obligatory double live album, Only the Silence Remains, featuring McLauchlan on guitar, harmonica and defiance, backed only by a bass player and a rowdy crowd, remains one of my all-time favourite albums (and is, of course, now sadly out of print).

The American market, however, eluded him. He went rock, he went country, he went folk, he toured but just couldn't crack the market. Eventually his brand of homespun singer/songwriter rock, full of wry observation and slice of life grit fell out of fashion, even back home.

What was he supposed to do? Go glam? Shove a safety pin through his nose? Release a disco album?

So he became a bush pilot. He staged occasional comeback attempts. He wrote his autobiography. He hosted a popular CBC radio show or two. And even now, he releases an album every now and then. They don't chart anymore, but I buy 'em. When I can find him.

But I digress...

Back in the early seventies, Zevon was earning his daily bread as musical director for The Everly Brothers who were going through their third or fourth comeback attempt. Phil and Don were doing a tour of British Columbia "mining towns," and the opening act was McLauchlan, who was just starting to make a name for himself. The two young singer/songwriters hit it off, and agreed to record one of each other's songs.

McLauchlan kept his promise, and "Carmelita" appeared on his 1972 self-titled album, Murray McLauchlan (his second). The McLauchlan version even has an extra verse, a little bit of nonsense about an angry Samoan.

But during a Montreal concert during the Excitable Boy tour, before playing "Carmelita," a very, uh, over-served Zevon blurted out the whole story, and offered up a sort of rambling apology to McLauchlan for not keeping up his end of the deal. I was there. I heard it.

No, McLauchlan's version isn't better than Zevon's. Zevon's doom-and-gloom bellow is missing, but McLauchlan has a rather unique voice himself, a sort of Canadianized, rough-and-tumble yelp mixed with a Toronto-ized Scottish burr, that brought it down a notch, made it less epic mythology and a bit more street-level, if you will.

So, it's not better, it's not worse; it's just different.

But I sorta like it.

With Apologies to Ray... (Snow in Palmdale)

2011-01-02T23:08:00.000-08:00

"There was a cold wintry wind blowing in the desert that night. It was one of those freak snows that come down through the mountain passes and bury your car and most of the twitchy paranoia. On nights like that every booze party ends in a snowball fight, and grown men try to write their names in the snow. Meek little wives put on another sweather and turn the kettle on, while waiting for their husbands to finish shoveling the driveway. Anything can happen. You can even catch a hockey game at a cocktail lounge."

It may not rain in Southern California, but girl, don't they warn ya, it snows.

Man, It snows!!!

No, really! Snow in the palm trees! I kid you not. This errant canadien is happy.

Happy Damned New Year, Part Deux

2011-01-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

Happy Damned New Year!

2010-12-31T15:49:00.000-08:00

"They were all whooping it up, the optimism and booze flowing freely, awaiting the new year. I was nursing a beer, my back to the wall. I just wanted to make sure the old one left."

That's the opening (maybe) from a story I'm writing, featuring my Montreal barfly/P.I. Thomas St. Cyr. I think it's going to be called "A World in White," and it's part of my nefarious master plan for 2011 to get some fiction published.

So, okay, you caught me.

You've all been had.

In the tradition of egomaniacs everywhere, The Thrilling Detective Web Site is actually just a hollow shill; all this time it's been a blast of blatant self-promotion disguised as a reference site, a bogus marketing scam to plug my so-far unpublished (and possibly unpublishable) stories featuring Montreal barfly and off-the-books private eye Thomas St. Cyr...

Given that the site's been around since 1998 or so and this is the first time I think I've ever mentioned St. Cyr in these pages, I figure I oughtta get some sort of long con award.

But the plan is that, in 2011, I will get a few stories, including a few featuring St. Cyr, published. It's been too fucking long since I've had any fiction published. And publicly outting myself like this -- something I'm still queasy about -- may be the only way to get myself off my ass and finally do it.

Some of the stories are in progress; a depressingly large number of stuff just need final tweaking. And self-confidence.

So here I am, out of the closet and hanging in the breeze, just another wannabe writer throwing himself over the falls. Sigh...

What's on tap tonight?

The in-laws in Palmdale, California, and a few bottles of Maudite from a brewery in my hometown 3000 miles away in Quebec. Maudite is French for "damned," more or less.

Tomorrow?

The world.

Bonne année.

Merry Christmas, Everybody!

2010-12-25T00:20:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that time of year again, and it feels good to be back at work on the site. My decision to get rid of (at least for now) the fiction, to add the "This Just In" and "Quote of the Week" features, and to use Twitter in conjunction with this blog seem to be paying off -- traffic has increased, and I'm inspired to try out a few new things. Like, my new "Christmas Issue" has a new Christmas-themed "cover" (oooh, look what Santa has!), a end-of-year list of My Favourite P.I. things of 2010 and a revised and updated List of Holiday P.I. Movies, Books & Stories that I think is sorta spiffy.

But the real plus of coming back from the dead is the sheer fun I'm having. I'd forgotten how much fun the site can be. So, please, spread the word: I'm back. And please, have yourself a very Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays to all.

Thanks for the Bailout. Can we screw you some more?

2010-12-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

Dear Chase (insert your own bank's name here if you want to vent along),

Thanks so much for your pre-Christmas Gift. So you greed heads are now imposing service fees that penalize people who get paid in smaller increments that you would like?

Were I paid bi-weekly I'd easily meet your new minimum direct deposit, but because I'm paid on a weekly basis that doesn't quite reach it, I'll be penalized with a new $10 "service fee"? Because my salary doesn't arrive in big enough chunks for you?

Yeah, that's a good way to reward loyal customers who've used your direct deposit for years.

And what "services" will I get in return? The same old computerized phone system that turns a two-minute question into a 30-minute, option-choosing ordeal that ends with someone who can barely read off a computer prompter? Semi-competent, gum-snapping teenage tellers? Inconvenient bank hours? An ATM in an unlit, syringe-laden parking lot? An online "Secure Message Center" that deletes messages without sending them, thus requiring customers to seek alternate means of communication?

Please reconsider this policy. In times like these, working people need understanding from the banks -- not more unconscionable gouging. Remember who it was that bailed you guys out...

BTW, Canada has tons of banking regulations. But their banking system is also rated as about the safest and most secure on the planet. Unlike you blood-suckers here who are at, what, 17th? 18th? 19th?

Freedom's Just Another Word for No One Else To Kill...

2010-11-22T21:32:00.000-08:00

I posted this on Ed Gorman's blog the other day as a comment on a provocative and thoughtful post he made about guns -- and why he won't own one. He thought my little contribution was worth re-posting, so I thought I might as well post it here (in slightly altered form), as well.

"The couple that own the local comic shop down the road have, on three different cases in the last eight years, hauled out their guns to defend their store from being burglarized in the middle of the night. In each case, they were in the store (in the middle of the night?). They've killed two of them (he got one, she got one) and in another incident, initiated a high speed chase that ended with them pulling a gun and forcing the guy off the road.

Evidently, they prefer sitting in their store at night in the dark (in each case, the store appeared deserted), and killing people, rather than putting a couple of bars on their windows."

Now, I'm not going to claim Americans kill more of each other per capita than any other nation on the entire planet -- they don't -- but for an allegedly civilized, God-fearing country that's part of the West and that allegedly treasures life and liberty, its citizens sure do like killing. Preferably foreigners, of course, but fellow citizens will do in a pinch.

You could look it up...

Twits are for Kids...

2010-11-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

And grumpy old web monkeys, evidently. You can now keep up to date on what's happening in the P.I. world -- and my take on them -- by following ThrillDetective on Twitter.

Actually, it's all part of my plan (as much as I've ever planned anything) to rejuvenate The Thrilling Detective Web Site.

To those of you who've been followed the site through the years, you've probably noticed it's been pretty dormant until recently.

But that's about to change. If you head on over to the site you'll see I'm well into round two of our special, "We're Not Dead Yet" transitional phase.

I'm still tweaking things, but here's a quick recap: unfortunately, due to severe time constraints, part of our previous concept (or was it conceit?) of semi-regular "issues" featuring a handful of original stories and selected excerpts, has -- after a lot of soul-searching and hand-wringing over the last year -- been taken out to the woods and gently tucked into a shallow grave. Temporarily or forever, I'm not sure, but currently I just don't have the dime or the time to devote to the fiction side of this site. Or at least in any sort of way that will ensure the quality you've come to expect.

I will, however, continue to try to keep -- with renewed energy, I hope, and your encouragement -- the reference portion of the site going. That, in fact, was the original idea for the site: a big P.I. reference site. And actually, non-fiction has always been the less glamorous but major portion of this site -- and plenty time-consuming in its own right. But I intend to keep it going for as long as I can. Or until the wheels inevitably fall off.

To keep this site current and moving along -- and to make sure I don't slack off -- I intend to maintain a short list of ten or so items detailing happenings in the P.I. world. This Just In... will feature short, mostly snappy blasts (I hope), with appropriate links, that will direct you to -- or give you my take on -- some of the things that have caught my eye lately and that may be of interest to you. Abbreviated versions of them will also appear here on this blog and on our Twitter feed occasionally.

I've also introduced a Quote of the Week, just for fun. Feel free to submit suggestions. If I choose one of yours, I'll send you a P.I. book or something... Lord knows, I have too many books.

For those of you who despair that you'll never read fiction on the site again, please note that, like Sean Connery, I never said "never".

"Toronto" "Noir"... Again

2010-11-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

A while back, I ranted about what I felt was the, um, dubious selection process employed by the editors of Toronto Noir, Akashic's first foray into the Canadian crime scene. At the time, I was disappointed that so few "crime" writers had been chosen for the project, the editors instead opting for more "literary" writers.

One of them claimed he'd tried to include more genre writers; at least a couple of crime writers told me their queries had been ignored. What the hell, as Dan Turner might have said.

But that was long ago and far away. Recently, I've read two noirish books by Toronto -- or at least Toronto-area writers -- that have stuck in my craw. Hell, they might even be accused of being "literary." But don't let that scare you. They're actually readable. So maybe the editors were on to something.

Although, going back to my copy of Toronto Noir, I see neither of these two writers made the cut, either. Still, in a better world, maybe they'll be allowed to participate in Toronto Noir II.

Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall (could he sound any more Torontonian? He sounds like a subway station) is an award-winning journalist from the Queen City, and while there is a crime novel of sorts in Ghosted, his first full-length stab at fiction, it’s buried under the rubble of a crazy, blackhearted maelstrom of desperation, suicide, drugs, Bob Seger, memory and delusion.

Fortunately, there’s enough gloom and doom and crime here – everything from gambling and drugs to murder and horse theft -- to keep noir fans happy, but this is, more correctly, a novel of bleak self-discovery and dark redemption. Mason Dubisee, a Toronto journo and would-be novelist whose life went off the rails years ago, staggers home after years of gambling, booze, drugs and squandered talent to be taken in by childhood friend and drug dealer Chaz. The action follows Mason’s quixotic struggle as a vendor of hot dogs near Toronto's City Hall, a coke-fuelled gambler on a major losing streak, an addict sweating through recovery and eventually, a potentially lucrative career as a professional writer of suicide notes. It’s the latter that ultimately puts Mason in the crosshairs of Seth, a charming but sadistic sociopath – and finally lights a fire under the sputtering plot.

Lucky for us, the finely rendered rogues’ gallery of memorable but damaged characters -- the beautiful wheelchair-bound junkie Willie; the sad, shy, guilt-ridden Warren; the unloved, obese Sissy; the suicidal performance artist Soon, and Chaz, the always amiable criminal, among others – and a barrage of pop culture namedropping (hey, it’s a Toronto novel, after all) will keep patient readers turning the pages. In fact, with its lovingly drawn but fucked-up characters, ruminations on the act of writing, the fragility of life, the lies we tell ourselves to keep on going and a GOTCHA! climatic confrontation between Mason and Seth that finally KrazyGlues all those disparate threads together, this bleak, frequently nasty literate novel comes off like a film noir pounded out by a pissed-off John Irving suffering from a nasty hangover.

Shaughnessy will be touring the States, hitting NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, Iowa City, San Francsco and Portland and who knows where else in the next few days, and I'll warn you right now: he's a man who likes to talk to a man who likes to talk. If you'd like to download and view his full itinerary, click here.

But I digress...

I'm not even sure if London, Ontario qualifies as "Toronto area" (certainly not to anyone who lives in London, anyway), but since at least a few, mostly American reviews have tagged fantasy author R. Scott Bakker as a "Toronto" writer despite his residence a couple of hours drive west, that's good enough for me.

And Bakker's foray into crime fiction should be good enough for you. Disciple of the Dog introduces private eye Disciple Manning, and it's one hell of a debut. Because, you see, Disciple's not your average gumshoe.

As though being named Disciple (and living in Newark) isn't enough of a handicap, he's also cursed with perfect memory.

Cool, right?

But it t'ain't necessarily so. As Manning puts it, "You wonder why I'm cynical. I've literally seen it all before. The truth is we all have, every single one of us past the age of, say, twenty-five. The only difference is that I remember."

There's a price to pay for all that total recall, you see. It seems you can't forget anything. Even if you want to. And it's left poor Manning with a pretty dim view of not just humanity, but life itself. "We keep waiting for something Shakespearean to happen," he explains, but we end up with "the Jerry Springer Show. Squalid. Cheap. Mean-spirited."

Which probably explains his disastrous relationships with women, his periodic substance abuse binges and the occasional suicide attempt. Only pot-smoking, the task of journal-keeping that his latest therapist has foisted upon him and the slight chance that a case will expose him to something new that will actually challenge his "mangy capabilities" keep him from just turning out the big light.

So when Jonathan and Amanda Bonjour ask him to look into the disappearance of their missing daughter, Jennifer, who had recently journeyed to the small, one-horse town of Ruddick, Pennsylvania to join a doomsday cult, Disciple jumps at the chance. Not because he's heroic or noble or even because he gives a "fawk" but simply because it might not be boring -- and there might a sizable fee. Drugs and bimbos don't come cheap, after all.

And while Disciple may not always the most likable of human beings and the book runs a little long, there's something rather enjoyable about watching this self-destructive scuzzball square off against small town cops, assorted true believers, a slew of neo-Nazis, a sexy journalist who sniffs a career-changing story and the charismatic but possibly insane psychology professor turned cult leader. Toss in a few clever, pulpy plot twists, and Disciple's constant stream of occasionally nasty wisecracks, put downs, wry observations and philosophical asides (and shout-outs to The Tragically Hip) and you've got one of the more memorable P.I. characters of the last year. You might even say unforgettable.

Both Ghosted and Disciple of the Dog are fine, dark stabs at the beast we call noir -- check 'em out!

Sigh, Rant.... I'm Back

2010-10-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

Sigh....

Sorry about that.... the hiatus was as prolonged as it was unplanned. And just about as unproductive.

Is it too early to sigh again?

Anyway, part of my long slow crawl back to doing what people seem to expect me to do is to once again start cruising the crime fiction mailing lists, and I swear some things never change. In fact, they may have gotten worse.

For example, after all these years some prima donna authors are still bitching about "bad reviews." And now it's not just POD/vanity press newbies. It's also the ebook brigade. It's also more established writers who really should know better. As the publishing pie continues to be cut into more and more slices and it gets harder and harder for non-superstar authors to make a decent living writing fiction, we're bound to see more attacks on criticism -- just as criticism should theoretically become more and more important in separating the great from the good, and the good from the horrid.

Now, granted, there are some genuinely "bad reviews" out there -- poorly written, incomprehensible self-styled "reviews" that betray no understanding at all of the considered work (or even the genre or the context). I'm against those sort of reviews myself. They drag down everyone who takes criticism -- or good writing -- or civilized discourse -- seriously.

But those reviews -- which may be either positive or negative -- aren't what these overly sensitive scribblers on the lists are moaning about. Nope. What they're really griping about when they say "bad reviews" are actually "negative reviews." As in, someone had the audacity and gall to disparage their literary genius, to question a weak plot or a lazy characterization. Most of these overly sensitive artistic types would be all be in favor of "bad reviews" -- just as long as they were favorable.

But unfavorable reviews? No, we can't have those. Of course, there's never anything wrong with the work in question -- no, it must be sour grapes on the part of the reviewer, or ignorance or stupidity. In fact, one of their most tired old saws is that critics and reviewers review other people's work because they can't write themselves -- which is bullshit.

An ability to write well in one field is no guarantee one can write well in another field. Nor is the ability to write fiction well any indication that one can just as easily write non-fiction or criticism. Sure, some people can write well in many fields; but most cannot.

In criticism, an understanding of and ability to discuss what constitutes good fiction is far more valuable than being able to write it.

I write reviews because I -- possibly mistakenly -- believe I'm good at them. And because people are willing to pay me to write them. And other people for some bizarre reason want me to write them.

I may have fooled a lot of people, but sometimes I do dig up something I think more people should read and sometimes I let a little air of the tires of some writer's over-inflated EgoMobile. But whether it's thumbs up, thumbs down or a bit of both, I always try to express myself in an honest (and hopefully entertaining) fashion.

So it vexes me that many of these buffoons who call themselves writers really don't understand criticism at all -- and have so little respect for critics. They really think critics are there solely to help them sell their books. They want flag waving, breathless raves and hyperbolic praise.

But I don't write for writers. I write for readers.

Alas, some authors, some after years of being published, still don't get it. I just read yet another ill-tempered rant (ironically, from a writer who generally gets positive reviews from some pretty impressive sources) who's been known to carry grudges for years, and is now publicly indulging in torture fantasies about what would happen if he ever gets his hands on anyone who ever writes a "bad review" of one of his books.

Worse, this Paragon of Pettiness claims he represents the yearnings of authors everywhere.

Sorry, toots. I know a lot of writers. I even live with one. And you don't represent "every author" on that one. Not even close. Most writers have tougher skins. They don't hiss and spit about "bad reviews" for years and years or daydream on a public forum about going all Gitmo on someone who displeases them. That's kid stuff.

Every writer occasionally gets a negative review. It's part of the job. The good ones, the tough ones, the ones with true grit -- they shrug it off and keep writing. Oh, the word "idiot" or "asshole" may pop up now and then in unguarded conversation (like I said, I know a lot of writers) when they consider the lowly critic who did them wrong, but that's about it.

Not that I write a lot of negative reviews (life's too short to devote so much energy and attention to truly bad books), but I've received more than a few notes from writers who (obviously) may have disagreed with my opinion but appreciated my taking the time to review them.

Perhaps it's because they were savvy enough to have figured out that even a negative review -- particularly if it's sincere and in a legit forum -- is better than no review at all. Someone taking your work seriously enough to weigh its worth -- publicly -- is something to be desired. But it's not a given. As many a frustrated writer -- myself included -- can tell you.

In other words, the mere act of a legit critic seriously considering a work makes that work -- and by extension the author him or herself -- appear to be worthy of serious consideration. Crazy, huh?

So, it's not a legit reviewer's job to bolster the flailing self-esteem of writers by withholding negative opinions. Nor is it their duty to enable and prolong the literary fantasies of writers who just aren't that good.

That's what those sub-literate five star Amazon "reviews" and gushing raves on some of the more dubious ass-kissing atta boy mailing lists are for.

* * * * *

Yeah, I'm back. A new, revamped version of the Thrilling Detective Web Site may just make it online in the next few weeks. Or maybe not. And I'm doing a drive-by to Bouchercon this coming weekend to attend the PWA dinner. Anyone going?

Ontario, Quebec and Me

2010-05-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

Always one of my favourite songs, it was written by British folksinger/one-man Clash Billy Bragg years ago, and most recently included on his 1999 hodgepodge of a collection, Reaching to the Converted. My guess is that it was written sometime back in the eighties (can you spot the callout to Montrealer Corey Hart?) when Bragg was bouncing back and forth across the world and spending a lot of time in Canada, trying to build a career. For a political wonk like Bragg, the Canadian political scene must have been fascinating -- and exasperating. The song is no less relevant today. And it was never just about Canada.

Except for the title, it doesn't even seem all that political at first -- just another oblique, cryptic love song; the sort of thing Bragg has always had a deft hand with. At least until you dig a little, and consider the title again. And then it becomes a prayer, almost, for any two people, nations, ideologies, solitudes or what have you that don't always see eye to eye but still want to live in peace.

In a world that is increasingly dumbing down , with all too many politicians, pundits and glib, vile, cynical opportunists who would rather divide us than unite us, catering to our lowest, basest, most vile instincts, maybe it's time more people paid attention to prayers like this.

"You don't need my Christmas cards
You already have my heart
This has been a holiday romance
Right from the very start

For we know how to spend the time
Who cares about the weather
We'll dance in the town till the sun goes down
And push our beds together

From the land of the midnight sunglasses
To the mountains of the moon
You could never stay a day too long
Nor never come back too soon

For we know how to spend the time
Who cares about the weather
We'll dance in the town till the sun goes down
And push our beds together

And you know what a fool I am
With my short attention span
Flying in the rainy season too
Nothing can keep me away from you

For we know how to spend the time
Who cares about the weather
We'll dance in the town till the sun goes down
And push our beds together."

Or maybe it's just a dumb love song. But I like it.

Oh, to be in Montréal now that Spring is here...

2010-05-12T18:34:00.001-07:00

No, really... imagine what'll be like if we go all the way.

Ah, the Things You Find When Cleaning Up Old Files...

2010-03-13T07:51:00.000-08:00

This is a quote I stumbled across when looking for something else. I eventually used it in a piece I wrote, and considering its source, I still think it still stands out as a bit of brave writing.

“In my career as a detective, both as a police officer and an author, I have always followed the evidence, wherever it lead. My investigation of the death penalty in Oklahoma County has brought me to this conclusion: death penalty cases are not investigated or prosecuted at a level that can guarantee justice, or even that the accused is actually guilty.

I no longer believe in the death penalty. I no longer have faith that it is administered fairly or justly. I fear innocent people have been executed…

I could make all sorts of arguments about deterrence, cost-effectiveness, wrongful convictions, politics, philosophy, and so on. But it boils down to this – the death penalty brings out the worst in all of us: hatred, anger, vengeance, ambition, cruelty, and deceit…

The story of the death penalty in Oklahoma, and throughout America, is sad, even depressing. But it is not without hope. The solution rests with each one of us to see the truth and then act on it. To choose justice over revenge.”

Anyone recognize the source?

You can probably google it in about 2 seconds, but does anyone have any guesses? The answer may surprise some of you. And piss off others.

By the way, for anyone who reads this very erratically published blog, I know, I know. Where have I been?

I think I'm about to break surface again.

Bah! Humbug! But please, buy books...

2009-12-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sheesh. Has it really been four months since I last blogged?

You'd think I had a life or something!

Anyway, a end-of-year blog/post from Linda Richards, mystery writer, editor and cyberpal, finally prodded me out of my online stupor. And I probably needed it. Somehow life has grabbed hold of me and whisked me away from several projects I really should be focussing on. Like, my own Thrilling Detective site's fall issue now will be lucky to make it online by January.

Anyway, back to Linda. It's a typical year-end message, plugging January Magazine's best-of for 2009, and I've even got a few pieces in it somewhere. So far so good. Then she goes on to urge people to buy folks books for the holidays, a suggestion of which I heartily approve

But then she unleases this little sucker:

"Indie booksellers are passionate, interested and -- most of the time -- big readers. Ask for help: you'll be pleased and amazed at the warm response you get."
Hello?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for supporting your local bookstore. And I LOVE indie bookstores.

But I love ALL bookstores. It's just too easy to propagate this myth that only indie booksellers care about books. Most people who choose to work in bookstores care about books. They're certainly not in it for the money. I have the pay stubs to prove that.

I work in a bookstore, part of one of those allegedly big evil chain stores everyone is apparently supposed to despise, but I care just as passionately about books as anyone working in one of those sainted little shops everyone romanticizes about. Sorry, but life is not a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks movie.

I'm a real-life bookseller. If you cut me, do I not bleed? And if one dares to enter our store I recommend, I hand sell, I bend over backwards to find the right book for the right person. I'm actually sorta good at it. I'm nice to people. I don't even bite them anymore.

And, as I said, I'm certainly not in it for the money -- in fact, I have a sneaking suspicion Otto Penzler, another big basher of big stores (check out his scenery-chewing off-topic rant/intro to his great new book The Line-Up), might pay me better than my corporate overlords do if I worked for him.

But I despise the on-going mindset that implies that anyone who works for Barnes & Noble or Chapters or W.H. Smith or whatever is somehow morally or intellectually inferior. It's that sort of on-going and pervasive contempt in certain quarters that no doubt contributes to the rudeness and nastiness regularly bestowed upon my fellow workers and me by select members of the general public. Especially at this "time of good cheer."

I've worked indies, and I've worked for big chains. And believe me, indie workers get treated far better. No customer in a small ma-and-pa store -- be it books or coffee or whatever -- would ever so easily toss around the abuse that workers for large chains are subjected to every day.

It's the same sort of troublesome mindset, a sort of faux-elistist, anti-corporate populism, that allows some "average" citizens to think they can easily insult some hapless Macdonalds or Wal-Mart workers to their face and say the sort of nasty, foul things that they would never think of saying to anyone else. Sorry, folks, but just because someone works for a big company does not mean they're automatically worthy of your contempt and abuse. Or somehow less human.

But I digress.

What do you do when your local bookstore is part of a big chain? Do we support our neighbours and friends who are employed there by shopping locally or do we travel fifty miles to a small indie with bad service, poor selection and cat hair on everything? (Perhaps even Linda realizes this dilemma -- she suggests checking out things on Amazon -- not exactly a beloved small local indie itself -- BEFORE heading down to your local).

Oh, and here's another myth. Our local store did NOT arrive by forcing other stores out of business by nefarious means. There wasn't a single fire bombing or drive-by shooting. Those few supposedly wonderful little stores -- if they ever existed -- were long gone even before B&N was invited to set up shop in our sleepy little bedroom town. Yeah, they were invited by the city because there were NO decent bookstores in the area.

So, by all means, buy books this year. I'll even suggest you buy them from a real actual bookstore. From someone who cares about books. But wherever you buy them, be nice to the person trying to help you.

'tis the season, after all.

We Want Our DVDS

2009-08-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

As web monkey for The Thrilling Detective Web Site, I get loads of mail asking, over and over, when the shows listed below are coming out on DVD. Or Blu-Ray.

Sorry, Folks. I don't know anything more than what's on the site.

But anyway, here's the top ten P.I. shows (subject to update) that people want to see. If you hear anything about the (legal) availability of any of these, let me know...

Harry O (1974-76, ABC)
By far the most requested show, and the most critically acclaimed P.I. show NOT to be available on DVD. David Janssen winced and grimaced and carried a world of hurt on his shoulders, and spoke some of the best writing -- in any medium -- the genre ever produced. Howard Rodman, this one's for you.

Spenser: For Hire (1985-1988, ABC)
Really? There must be an awful lot of Robert Urich fans out there.

Staccato (1959-60, NBC/ABC)
A noirish cult fave, starring and occasionally directed by John Cassavetes. Very cool to look at; occasionally (and unintentionally) hilarious to watch -- but that's what happens when you're an "auteur" aiming high.

Vega$ (1978-81, ABC)
Really? See #2.

Peter Gunn (1958-61, NBC/ABC)
Yeah, some of the episodes have surfaced, but the complete run is what the boys in the back room will have. Starring Craig Stevens as the coolest TV eye ever, stylish but never self-conscious. Extra points for having Edie, the greatest P.I. girlfriend ever.

Longstreet (1971-1972, ABC)
James Franciscus as a blind insurance investigator. I loved this show as a kid, but I'm pretty sure most of the demand now is due to the detective's martial arts trainer, played by some young Asian guy named Bruce Lee.

City of Angels (1976, CBS)
An ambitious period piece from the Cannell factory, set in WWII L.A, but fondly remebered by those 17 viewers who caught it. Supposedly the star, Wayne Rogers, thought it was crap. He also thought he'd have a big career after bailing out of TV's M*A*S*H.

Eyes (2005, ABC)
A high-tech agency specializing in corporate crime, but run by Tim Daly with plenty of soul. The most recent show on the list; arguably conclusive proof the networks have lost their testicles.

Vengeance Unlimited (1998, ABC)
Ahead of the curve, this edgy blast of dark humour and pulp fiction cool starring Michael Madsen, would be a shoe-in now on HBO or Showtime. Imagine The Equalizer without a stick up his butt.

Tenspeed and Brownshoe (1980, ABC)
A personal fave of mine, but I'm not the only one. A witty, savvy love letter to the P.I. genre, starring Jeff Goldblum as a doofus accountant with Chandler dreams and Ben Vereen as a slick, jive-talking grifter all too willing to lend him a hand, by uber-fan Stephen J. Cannell.

RECENT WRITE-INS

Richie Brockelman, Private Eye (1978, NBC)

The detective wore tennis shoes. Rockford-lite, but definitely watchable..

The Outsider (1968-69, NBC)

A one-season dry-run for Rockford. I've never seen it, but supposedly it's as much Harry O as Jimbo, and Darren McGavin shines.

Archer (1975, NBC)

Brian Keith as Ross Macdonald's classic, angst-ridden gumshoe. Supposedly quite good, but lost in the seventies P.I. orgy. Leigh Brackett even wrote an episode.

PEOPLE, TAKE HEART

The folks at TV Shows on DVD.com are trying to change this sorry state of affairs.

Or at least allowing you to blow off a little steam... Head on over and vote on which shows you'd like to see brought to DVD. Beats me if it does any good, but it can't hurt, can it?

And it sure beats shilling out big bucks for a dubious copy on eBay.

Ah, Bookstores... The Sequel

2009-07-05T08:54:00.000-07:00

People always seem to complain about bookstores. But consider the alternative.

Think what's it's like to work in one. I've been working, in one capacity or another, in the local big bad chain bookstore in Poodledale for several years now. Yeah, one of those faceless, heartless, evil large corporate entities that don't give a damn about anything or anyone, and have put all those poor little indies run by Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa out of business.

What a crock. And a tired one at that. Book selling is a very tough, competitive business and unfortunately, simply loving books is no guarantee even the nicest, coolest, friendliest person in the world -- and I've met some pretty good folks in those small little bookstores -- can manage to run a successful bookstore.

But I can assure you that there are plenty of people working in even those big bad bookstores who love books and reading every bit as much as their customers. I know I do. It's why I love my job. And most of my customers are great.

And yet there's hardly a week goes by that I don't open up a discussion group digest or have to deal with some irate "customer" who's dumping all over us once again.

Like, for instance:
"I wanted to go to the bookstore for my birthday. I wanted to get a cup of coffee and a muffen then use WiFi to look at (some author's) webpages and see what books I could find. I am not picky what kind of book I read I will read anything! I have even been known to read a cookbook when I had nothing else. Off to the bookstore with my PDA I go. What do I find? Coffee and a muffen would set me back 10 dollars. WiFi was not a free service and I could not find any of the books that I wanted. I am not just talking about (some author's) books, I am talking about there was not one Hard back Dean Koontz book in the whole place. I miss the local used book store at the end of the block where you could just drop in and find the book you wanted chat up the latest gossip with the lady reading a romance novel behind the counter, then go home curl up in a blanket read the book all night. "SIGH" I have not tried the libary yet that is where I am heading next.

Me? All I wanted was someone who wasn't hoping to read magazines and books for free, or poach our WiFi for free (which isn't free to those who provide it) and not get their undies in a knot simply because we don't carry every edition of every book in the world (no bookstore can afford to). But if we don't have it, we'll try our best to get it for you.

All I wanted was someone who wouldn't complain about how used or online bookstores offer so much better prices (except for shipping and handling, of course). And the next time you can't find that book whose title you don't know by that "arthur" whose name you forget but it has -- maybe -- yellow on the cover, feel free to call Amazon. I'm sure they have a team of operators standing by just to help you. Or ask one of the staff (if you can find one) at Wal*Mart for help with your literary questions.

All I wanted was someone who wouldn't exaggerate to make a point. Ten dollars for a simple coffee and muffin? Yeah, right... I'd like to see the receipt for that.

All I wanted was a customer who could spell "muffin" or "library."

All I wanted was a customer who was a "customer" (IE: one who actually spends money), not a freeloader or a mooch or a squatter...

It's not a library. We don't mind if people glance through a book or a magazine sometimes, but for God's sake buy something sometimes, damn it. Don't sit there, snapping pictures of our books with your cellphone. And don't complain to us at customer service because we don't have photocopy machines, you thieving mooch.

Please treat our merchandise with respect. Put it back where you got it, if you've got the mental capacity to do so. Or at least don't dump them on the floor. And please don't use a sweating, dripping gargantuan ice-blended coffee drink as a bookmark in an $80.00 coffee table book on Andy Warhol whose protective plastic wrap you just ripped off when you thought nobody was looking.

It's not a picnic area. Don't bring your own food, you deadbeat. You want a four-pounder SuperBurger with the works, jumbo fries and a five-gallon Diet Coke to plug that annoying clean spot in your last working artery, by all means, go for it. But eat it there. Please. You keel over, I'm not sure we have enough staff on hand to be able to move your carcass.

It's not a day care centre. Don't leave your runny-nosed screaming ill-begotten brats here to raise hell while you go to Target.

And it's not an ashram. Get your fat butt off the floor. Don't sit on that convenient stack of bargain books either. We do have chairs. You wanna sit on the floor, go to the supermarket. I'm sure they'd love your business.

We're not an auditorium. So don't give me that bullshit about there not being "enough" chairs. We're under no local or state obligation to provide seating. And sometimes we have to take away chairs to -- GASP!!! -- make room for books. Deal with it, lard-arse.

If there are no chairs available, STAND (if you remember how). Or go home and wait for the casting call for the theatrical touring version of WALL-E. I hear they're looking for "humans." You'd be a natural.

Don't give me this crap about a bad back, either. If your body is in such horrible shape you have to lie on the floor, have whoever delivered you here (because of course in your delicate condition you couldn't possibly have driven yourself, right?) take you home.

Because, believe me, some of our "heavier" patrons steps on your head, you'll have head problems too.

By the way, all you blushing young brides-to-be with the foot-high stack of expensive, glossy wedding magazines you're folding, bending and mutilating: we've hired an old gypsy to put a curse on you. "May your future groom respect your wedding vows as much as you respect our merchandise."

If this curse works out, we're having her back to lay one on nursing students as well. And people interested in tattoos.

No Dean Koontz hardcovers? Does he have a new hardcover out? Or are you looking for an older title? Here's a clue: the books on the shelves? We're hoping to sell them. A book unlikely to sell is not going to be on our shelves for very long. (Which is why we carry so few self-published novels -- nobody wants them).

Unfortunately, retail space is too expensive to stock books on a whim. And a five or six-year old hardcover edition of a book readily available in paperback definitely falls into the whim category. If a book's not selling, it goes back to the warehouse. But if you want it, we can get it for you, usually within a week.

Which reminds me: the next time we don't have some TV "journalist"'s latest hate-filled screed on who is destroying America this week, please let me assure you it's not because we're part of some vast left-wing liberal/socialist/Commie/terrorist plot -- maybe we're just sold out. Or the publisher seriously miscalculated demand.

It's a bookstore. We sell books. Hell, we sell Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler and friggin' cat mysteries. So why wouldn't we sell books by Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Riley or Al Franken or whomever?

And while I understand a small but angry minority didn't like the way the last election went, defacing or turning around any book featuring Obama on the cover won't change the election results.

And referring to him as "the nigger president" tells me more about you than it does about him.

As for this mythical little used bookstore where you can gossip away with the lady behind the counter reading the romance novel, well, how nice for you. I imagine that impresses the person behind you in line. Assuming there was a line. Or is the lady reading behind the counter because she hasn't had any paying customers for two hours?

Sorry but, as I said, we're booksellers. We sell books. We're far too busy helping real, hopefully paying customers to read behind a counter. Any bookstore where the staff has time to read a book during business hours is likely going to be gone in a year. Or less, if people continue to abuse their hospitality.

So go to Costco or Walmart or wherever and sprawl on their floor, read their magazines and books and eat your "muffen." And gosh darn it, you can't beat their selection. Plus their staff is so helpful and knowledgeable about books. Why, you can get any book in the world you want as long as it was on Oprah last week.

Unless, of course, they're also sold out.

Coming in July: Palmdale Noir

2009-06-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm.... every day there seems to be some sort of crime in Palmdale and the Antelope Valley splashed across the pages of the local rag, offering a little something for everyone, from redneck meth dealers and crazed desert rats holding off an army of cops to assorted gangs imported from LA going ballistic on school teachers, plus the usual suburban real estate scams and municipal graft (I think they call it "Palmdale" because of all the palms that are out) and good ol' American domestic violence.

But there will be a whole different kind of crime going on in Palmdale, where The Thrilling Detective Web Site and Butler's Coffee are presenting the first ever PALMDALE NOIR: AN EVENING OF MUSIC AND CRIME on Saturday, July 18.

Butler's is this funky little coffee shop that I've probably mentioned before, but anyway, they've been offering live music (with my bumbling interference) for the last six months or so, and this is definitely going to be something completely different.

Robert Fisher, the front man of Americana noir collective The Willard Grant Conspiracy will be hosting a salon-type discussion and performance of songs about crime, aided and abetted by Vince M. (a singer-songwriter stuck on the lost highway somewhere between Townes Van Zandt and Paul Westerberg), Mark Burgess (primo slide guitarist and ace performer of bloody, muddy blues) and Laura Browne-Sorenson (angel-voiced singer-songwriter and member of Celtic folk group The Browne Sisters and George Cavanaugh).

They'll all be performing individually and in various combinations, talking and playing about robbery, assault, thievery, cheating, lying and other assorted crimes, including of course everybody's favourite: murder. Possible songs to be performed include "Folsom Prison Blues," one that deals with stealing beer from a convenience store, Springsteen's "Stolen Car" and an old (auld?) murder ballad sung in Gaelic. It's going to be some kinda night.

If any SoCal-area crime fans or other Rare Birds (or even birds on vacation) have a hankering for caffeine and crime you can tap your foot to, Palmdale is about an hour north of LA, located in the High Desert. I'd love to see a few rare-birds representing. Hell, I think I'll even give out some crime books as door prizes...

Butler's Coffee is located at 40125 10th St. West. Their telephone number is 661-272-9530.

There's such a wealth of songs about crime and murder that we could probably do this for a year and never repeat a song.

Is He Rough Enough? Is He Tough Enough? Yes.

2009-06-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

True confession time: I've been a fan of Ray Banks and his woe-begotten Manchester ex-con private eye, Cal Innes, for years, ever since I first published "Walking After Midnight," one of his early Cal Innes stories way back in 2003.

I can't claim to have "discovered" Ray, or even to have been the first to publish him, but nonetheless I feel quite pleased for his success, and even a little proud, no matter how misplaced that pride might be, that I may have contributed even a miniscule bit to it. And I've liked his three subsequent novels featuring Innes well enough to name 2007's Donkey Punch (known in the U.S. as Sucker Punch) as one of my picks for January Magazine's Best of 2007.

But nothing prepared me for Beast of Burden, his latest novel. Maybe it was the mood I was in, maybe I was desperate for something good to read after a disappointing spate of shitty books, or -- and this is more likely -- maybe Ray Banks is just one hell of a writer really, finally kicking out the jams.

But, for whatever reason, this is, hands down, one of the most affecting books I've read in a long time.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm fucking floored.

I knew Ray was good, but this one just... well, I'm still reeling. As I said about Donkey Punch back then, "What separates Banks’ writing from that of so many other 'new wave of noir' writers is that he actually seems to understand noir and what lies right at its deep, dark heart. He doesn’t have to rely on juvenile, self-conscious shock tactics... to tell his story. Instead, he does it the old-fashioned way -- by creating credible, memorable characters and telling an actual story. Don’t get me wrong: nasty things do happen... but it’s the characters that really matter."

I still stand by that, but Beast of Burden hits so much harder and sets the bar so bloody high, it's difficult to see where Banks could possibly go after this. It's truly mortal stakes he's playing for this time, as Cal, reeling from his brother's recent suicide and suffering from a stroke that's left him partially paralysed, reluctantly goes to work for notorious local mobster Morris Tiernan, who wants him to find his missing son, Mo, a useless piece of crap/wannabe crime lord that even his own father doesn't particularly want anything to do with.

This is no jolly cozy set in a picture postcard of swinging modern Manchester -- this is a cold, ugly rough wind of a novel, and Banks makes this ugly scab of a hardscrabble industrial town come alive, offering no apology or mercy. This is the Manchester the shiny happy trendies and tourists don't see; this is the Manchester of rundown buildings and squats, of boxing clubs and dives, of piss and despair and regret. And the whipsaw first-person narration, split between Cal and his old nemesis, Detective Sergeant "Donkey" Donkin, possibly the most venal, stupid and just plain evil cop to pollute the genre in ages, just cranks up the tension. It's rough and abrasive and unrelentingly coarse, but never feels forced or phoney or gratuitous.

That these two men are on a collision course is a given, but the fact neither truly understands the other's motives rips this story loose from any preconceptions I might have had. This is contemporary noir at its absolute ground zero finest: dark, disturbing and nasty, but tempered with surprising acts of friendship, loyalty and honour and just plain humanity so moving and real that they're a spit in the face of the glib cynicism and shallow posturing that currently taints too much of the genre.

It's hard to believe, in a novel that trucks so much in misery and greed and stupidity and hate, but the ending, when it comes, is still like a knife in the gut. It's one of the most ballsy, most disturbing and yet most moving conclusions to a crime novel I've read in a long, long time.

Beast of Burden goes on sale in the U.S. in a few weeks (or maybe it's already out; books from the U.K. seem to have a hard time crossing the Atlantic according to schedule). But if you give a damn at all for hard-boiled fiction, get this book.

The Disassembled Man Disassembled (Sorry, Frankie)

2009-06-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

There's a new gang in town and they call themselves The New Pulp Press.

According to head honcho Jon Bassoff, they were founded as:

"... an alternative to the often generic world of conglomerate corporate publishing. Dedicated to giving voice to some of today’s most talented and neglected writers, New Pulp Press focuses on off-center crime fiction and neo-pulp. Veering away from the assumption that a protagonist must be a sympathetic character, our books are centered around con-men, losers, and sociopaths. In other words, we represent what's best about America."

Got that? Con-men, losers, and sociopaths are what's best about America? Maybe they should tear down the Statue of Liberty (that French bitch) and put up one of Ted Bundy. Or Robert Ford.

But hey, chest-thumping publisher hyperbole is one thing -- what about the books themselves?

I had the fortune of receiving a copy of one of NPP''s very first books, The Disassembled Man by Nate Flexer. It came blurbed by a few guys I know and a Bruce Bassoff (no relation) says very nice things on the book's Amazon page. And the publisher himself recommended it highly to me. Not a surprise, perhaps, but he chose this one over the others in his small but growing catalogue.

I had high hopes, then, but it turned out more cartoon than caricature, and what humour there was in it was more of the gross-out/train wreck variety -- a more-than-likely likely candidate for Gun in Cheek III, if Pronzini ever gets around to it. This is "noir" as understood by fourteen year olds.

Granted, we all like different things. What disappointed me about this book -- what I felt was juvenile and self-conscious -- others may praise as fresh and exciting and the funniest thing they've read in years.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on a first-time (?) novelist, and should save my vitriol for the "big boys" -- those firmly entrenched best-selling writers who are beyond reviews (and the sniping of frustrated wannabes in the peanut gallery). But the author doesn't strike me as the sensitive type. In fact, he goes out of his way to prove he's about as sensitive as a hockey puck.

In trying to establish his tough guy bona-fides, he crams every sentence, every paragraph, every clunky, self-conscious bit of dialogue with over-boiled similes ("red as a used tampon"), blatantly obvious metaphors, dime store psychobabble and prose so tortured only Dick Cheyney could love it.

So what might have been a tight and effective, albeit obvious, tour through hell ends up just another neo nah entrant in the schoolyard spitting contest.

Nor is the plot strong enough to pull the reader over the rough spots.

Despite all the huffing and puffing, the story goes pretty much from A to B, with nary a detour along the way: disgruntled slaughterhouse worker and unhappily married man goes psycho nuts about sums it up.

And talk about obvious. The cover itself is so unapologetically amateurish and crude, I just felt it had to be ironic. But no irony was intended -- or even evident. What you see is pretty much what you'll get. The protagonist, a vicious little slug of a specimen, is named -- I kid you not -- Frankie Avicious. Meanwhile, the "twist" ending (and the "surprise" rationale for his crimes) is pretty much blown by its own title. If you've read enough Jim Thompson (or enough Jim Thompson wannabees) you already know what's coming.

Not that anyone would be reading this for the plot, anyway. It's the writing, the publisher and the blurbers and Bruce Bassoff (no relation) assure us, that's supposed to be the real treat here.

One reviewer even called Flexer an explosive writer. I'm not sure about him, but Frankie sure is explosive. Or maybe just gaseous. At the least display of stress or suspense, he vomits. Or pisses his pants. Or craps in them.

A typical sentence construct is "I was so (angry/upset/nervous) I (pissed my pants/threw up/shit myself)."

Repeat ad nauseum.

Although Frankie does on rare occasions exert some control over his bodily functions, as in the memorable scene where his car, left sitting in the sun, is so hot he has to piss on the steering wheel before he can touch it.

Yeah, people do that all the time.

But mostly he seems unable to control any part of his digestive system, as when, trying to gain access to a rendering plant, he writes:

"I pulled (the) keys out of my pocket. The first two didn't work. I panicked. The third key did the trick. I farted with relief."

Huh?

Maybe, in smaller doses, if the excesses weren't run into the ground, this gaseous sort of prose might have worked. Obviously some people think this is very funny stuff.

And, to be fair, there were several times I found myself chuckling despite myself, which is why I said I was disappointed by the book; not just pissed off. The author, despite himself, does show promise. Sometimes, out of the blue, something pops out of his protagonist Frankie's mouth that is so incongruous it's hilarious.

Like, when in the middle of everything, just as he's about to murder someone, he starts spouting off about the Electoral College and universal health care to his potential victim.

It's a head snapping twist. Totally implausible, of course, but very funny, in that context. But Flexer's not content to stop there -- he works it into the ground, riffing on education, government spending and other pet peeves for almost a page, like some junior high student padding out his overdue civics paper. What should have been a quick snappy one-liner becomes a WTF?-like rant that flattens the humour pretty effectively. It's the sort of thing an editor should have reined in.

The whole book is riddled with scenes like that. Unexpected excess can be funny, but when the excess goes way past the funny point, the reader is left with just excess.

A friend suggested I made Flexer seem like G.G. Allin, but I was thinking more along the lines of Robert Leslie Bellem, whom I like quite a bit in fact, but yeah, that's exactly the type of "alternative" writing I'm talking about. But whereas I think (I hope) Bellem was putting us on, I'm not so sure that's the case here. There was something sort of good-natured and goofy about Dan Turner, but Frankie Avicious just seems mean-hearted.

To each his own, I guess. But the real irony, of course, might be that for all the flag waving of the publisher and Bruce Bassoff (no relation) and some of his relatively well-known blurbers have done, my more negative view of the book may actually entice some readers just as effectively as they did.

So, all in all, a debut done in by its own enthusiasm, with the editor (if it was edited) showing as little restraint as the author. Yeah, this book is memorable, all right, and definitely "a bit special." Sorta like watching a grown man (the author is supposedly 33 years old) play with his own turds.

Though that might be taken as a compliment and even a selling point in some quarters. Maybe the New Pulp Press will peg me to blurb Flexer's next book.

Depp Jam

2009-05-29T07:34:00.001-07:00

There's a thread going on right now over at Wicked Company, a mystery writing discussion group started by D.L. Browne (aka Diana Killian, aka Mrs. Thrilling) about reviewing and cruelty and what constitutes a personal attack in a review.

Should a writer's personal life be fair comment in a review?

My first instinct is to go all Nancy Reagan and just say "No.".

But how about if that said writer has used his or her personal life to sell or promote a book?

That's the connundrum that faces me here. And I'd have to say, upon further consideration, "Sometimes."

Not that screenwriter and first time P.I. writer Daniel Depp has gone overboard with the personal stuff, but it's virtually impossible to read his new novel, Loser's Town without becoming painfully aware of who his famous half-brother is. But it's also glaringly obvious that's the way the author and his publishers and publicists want it.

Aging former stuntman turned Los Angeles private eye and weekend rodeo cowboy David Spandau knows more than he ever wanted to know about the movie biz, which may not make him the happiest camper around Tinsel Town, but sure adds an edge and a delightfully skewered "insider's" view to this 2009 debut.

Spandau works for Coren Investigations on Sunset, a swanky "boutique" detective agency that caters to the rich and powerful. Despite his misgivings, Spandau agrees to go to work for heart-throb actor Bobby Dye (a party-loving, good-looking man-child, with a skinny model girlfriend overly fond of recreational drugs in tow -- remind you of anyone?) who's caught up in a nasty Hollywood blackmail scheme. The preliminary buzz on this one made it feel like the start of a beautiful friendship... but actually reading the book harshes that buzz pretty quick.

Not that there isn't some really really good stuff here. Spandau himself is a carefully crafted and intriguing character, with some decidedly Macdonaldesque overtones (the detective, for example, still yearns for his ex-wife), and some of the quirky lowlifes (agents, publicists, gangsters, etc.) who flesh out the story are surprising vivid, suggesting Depp hasn't been neglecting his Elmore.

But all this great characterization (Spandau's sometime assistant is a real piece of work, for example, and the lovesick thug Potts is alternately disturbing and heart-warming) goes for naught because Depp isn't sure where he's going. Sub-plots burst into narrative flames, only to puff out like a wet birthday candle a few chapters later, and Spandau, the alleged hero of the story, is curiously absent -- and not even involved -- in much of what takes place. Not that all major sub-plots simply fade away, though -- some suddenly reappear, long after we've almost forgotten about them. And certainly after we've ceased to care about them.

Which is a real shame. There's plenty of good writing here, and some delightfully wicked takes on the industry (although, honestly, nothing particularly new). But the Johnny Depp-like Dye is curiously flat, as though the author wasn't quite sure how to handle him; worried on the one hand he'd offend and on the other that he'd be accused of sucking up. As it is, whatever resentment and jealousy and contempt might be brewing right under the surface is held in check. After all, everybody loves Johnny, right? It wouldn't do to piss off all those fans. And just to be on the safe side, Depp dedicates the book to "John."

Too bad he hadn't paid as much dedication to his story.

My guess? The Depp name got Daniel's manuscript in the door, even though it was probably good enough to be accepted anyway, but as a result the book got vetted more thoroughly by publicists than actual editors. Because a sharper editor would have insisted on the story being tightened up and would probably have suggested that the author remove some of the more glaring repetitions of descriptions and phrases (sometimes only a few pages apart). And maybe, just maybe, urged the author to drop the kid gloves and just go for it.

As it is, this books reads like a disjointed and failed opportunity. now that the roman à clef trick has been played, Depp is going to find it difficult to build a series around a character who ends up being an extra in his own debut.

The author was born in Kentucky, read Classics at university, and has worked as a journalist, a bookseller and a teacher, and now divides his time between California and Europe, writing and producing screenplays. Maybe he and Johnny have matching villas in France.

On the Street Where You Live

2009-05-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

There's a reason cops don't like going out on domestics. It gets messy.

Thieves, killers, dealers, gangsters,whatever -- you pretty much know what to expect.

But family squabbles? Runaways? Missing children? Custody battles? Abuse?

It's enough to tear your heart to pieces.

Which is why, as far as the curious sub-sub-genre of domestic noir goes, there’s really no need for lower-than-low life forms or exotic serial killers and hit men to set off fireworks. For most of us, noir hits us hardest when it hits us where we live. Which explains why the domestic noir has enjoyed such a long, thematically unwavering history, stretching from James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce right up to Harlan Coben’s latest tangled family drama. There's a world of hurt out there, and much of that hurt is done in the name of love.

The books of Harlan Coben are ample proof of that. In fact, he's pretty much nailed the market lately. It's been a conscious reinvention, as he puts it, of his "brand" -- moving from his glib, popular Parkesque tales of hands-on sports agent Myron Bolitar to his hyper-popular thrillers full of parents and children, husbands and wives and neighbours and friends all being bashed around by the inevitable revelations of deep dark secrets from the past. The first of these domestic noirs (or whatever you want to call them) was Tell No One in 2001 (which has recently been made into a rather effective French film -- they "get" noir over there). But hints of what was to come in Coben's work were already creeping into the increasingly dark Bolitar series by then -- and Coben has, in fact, occasionally revisited his series character (although even Myron's adventures seem wrapped up more and more in domestic and familial angst).

There are bystanders a-plenty in Coben's work these days but few are innocent. Nuclear families seem to always be heading for some sort of nuclear accident or another. Husbands, children, wives -- they all disappear, and thise who remain must sort out the pieces, the lies, the deceptions, the secrets. If there's a common theme in Coben's work these days it's that the truth will eventually come out -- and it will fuck you up. Guaranteed. All secrets do is delay and increase the damage. It's generally great stuff; gripping and nasty, and the generally easily identifiable family settings hit home hard.

I said "generally." We recently chose Hold Tight, Coben's 2008 ma-and-pa thriller, for Murder Ink, our mystery reading group that meets once a month at the local Barn O' Novels, and I've gotta admit I was a little disappointed. Part of the appeal of Coben's latest works has always been how accessible they've seemed to me; how well he's mined that "just regular folks" vein.

But in Hold Tight, it seems the vein is tapped out. It's definitely worth a read, and there's definitely some hard questions asked, but there's something a little too forced, a little too irregular, a little too Huxtable about the Bayes, the beleagured family around whom the action swirls. Does Daddy Mike really have to be a former pro athlete turned brilliant surgeon? Does Mommy Tia really have to be a brilliant lawyer? Does kid sister Jill really have to be such a perfect little precocious princess?

Even the New Jersey suburb it all takes place in seems a little too tidy.

Perhaps the squeakiness of the Yuppie family unit here has a point -- maybe how too successful a career or at least pursuit of that successful career can damage a family? - -but the actual story doesn't need it. It becomes window overdressing. When the sixteen-year old son Adam goes missing -- a moody sixteen-year-old whose best friend recently committed suicide -- it seems sufficient enough to me. After all, what parent wouldn't feel their guts twisting at that?

And the fact Adam's disappearance may have been sparked by Mike and Tia's own attempts to spy on him, using surveillance software on his computer, makes for plenty of guilt to go along with their growing apprehension. And begs some serious questions about privacy versus parenting.

The parents' desperate hunt for their son sets is gripping enough, and there's a nifty sideplot as well, concerning an outraged sadistic killer out there out to defend the honour of a hurt little girl. That the two seemingly diverse plots -- and that the themes, of honour betrayed, of promises broken, of love polluted, will all ultimately converge -- is a given.

But what might have been a hard, tough exploration of these themes is amped up to the breaking point, as though Coben was trying to get too much off his chest at once. Make no mistake -- there's plenty of great stuff here, but it's diluted by the high-flying upper middle class family life, by a criminal conspiracy that lies at the root of it all that's just a little too over-the-top to fully buy and by a plot that tries too hard at times to twist and turn. Sometimes larger-than-life isn't as large as life.

It's like Coben turned it all up to eleven, and forgot to turn it back down at least occasionally.

Canadian author Linwood Barclay’s latest, Fear the Worst, also hits the eleven mark, but fortunately the author remembers the importance of dynamics. It's a solid addition to the suburban noir sub-sub-genre, and bears more than an echo of Coben's recent work. But it’s the sheer nothing-specialness of most of its characters that really brings it back home.

A divorced couple, a good daughter, a wild friend, a fragile ex-wife, new relationships, the shards of old ones, a mopey stepbrother, office squabbles, slick salesmen, a cookie cutter sub-division – if there’s anything vaguely exotic about any of this, I sure missed it. Even the broken couple at its core, used car salesman Tim Blake and his ex, Suzanne, aren’t the perpetually squabbling wolverines so often depicted in literature and film, but normal, battered adults simply trying to rebuild their lives, hoping they haven’t messed up their seventeen-year-old daughter Sydney too badly. They carry on, trying to do as right as they can. Just like you, just like me. Good intentions all around.

But we all know where they can lead. And for Tim, it’s the moment Sydney doesn’t come home from her summer job at a local hotel. She’s no angel, Tim ruefully concedes, but things take an abrupt turn when the hotel staff claims to have never heard of her, and Tim’s increasingly frantic search eventually strips bare the safe, smug patina of banality that passes for the pursuit of happiness. Lies, hate, deceit, shattered families, fraud, alcoholism, jealousy, prostitution, loneliness, rape, even murder – none of it is quite as far away as you might think. By the time Barclay jacks up the tension to Hitchcockian (or at least Cobenian) levels, you’ll be peering through the shades, wondering what the neighbour’s doing in his garage this late at night.

And where your own daughter is.

OOOH! Look! Excrement! (And Nazis!)

2009-05-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

Manny Rupert is your typical circling-the-drain gumshoe with serious substance abuse problems.

After making his debut as a self-loathing ex-junkie cop in Jerry Stahl's Plainclothes Naked (2001), Manny returns as a self-loathing, full-fledged (and supposedly clean and sober) private eye in Pain Killers.

Guilt and self-loathing? This guy mainlines them.

Clean and sober? Yeah, right!

Of course, he's still got a rather large monkey on his back, and when he falls off the wagon, he really falls off the wagon. Which means no degradation, no debauchery, no wallow and no metaphorical shitty diaper is too disgusting to rub our faces in.

All of which should probably be expected. Manny's creator is, after all, Mister "Permanent Midnight" himself.

This time out, Manny is hired to go undercover, posing as a drug therapist counselling San Quentin inmates, in an effort to expose an elderly prisoner with a German accent who just may be notorious Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele.

And, oh! the irony! Did I mention Manny's Jewish?

This is the flimsy, alleged laughfest of a foundation upon which Stahl builds his story, which consists of a series of loosely connected, deliberately squirm-inducing little set pieces, from lovingly recited Nazi atrocities to various sexual, chemical and scatalogical abuses, occasionally leavened by some genuinely funny -- if rude --wisecracks. Whether that will be enough to keep you reading will depend on your stomach for high concepts in low places.

You've heard of black humour? This is brown humour.

I dunno -- I think most people already agree the Nazis were pretty much pure evil, but there's something so wearisome and tired and forced about this book that I had real difficulties reading it right to the end. The real outrage I felt was at how predictable and shallow and juvenile it all felt. Stahl may have inadvertently given Holocaust deniers and their ilk a helping hand.

After all, it's hard to be outraged when you're yawning.

Down These Mean Streets A Man Must Go. Wear comfortable shoes.

2009-05-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

Doing anything this Saturday, May 30th?

In the LA area?

Not afraid of the big bad city?

If you answered "No," "Yes" and "Bring it on, dude!" to those questions, you really ought to consider The Raymond Chandler Walking Tour. Brian and Bonnie Olson, the authors of the popular guidebook Tailing Philip Marlowe will be conducting a free hard-boiled detective tour of downtown Los Angeles. Included in the tour are the Bradbury Building, City Hall, Bunker Hill, the Oviatt Building and other historic downtown landmarks mentioned by Raymond Chandler in his mystery novels.

And the price is right, too. It's free!

Mind you, you may want to snatch up a copy of the guidebook -- they'll be on sale for a measly ten bucks and will include a complimentary copy of Brian’s new mystery novel To Fetch a Pail.

The tour kicks off at 10:00 AM at Caravan Books, 550 S. Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles, and will last approximately two and one-half hours, ending at the Spring Street steps of City Hall.

This sounds too good to pass up. I'm definitely going to try to make it myself, one way or another. Hopefully some of you can make it too. And maybe after we make our rounds, we can find an honest glass of beer somewhere downtown, and pressure Brian and Bonnie into doing a walking tour of Marlowe's Hollywood next...

For further information e-mail Brian or call (213) 626-9944.

Who's Afraid of Big Bad Jack?

2009-05-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

The private eye, at his best, is and always has been a man (or woman) of his times and his world. And you can’t get much more man-of-his-times than John Shannon’s Jack Liffey, who makes his 11th appearance in the just released Palo Verdes Blue.

Me, personally, I think this is one of the finest, most sustained and boldest detective series to ever be set in Los Angeles -- an extended valentine to a battered, tattered City of Angels and its citizens that never fails to entertain and to challenge. But imaginative plots, rock-solid writing, living breathing characters and an unwavering intelligence and compassion evidently aren't enough for mystery readers these days.

What more do they want?

Tits? Beheadings? Torture?

Maybe John isn't quite the man of his times I thought, because if there's one recurring theme in the reviews of his last few books, it's the nagging mysteryn that keeps turning up. As a recent Booklist review (starred, of course) so succinctly put it, “With a hero as brainy, compassionate, and conflicted as this, the only real mystery is why these books aren’t bestsellers.

Even I'm getting a little cranky waving the flag here. My guess is that, in an increasingly polarized cultural and political landscape where opposing political, cultural and social philosophies are too often endlessly smacked together for simple entertainment value under the guise of “news,” and the “analysis” offered is really just a dumbed down demolition derby, Jack scares people.

i mean, this is a culture where a large segment of its citizens, if they even care about the news at all, turn on the boob tube to hear the president referred to as "Hitler" by camera-sucking "patriots;" where a beloved commentator publicly hopes the entire country's economy will crash and burn to prove some dubious political point, where namecalling and bullying have replaced rational debate. So, a series that dares to ask people to think for themselves, to not jump to conclusions, to look at multiple sides of an issue instead of jumping on the bandwagon du jour -- yeah, I guess I could see how that might unsettle people. I guess, for some people, Jack is scary.

Which is a laugh. Jack’s probably one of the most soft-spoken and least threatening private eyes around. Not that he’s a wimp, or that he doesn’t display rather amazing resilience at times, but this Los Angeles-based finder of lost children has never met a one-sided argument in his life.

For some readers – particularly those more accustomed to having their opinions (and their crime fiction) pre-digested and spoon-fed to them, that can be heady stuff. And possibly a little bewildering.

So maybe it’s simply commercial frustration, but this time Shannon pulls out all the stops. Everything that is wonderful about this series is cranked up a notch – there are even more memorable characters, even more So Cal weirdness, even more of LA’s endless sub-cultures to explore, even more ideas fleshed out and stamped with a human face. Shannon doesn't so much offer talking points as thinking points.

As a favor to his ex-wife Kathy, Jack reluctantly agrees to look for her best friend’s precocious, idealistic teenage daughter. But what at first seems like just another wandering daughter job soon has the detective bumping up against the spoiled, territorial surfer brats of the swanky Palos Verdes enclave, not to mention cranked-up white supremacists, burnt-out cops, the obscenely rich and the murky world of illegal immigrants who serve them -- including a young Mexican day laborer who just wants to hang ten. Meanwhile, Jack’s own precocious, idealistic teenage daughter, Maeve, hits another speed bump on her ongoing journey to define herself. That the author is growing impatient (critical acclaim and rave reviews don’t pay the rent) might be guessed by the defiant, almost surreal, even more-audacious-than-usual vaguely apocalyptic conclusion with which he wraps things up. But somehow, once again Shannon manages to pull it off with his by now trademark wit and compassion.

Scary stuff, indeed.

Spring is Sprung, The Grass is Riz...

2009-04-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you wondering where the Spring issue of The Thrilling Detective Web Site is, don't bother.. . it's here.

Call the neighbours, wake up the kids, tell Granma to put her bifocals on.

And we're only a few weeks late, not a few months, so we're definitely doing a little better. Not better enough to actually, regularly blog -- I see my last blog here was about the last issue, but trust me, I'm feeling good about now.

We've got some new stories for you, and a big hunk of a think-piece I'm still trying to get my head around, but it's good to be back.

Of course, none of this would be possible without my partner-in-crime, fiction editor, Gerald So, and the contributors for this issue, all of whom once again waited -- and waited and waited -- for me to get my act together.

As always, Gerald has acted as gatekeeper, only letting in the worthy. This go-round we kick off with "Love is for Suckers" by Robert Petyo, about a private eye who isn't sure anymore who's watching who and who's zoomin' who. Next up is "Terra Bella" by Robert Stevens, a decidely bucolic tale that shows there's more than cowshit that smells bad in the sticks. Our old pal Jim Winter returns with "Love Don't Mean a Thing," a nasty little tale of love, hate and revenge, featuring his long-time series gumshoe Nick Kepler.

Also in this issue we have "East of A," a classic Payton Sherwood reprint by Russell Atwood that originally appeared in the June 1996 issue of EQMM. And we wrap up things with an excerpt from The Big Wake-Up, the upcoming novel by Mark Coggins, featuring his San Francisco eye August Riordan.

But that's not all -- we've also got a great non-fiction piece making its Thrilling Detective debut. "A Man Must Do What He Must: Hammett's Pragmatism" is an unapologetic think-piece by Josef Hoffmann that makes no bones about its thesis: Hammett wasn't a Communist; he was a pragmatist.

And, uh, there'sa whole shit load of other stuff coming, including about three or four months of bits and pieces that have accumulated in my in box. Be patient -- I'll get to it.

And of course we're always looking for contributions. Reviews, editorials, trivua, comments, blah blah blah. Don't worry, I don't bite.

Well, hardly...

It's Been a Long Time Coming

2009-01-18T21:50:00.000-08:00

Okay, the hiatus is over. Well, for now, anyway. The new "issue of The Thrilling Detective Web Site is live.

Some hiatus. Of course, I didn't get half the things done I'd hoped for -- a new job and a new work schedule (and yet another job) pretty much sucked up all the free time I thought I'd have to wrap up a few projects (more about those a bit later), so what was supposed to be a few months ended up being a few more months. And then a few more. But we're back.

We've got some new stories, and with any luck, I/we'll be back up to speed within a week or so.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience and support and your kind letters. And a special shout-out to my partner-in-crime, Gerald So, and the contributors for this issue, all of whom waited -- and waited and waited -- for me to get my act together. At times, I think you guys had more faith in me than I did.

Anyway, for this issue, once again Gerald has acted as gatekeeper, only letting in the worthy.

We kick off with another gem. Site favourite Stephen D. Rogers makes his sixth (SIXTH!) apearance in these pages and once again, he offers a dark little nugget of ethical and moral murkiness that'll keep you scrolling. "Discharged" offers a gambler running the bluff of his life.

Andy Carruthers, the reluctant hero of Kieran Shea's "Shot Back," has his own bluff to run, but shows shows a rather amazing amount of true grit, all the same. Hopefully we haven't seen the last of either Andy or his creator.

Former private detective August Hanrahan displays similar reticence in "Pandora" by Patrick Shawn Bagley, a sordid little vignette that'll have you reaching for the soap -- and wondering about the neighbours.

But don't despair. Mark Troy's "Horns" wraps things up on a (relatively) upbeat note, when Honolulu good time gal and crack P.I. Val Lyon is hired to find out who's taking the wrong bull by the, uh, horn.

Meanwhile, we've got the just-released list of 2009 Edgar Nominations, a list that will once again remembered as much for its exclusions as its inclusions.

And it somehow slipped between the cracks, but Rap Sheet editor J. Kingston Pierce's heartfelt tribute to P.I. writer Arthur Lyons is well worth another look.

And, uh, there's other stuff coming, including about six months of bits and pieces that have accumulated in my in box.

Thanks. And I hope we've passed the audition.

He Who Will Be Missed

2009-01-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

Damn.

First Donald Westlake. And now Sir John Mortimer, who died on Friday at his home somewhere in England. He was 85.

Yes, yes, yes, I know Mortimer did lots of other things. Tons of things. He was a crusading lawyer and a beloved novelist, a gadfly and a warrior of the literary trenches, a knight and a court jester, a respected man of letters, and a bit of a rake, perhaps. But to me and millions of others he'll always be simply the man who created Horace Rumpole.

Anyone who thinks literature is somehow inherently superior on some intellectual level to television has never really watched an episode of Rumpole of the Bailey, one of the cleverest, most literate and most sustained lancings of society's boils to ever come from the ranks of crime fiction. In ANY medium.

That most of those marvelous television scripts were eventually -- and quite successfully -- turned into prose stories and novels by Mortimer is practically moot.

It's just too bad too many American's unease with and/or aversion to British accents and customs prevented this PBS staple from reaching a larger audience, because there have been damn few crime shows to have ever maintained the level of quality Mortimer achieved with Rumpole, on television and later (after the death of beloved character actor Leo McKern) in print.

Hypocrisy, class and racial prejudice, the insufferable smugness of the powerful, the all-too-human-sized holes in the legal system, the nature of "justice," and even the on-going tug of war between the sexes-- all were pierced, time and again, by Mortimer's scathing but somehow gentle wit.

There was rarely any sign of mean spiritedness about the Rumpole series. For all their faults and foibles, there was an obvious, almost Wodehouse-like fondness on Mortimer's part for Horace, Hilda, Guthrie, Old Tom, the Mad Bull, the Timson clan (criminals one and all) and all those other endearingly flawed miscreants who populated the Old Bailey.

Which is without a doubt one major reason I and countless others were drawn back again and again to that world. Sure, we could empathize and even sympathize with the various trials and tribulations, both personal and professional, of one old Bailey hack, but it was Mortimer's genius and obvious affection for his characters that drew us back.

Perry Mason? LA Law? Damages? Grisham's latest attorney-in-peril? Pheh!

All better, smarter lawyers, perhaps, but who would you rather spend a long lunch hour at Pomeroy's Wine Bar with?

So please, for those of you lucky enough to have had the pleasure of having encountered Mr. Rumpole over the years, let's all raise a glass of Chateau Thames Embankment, light up a short, smelly cigar and toast his creator, He Who Will Be Missed.

Donald Westlake

2009-01-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

It seems almost impossible that Donald Westlake is no longer with us -- or that the shuffling off of one single mortal coil could also pull the plug on the impressive and respected literary careers of his contemporaries Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Timothy J. Culver, Samuel Holt, and God only knows how many others.

Westlake's classic tales of John Dortmunder, the affable criminal genius whose brilliant schemes are particularly curveball-prone, and the grim, gritty adventures of professional thief Parker, written Richard Stark (one of the greatest pseudonyms of the genre ever), will be read for a long time to come. And his 1997 standalone The Axe is some kind of timeless classic; a decidedly black pot shot at corporate soullessness -- a favourite Westlake target.

My sorrow for those who have not yet discovered Westlake is only tempered by the considerable envy I have for them: they're about to discover a new favorite author. Or authors.

My personal favorite, though, remains the private eye series Westlake wrote as Tucker Coe, featuring guilt-ridden ex-cop Mitch Tobin. The Parker novels showed how fast Westlake could get you to turn pages, and the Dortmunder tales proved Westlake could make you laugh, but it's the five Tobin books that could make you cry. More than any of his other novels, those are the ones I treasure the most. They're beautifully written -- haunting, compassionate, brooding examinations of a man slowly rebuilding himself. And kick-ass mysteries. Go out, find them and read them. It's a true crime they all seem to be out of print.

But it's not just his work itself that Westlake has left us to deal with. It's the huge mark he's also left on the crime fiction genre, and those who have followed. As recently as a day before his death, there was one of those unplanned moments of synchronicity that makes you wonder if God shares Westlake's warped and wicked sense of humor.

It was an episode of a new USA Network show, LEVERAGE, about a gang of scam artists and former criminals who pool their talents under the guidance of Timothy Hutton to right injustices --usually at the expense of corporations. Anyway, the episode began with a scam already over, and the gang on their way out of the bank with a briefcase full of loot when -- in a moment right out of a Dortmunder caper, the bank is robbed. The plot twists and turns and winds its way to a clever, sly ending -- every move and every wink and nudge is like something right out of one of Westlake's comic capers, making it easily the best episode of the show to air so far.

But it's not mere coincidence of plot alone that had me thinking about Westlake -- it was the episode's title: "The Bank Shot Job," as obvious wink to Westlake's 1972 Dortmunder novel Bank Shot as you can get. And if that's not enough to convince you, how about the name of the all-business bank robber member of the team whose expertise is called upon so heavily in this episode?
Parker.

Yeah, it's gonna be a long time before Westlake and his legacy truly leave the building.

The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics

2008-12-27T11:16:00.000-08:00

This hefty brick of a paperback, edited by Paul Gravett, is like a warning tossed through the plate glass window complacency of all those skinny, over-priced little graphic "novels" that offer a lot of overblown pretentious artwork and precious little actual plot.
You want story? This collections offers a virtual who's who tour of crime comics from the forties to the present, offering samples of everything from Will Eisner's The Spirit to Collins' and Beatty's Ms. Tree. The earliest selection is a dry run of Spillane's Mike Hammer ("Mike Lancer and the Syndicate of Death" from 1942) and winds its way to the present, offering mostly complete stories (or story arcs, in the case of strips) of such familiar classics as Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond's Secret Agent X-9.

Sure, even clocking in at close to 500 pages, there are some glaring omissions (No Dick Tracy? No Slam Bradley? No Johnny Dynamite or 100 Bullets?), but the spattering of off-beat choices and outright rarities they offer instead (a 87th Street Precinct tale from 1962, a 1975 Alack Sinner vignette, a 1948 Simon-Kirby short) more than make up for it.

Please, please, please may this be an annual collection.

BONUS RANT: This is real deal crime -- not some dubious "noir" homage featuring some musclebound, spandexed doofus with a fedora slapped on his noggin, like Marvel's recent X Men Noir. Hell, the only spandex in evidence is worn by Charles Burns' El Borbah, the Mexican professional wresler turned private eye. And that's supposed to be a joke.

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

2008-12-18T10:37:00.000-08:00

It wasn't supposed to happen. Snow? In the Antelope Valley? The High Desert?

In my six years here, we've had snow actly once, the first winter I was here. I looked out the sliding glass door one overcast wintry afternoona and saw a light dusting of snow on a plant. This homesick Montrealer was so excited I phoned D.L. at work to break the news: THERE WAS SNOW IN PALMDALE!!!

Unfortunately, by the time I got through to her, the snow had melted.

And that was about it. In the years since, we've had more murders than snowflakes in Palmdale.

Until yesterday, when I woke up to an honest-to-goodness snowfall. At seven in the morning it was heavy enough that it looked like it might actually last. On the three-mile drive to work, though, the yahoos were already out in force. I had the pleasure of watching some moron in a humongous 4X4 SUV slip, slide, skid and fishtail his way through a red light right in front of me. And by four in the afternoon, Palmdale was a winter wonderland -- at least for errant Canadians pining for home.

For at least some other Palmdale residents, it was probably more like the fall of Saigon. The motels were jammed with stranded travelers, and the local B&N was hosting more than one gang of refugees from the storm, slurping hot chocolate, thumbing through magazines and balefully staring out the glass front of the store, watching the snow bury their cars and -- for many of them -- any real chance of getting home.

Me, I was loving it. But the giddiness took a knock on the drive home. The four or five lanes were reduced to two almost viable lanes, one in each direction, delineated by tire ruts of those who had gone before. Bad, I thought, but I've seen worse.

What I didn't count on was the fact that folks here don't know how to drive in snow. Yes, there were nuts on those ruts.

Make my life easier, fellow citizens of Palmdale. If you don't have to go somewhere, stay home. Enjoy the snow. Talk to your kids. Make love to your wife. Eat a nice meal. Be a Montrealer. But if you really have to drive in snow, please follow these rules, and we'll all get along better.

It's just snow, dammit! Stop admiring the view and concentrate on your driving. And forget the play-by-play. Shove that damn cellphone up your ass.

That turn lane in the middle of the road? It's for turning left, OFF the road. NOT merging onto the road. And just because you're driving some overgrown 4X4 assholemobile does NOT give you the right of way, no matter how many McCain/Palin bumper stickers you have on your back bumper. Just because you voted for someone in Alaska does NOT mean you know how to drive in snow.
Speaking of which, most of those gigantic 4X4s, particularly the jacked-up ones with oversized tires, are lousy in the snow. Because they're so high, they're more likely to skid and because they're heavy, they take longer to stop. And it doesn't help that it gives these yahoos a false sense of security and safety. Somebody should read the accident stats to these idiots. (By the way, I'm not saying everyone driving one of these overgrown, mid-life crisiscowboy skateboards is an asshole, but it is rather striking how many idiots seem to drive them).
Driving faster on ice and snow does NOT give you better traction. Relax -- we ALL want to get home.
Proceeding slowly, and slowing down to a stop is better than racing to the next red light and jamming on the brakes. Be particularly careful at intersections -- slow down for ALL of them. Even when you have a green light. When the snow falls, so does the IQ of many a driver.
If you get stuck, DON'T floor it. That just turns the packed snow under your tires into ice. Instead, gear down and try going in reverse. Rock your way out.
Yes, the snow's lovely. But clear off your entire car or truck before driving -- not just a small circle on the windshield. Clear it off completely, as well as the back window, the sides, the lights (front and rear) and clean off the damn roof. The guy behind you doesn't want your snow collection to suddenly be dumped in front of him -- or on his windshield. If you can't clean the snow off your own vehicle (or you're just a lazy lard ass), you're driving the wrong one, and you shouldn't be on the road. And what's with the geezers hauling a full load of snow in the beds of their pickups? Do they think God needs help with snow delivery? He seems to be doing fine, so far.
Fill up the tank before you go on a long drive. The added weight will give you extra traction, and walking down the road on a stormy night, when visibility is down to about two inches, while clutching a gas can, is not all the fun it's cracked up to be.
It's winter, it's cold. Wear appropriate clothing -- it doesn't matter if they have heat where you're going. You may never get there. Keep mitts, gloves, scarves and a hat in the car. Maybe a warm blanket and sweater too. And that scraper will come in a lot handier in your car than on the workbench in your garage.
If you get stuck in a snowbank, don't count on running the engine to keep warm indefinitely. Unless you're a member of a species that has learned to breathe carbon monoxide.

So, uh, anyway, happy motorvating, folks. And yes, that's a Joshua tree up there.

Mal-de-mer: Clyde Ford's PRECIOUS CARGO

2008-11-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

This one's been kicking around for a few months, and I thought I'd tweak it a little and dump it here. It was rejected by an editor for being a little too negative, I didn't think it was THAT negative, all things considered. Particularly in the version I submitted. But it was definitely one of the lamer books I've read in a while -- made all the worst by having been written twice. I don't know which is worse -- that after having a second shot at publication (and a few years to polish it) this is the best revision the author could come up with, or that he felt the book was already perfect and didn't need revision.

But I digress...

In 2006 Precious Cargo, the second book in his nautical mystery series featuring Washington State-based “marine private eye” Charlie Noble, was self-published and promptly sank without a trace. But since then, Ford, a trained psychotherapist, "mythologist" and "much sought-after public speaker," has appeared on Oprah and received, presumably, a big-ass seal of approval. Now Vanguard Press is ”re-releasing” the book to much fanfare (and PR).

But I’m not sure the hoopla (and new lease on life) is justified. Oh, the series shows potential -- Charlie is an ex-Coast Guard boat nut who’s set himself up as a “marine private eye,” and in this one he finds himself pitted against a powerful Texas businessman who may (or may not) be smuggling Mexicans into the area on board his yacht. Images of John D. MacDonald’s beloved Travis McGee heading for battle in all his righteous fury might come to mind.

Sorry, Charlie, I know Travis McGee. And you’re no Travis McGee. Where McGee’s hard guy shell concealed a battered but compassionate heart and a mocking, self-deprecating sense of humor, nice guy Charlie is pretty much pure mush through and through, without a speck of humor. Too damn sensitive and earnest for his own damn good, he’s prone to inopportune bouts of self-analysis and occasional outbursts of (manly) weeping; so-in-tune with his feelings it gets embarrassing.

He lives on his boat, plays classical guitar, respects all women and presumably all God’s other creatures, enjoys microbrews (in moderation, of course), drinks “healthy” protein shakes and openly discusses his relationships and his feelings with his cop buddy. Now, if only he impressed readers as easily as he apparently impresses himself.

Oh, and he’s a brother.

We know because he told us. And a bad guy almost calls him the "N" word. But other than that, you'd never now. With his protein shakes and his fussy, wussy New Age sensitivity, he makes Felix Unger look like Shaft.

Despite his years in the Coast Guard and his current occupation, Charlie seems neither tough nor particularly savvy. A misguided nautical tail job almost results in his boat capsizing, and he has his waterlogged butt conveniently hauled out of the fire a few too many times by his new Native American buddy Raven. Unfortunately, Raven himself is an unlikely cross between the Great Spirit and Tonto, prone to the same sort of sensitive bellyaching and mystical psycho-babble as Charlie.

He's Native! He's mystic!

Don’t get me wrong – all the elements for a rip-snorting yarn are here: a possible serial killer, storms at sea, shootouts, assorted fisticuffs, vicious bad guys, a few refreshing twists and tantalizing suggestions of a far-reaching criminal conspiracy. But Ford takes so long to get to the point – and is so easily sidetracked by his “feelings” -- that what should be straight and hard and tight often gets warm and fuzzy and woozy. By the time the final showdown arrives and an unarmed but unfailingly erudite Charlie cautions an assailant “Don’t compound the tragedy and the sorrow,” I’m tempted to cheer for the bad guy.

Next time out, I’d suggest our hero stop being quite so noble.

We want detectives that taste good, not detectives with good taste.

Sorry, Charlie.

Let Freedom Ring...

2008-11-04T21:37:00.000-08:00

'nuff said.

Man of Mystery, Man of Music

2008-10-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm not just a pretty face! At least not like Anna over there...

But I am one busy little beaver. As well as working as a bookseller, doing web work for other people, writing columns, reviews, articles and (now) computer games, and fighting crime in Gotham City while dressed as a giant flying rodent, I've now taken on a new title: Music Guy.

Yep, I'm now running the music program at the newest coffee joint in Palmdale, BUTLER'S COFFEE, that just opened in Palmdale. The owners, (Pam and Dave Logan) and I have big plans (BIG plans) for Butler's music program.

We're currently seeking local, acoustic-based musicians and singer/songwriters interested in showcasing their skills before a live audience. Folk, jazz, rock, soul, pop, blues... we're open to it all. We're hoping to offer an eclectic but welcoming coffeehouse atmosphere, something currently sorely lacking in the Antelope Valley. And if we accidentally stumble on the next Bob Dylan -- well, we'll just have to risk it.

(And one fine day, I'd LOVE to have a murder ballad evening...)

Don't come looking for a mosh pit, smoke bombs, forty-three-piece choreographed dance troupes or ear-bleeding volume, though. It's more a family place, so think more quiet thunder. The passion should be in the performance, not the volume -- just good honest coffee and good honest music.

So, no nudity, no profanity, no human sacrifice, please. You want that, there's a WalMart across the street.

Anyway, last Tuesday night they had their first gig at Butlers, and the response was very gratifying -- to the point they were running out of chairs. Three local acts, all hailing from the Palmdale/Lancaster area, played before an enthusiastic crowd.

VINCE MARCONNETTE, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, kicked things off with a short, spirited set of originals and a couple of covers -- one by Townes Van Zandt and "Mutineer," a minor gem of a ballad from the Warren Zevon songbook. Vince's wry take on the vagaries of love and heartbreak -- plus his easy rapport with the audience -- set the tone for a great night of music.

Vince was followed by the mighty-voiced ALLIE TAYLOR (all of fifteen years old) on guitar and vocals, accompanied by her older brother MAX THE MIGHTY on percussion and her father BOB on guitar and banjo. The Taylor's set featured country-tinged covers of several current pop hits that ranged from Katy Perry ad Avril Lavigne to the Dixie Chicks, and was boisterously received by the crowd.

And local classical guitarist JULIAN CORPEÑO closed off the evening with a deftly played and sensitive repertoire that drew gasps of delight at his sheer artistry. As fellow musician Marconnette remarked, "Man, he can play. That fandango, I tell you, people just don't respect this music enough." As if his musicianship wasn't enough, though, Julian played a crowd-pleasing rendition of the Beatles' "Yesterday" -- a song he learned specifically for his Butler's debut.

All in all, it was a great night of music, and bodes well for Butler's music program. Buter's even had their first celebrity spotting -- TV and film actor and former Hardy Boys' star Parker Stevenson (See? There's even a crime fiction tie-in!).

(Actually, the Parker sighting is a good indication I'm still a Montrealer at heart. I saw him and my first reaction was "Hmmmm... that guy looks a little bit like Frank Hardy," and forgot about it. All the natives, though, took one look at him and started whispering among themselves, askiing "What's Parker Stevenson doing here?")

This Saturday, October 28, Ginkgo recording artist ANNA LAUBE, originally from San Francisco, will be playing Butler's in our first SHOWCASE. Accompanying herself on guitar and harmonica, Anna will be playing her own brand of Americana -- a rootsy mix of folk, blues and country originals with a sprinkling of well-chosen covers by the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, and Jolie Holland. According to NPR, Anna sings "with a strong voice reminiscent of Neko Case or Jenny Lewis" and C|NET Download.com compliments her on her "torchy pop" and "burnished tunes."

And Tuesday, October 28, we'll have our second action-packed SEMI-OPEN MIKE NIGHT. Butler's will be offering the musical stylings of three (Count 'em, THREE!) acts:

TYLER GOUCHER is a young Lancaster singer/songwriter whose genre-straddling acoustic-styled Indie rock is a reflection of every situation he's encountered and all the people he's met.

DAVID JAMES is a Lancaster singer/songwriter with over fifteen years of performing under his belt who lists Damien Rice, Oasis and the Dave Matthews Band as influences. Although he plays in a rock band, he's looking forward to getting his solo acoustc guitar-driven music out in front of the public.

Originally hailing from Boston, PETE RICHARD with JULIA AUDREY bring their eclectic acoustic/singer-songwriter/blue-eyed folkie soul/alt-country mix, a mash-up of everyone from Johnny Cash & June Carter to Radiohead, to Southern California.

If any of you are in the area, or feel like taking a drive into the High Desert, Butler's Coffee is located at 40125 10th St .West in Palmdale. Those of you on the East Coast or Montreal might want to leave a little early to avoid that mid-continent traffic mess.

Those interested in playing at Butler's can pick up a form there or by visiting their web site. You can also see who else is playing.

Tess Monaghan: Knocked-Up P.I.

2008-09-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

Not since Dan Quayle, he of ‘potatoe’ fame, railed against The Murphy Brown Show’s depiction of an unwed mother has the collision of vice-presidents and the topic of unwed mothers been given such media (and peanut gallery) attention. It turns out the uproar over Brittany Spears’ kid sister’s much-discussed pregnancy a few months ago was just a teaser. The real deal is the unwed seventeen-year old mother-to-be lurking in Vice Presidental candidate Sarah Palin’s little family-value-driven family.

As I write this, I have no idea if Palin will be the history-making vice-president of these United States, or an upcoming question in a future game of Trivial Pursuit, but for the last week or so, the opinions (and the proclaimed opinions on whether or not American’s should even be having such opinions) on the young Miss Palin’s fertility have been raging around me. At work, at home, and most places in between.

Is it our business? Should the choices politicians’ (or their children) make in their personal lives be off-limits for discussion? What about politicians who want to impose restrictions on the choices the rest of us make in our personal lives? Is Miss Palin’s choice to bear a child her constitutionally protected right (and her actual choice) – or what her mother would want to be the law (and what she wants her daughter to do)?

In the event of an unplanned, out-of-wedlock marriage, what would you do? What would I do? And more importantly, what would a well-established and much-beloved private eye do?

That’s the exact predicament in which Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan finds herself in "The Girl in the Green Raincoat," her newest case (hot on the heels of the 2008 publication of Another Thing to Fall….)

Not that Lippman planned it this way. The whole Palin Pregnancypalooza was probably as unexpected to the author as pregnancy was to Tess.

Throughout its long and diverse history, the P.I. genre has offered us an astounding array of detectives: male and female, black and white, Mormon, Christian, Jewish, Moslem and atheist, gay, straight and other, old, young, big, small, thin, fat, and even freckled. There are virgins and satyrs, drunks and nuns, losers and winners. But the number of private eyes with actual children are few and far between.

Oh, sure, there’s an occasional more-or-less grown child around (Robert E. Bailey Art Hardin is an actual middle-aged family man with a wife and three kids) but younger children are usually mentioned only in passing, or conveniently shuttled off-page and into the custody of an ex-spouse (Warren Murphy’s Trace). Even the rise of so many female gumshoes since the eighties has not seen a dramatic climb in the number of shamuses with children. Kinsey, V.I. and Stephanie remain as footloose and child-free as Philip, Sam and Lew did in previous generations.

But having your gumshoe not just be involved with children, but actually be with child? Now that takes balls.(And, er, eggs).

Only a few precedents spring to mind, most notably Max Allan Collins’ ground-breaking comic book Ms. Tree, whose pregnancy and subsequent birth and even breast-feeding (in a comic book, no less) in the early nineties were so far ahead of the curve that there was no curve. Then, of course, there was the notoriously misguided 1999 television adaptation of P.D. James’ Cordelia Grey, which had the previously rather virginal gumshoe inexplicably bearing a child. James was reportedly so taken aback by this plot development that she publicly complained that “they made Cordelia into an unmarried mother and a totally ineffective and silly girl. They've rather stolen my character, really.”), vowing she’d never write another book with the character.

But Tess is no virgin. Or some lunkhead teenager -- she knows where babies come from. She’s a grown-up woman, able to make up her own mind. In a world of hard-boiled superdicks (and janes) with their chiselled-out-of-granite moral codes and Uzi-toting sidekicks, Tess is the weird, messed up kid sister we all had – or wish we did. She's loyal to a fault, opinionated, funny, clumsy and alternately endearing and enfuriating, honourable and sly, a high-minded idealist only half a step away from telling fart jokes, the accident constantly waiting to happen. She's not Everywoman, so much as Anywoman, hrr life ruled as much by accident as carefully made plans. So it seems only natural that eventually she’d end up unexpectedly pregnant, despite all precautions.

Even better, we’ll all be able to follow along, because Laura’s not going to do this in a short story tucked away in an anthology, or even in a novel which not-so-loyal readers may or may not buy (although Laura’s become such a contender on the bestseller lists lately it’s hard to believe anyone doesn’t buy – or at least know of -- her books).

Nope, Tess’ birthing pains are being played out in as high-profile and public a literary forum as possible – they’re being serialized in The New York Times Magazine, beginning with the Spetember 7 issue and running until, well, until it doesn’t (actually, Laura says it will run for 15 episodes, which means that it should be wrapping up about the same time this year does... and you can even read it for free, as far as I know, online. without being a subscriber.

Think of it: a weekly serialization of one of the ballsiest tales a P.I. will be involved in this year, by one of the genre’s best selling authors. With the Sunday Times wrapped around it. Lippmann and her husband, both ex-newshawks (he does some TV show called THE WIRE), must be rather pleased. Or something.

As Ronnie Hawkins once put it in The Last Waltz, “Big time, Robbie, big time.”

As the story kicks in, Tess, already into her third trimester, is bitching to his best gal pal Whitney that she’s being held hostage, and demanding wine and pizza, while Crow, the father to be, hovers like a mother hen, wrapping her in a quilt and generally driving her crazy. Bed-bound, Tess demands a pair of binoculars and busies herself watching people walk their dogs in the park across the street. Her attention is piqued in particular by a girl in a green raincoat and her dog. And then one day, the girl doesn't show. Think Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, trying to deal with a possible murder and, not a broken leg, but high blood pressure and fluid retention.

Yikes!

You big tough, steely-eyed gents want gritty realism? Forget back alleys, mean streets and automatic weapons, and try to take on talk of diaphrams, preeclampsia and daycare.

I've read a lot of P.I. stuff, and a lot of series, but this has got to be one of the ballsiest moves in the genre since Chandler tried to marry off Marlowe. "The idea has been rattling around for a while," Lippman confesses, "I thought it would definitively end the series; I was less sure at the end, but I don't know where Tess will go. When I was asked to write a proposal, I saw instantly that I would have lots of folks coming to Tess's sick room, talking about love and family."

Indeed. It's going to be a high-wire balancing act, but if anyone can pull this off without getting cute, or turning this into a Lifetime movie-of-the-week, it's her.

Will Crow videotape the birth? Or, more likely, will Tess have to shoot him to get him out of there? And what happened to the girl in the green coat?

I'm not sure -- and Laura's not telling -- but I'm know what I'm doing every Sunday morning for the next few months, as soon as the coffee is made...

And Tess? Yes, this columnist does accept chocolate cigars.

They Don't Write 'em Like That Anymore (Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh)

2008-08-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

A poster on a mailing list recently complained that, essentially, they don't make 'em like they used to. He was referring to private eye TV shows in this case, complaining about "a few episodes of BURNT" and wondered aloud "how it ever got produced." It's an old refrain, and a tired one.

Me, I wondered how someone could watch a few episodes of a TV show -- at least a couple of hours of viewing -- and never catch the title, but I digress... He concluded by lamenting "When will TV executives return to shows that tell plotted stories? Perhaps I am old fashioned, but I love a good hardboiled dick drama."

My response was simply to note that it's too bad there have been so few. THE ROCKFORD FILES and HARRY O were generally well done and quite consistent, but a lot of what I used to think of as "classic" private eye shows were-- thanks to the magic of DVDs and once the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia are removed-- revealed to be often uncomfortably shallow and predictable; moments of brilliance surrounded by entire episodes of cud-chewing acting and formulaic writing.

I'm not sure what show he was referring to, but if it's BURN NOTICE, I suggested he give it another shot. It''s certainly no worse than MANNIX or CANNON or PETER GUNN, all above average if not always brilliant shows, and has a far better batting average (and writing, acting and sense of true style) than SIMON & SIMON, MAGNUM P.I. or 77 SUNSET STRIP.

Of course, there was the expected response, like-minded souls lamenting how they just don't make 'em (or any sort of art and entertainment) like that anymore.

Sorry, I just don't get it. Sure, entertainment may be in a transitional mode, at least as far as delivery systems go, but the nature of entertainment and art really hasn't changed all that much. We all still want a good story, a catchy ditty, a pretty picture to rock our world.

And for those of you with open minds and ears and eyes, there doesn't seem to be any dearth of well-written and intelligent art -- the problem is that, thanks to technology and a sense of entitlement, everyone thinks they have something to say that we should all hear. I don't think there's less good stuff, but there is -- admittedly -- a ton more bad stuff out there to weed through. It used to be an artist often suffered for his art -- now, with all these new paradigms of content delivery, there's no need for actual craft or art, but the public is certainly expected to suffer through the results.

It isn't the loss of good art we should be mourning (it IS out there), but the loss of a shared community to enjoy it, and the lack of respect for any sort of critical filter or display of intelligence. We used to be able to gather around a sit-com, a hit movie, a bestseller, a tragedy. The money men and the ideological thugs have destroyed that, and we've been complacent in it. Polarization (the more dumbed down the better) is the new entertainment. The bullshit cultural wars are good for business -- send them your brain NOW!

The retreat into a slack-jawed cultural comfort zone (niche marketing, speciality radio and TV, narrow-casting and reaction quotes instead of actual news) where we seldom know what lies beyond our own little, conceited worldview is the problem. And now we're far enough into it that we have "artists" raised in that sort of closeted milieu who only serve (and can only serve) the narrow little cultural pigeon hole in which they were grew up.

"I only listen to classic rock" is just another word for "Nothing left to lose." Or possibly "I have become my parents."

The baby boomers and the "Greatest Generation" are amazingly similar -- self-mythologized but too often culturally-blind dinosaurs who closed their minds and eyes and ears years ago and have been moping for the "good old days" ever since, idealizing and romanticizing the stupidities and fads and knee-jerk group-think of their respective eras while sneering at everything since.

And, of course, ignoring the fact that the "good old days" were always a dirty lie.

Sure, it's sad that some nineteen year old (or some 73-year old) can't name all the Beatles or Rolling Stones, but it's equally sad that some 48-year old can't name one song by Coldplay or Jay Z.

The pundits have been saying that the world is going to hell. But they've been saying that for 10,000 years.

Rant, rant, rant. Someone stick a fork in me. I'm done.

P.S. If you've never seen BURN NOTICE, you can catch up on it's entire run for free [and legally] at

www.hulu.com

A Riot of My Own: Montreal is NOT LA... or is it?

2008-08-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Out of the blue, someone hit me with this last night:

"So Montreal is just like Los Angeles now."

I was stunned. I've spent six years occasionally writing about and constantly trying to come to terms with the wild and weird cultural and social discrepancies between the two countries and the two cities and this one really sandbagged me. I muttered some declarative inanity to the effect that "Trust me, Montreal is NOT LA" but now I'm wondering if I was a little too hasty in my response.

Granted, the person who hit me with this one has his own agenda. Although a genial, educated and often charming guy, he's prone to see almost everything wrong with the world in terms of race. Or the Republicans. Or anyone who views the world differently than he does.

So he took no small amount of satisfaction in tossing that little tidbit of pithiness in my face. Or at least that's the way it seemed to me.

He was referring to the recent riots in Montreal North, of course, and he seemed (to me) rather pleased about the whole thing. He knows how disheartened I am about the casual racism (or at least what I see as the casual racism) so prevalent down here, and he loves to provoke people and foster arguments. He routinely dismisses all liberals as ignorant fools, but I'm told I shouldn't take it personally. And, of course, he'll deny to the end of his days that he's racist, but he's not above tossing off the most mean-spirited sweeping generalizations and hurtful epithets about various groups without a second thought. And whatever you do don't get him started on the Jews.

If you don't know about the Montreal riots, there's a good summary on the Canadian Press site. But essentially, the riot erupted after the police shooting of an unarmed kid.

You wanna drag racism into it? The cops were white. The kid was "dusky," to use the euphemism my friend used. Had we not been in mixed company, he might have used a lot stronger word.

The rioters were a mixed lot, but given the neighbourhood, it's a safe bet that plenty of them were "dusky" as well.

The whole shooting thing is now under investigation, so some details are pretty murky, but since it's the Surete, the Quebec provincial police who investigate such shootings, don't expect much. The mutual backscratching between police forces in such investigations has been going on for years.

The Montreal police do have a history of shooting unarmed people, particularly those of the "dusky" persuasion (a memorable incident in Montreal several years ago had them killing a high school teacher). They also have a history of closing ranks after every such incident. In this case, they refused not only to name the two police officers involved (understandable), but didn't even interview them until days after the incident (which certainly ratcheted up the tensions that contributed to the riot). In fact, even two weeks later, they still haven't revealed why the two police officers approached the youth and his friends in the first place.

The police might have been totally in the right; they might have been totally in the wrong, but their secretiveness and evasiveness has once again made matters worse. And now, there's a riot to investigate as well. Once again, that sounds like LA.

Still, there are differences. The Montreal cops are almost totally white and the immigrants in Montreal North are almost all legal (actually, most of them aren't even immigrants, having been born in Canada). The dead kid, though, was an immigrant. Honduran, in fact.

God knows, there is racism in Canada (and Quebec and even Montreal), but I'd like to think most Montrealers would find the casual racism so many Los Angelenos take for granted abhorrent. Or at least I'd like to think so.

This particular riot is probably more in line with the recent ones in Paris, but once the first window is smashed, the first brick is thrown or the first cop opens fire on a crowd, all riots are the same. Stupidity is the great equalizer.

People will always riot, given the right circumstances. And some assholes (no matter what colour) will take advantage of that to let off steam, smash things or line their own pockets. I remember sitting in a sidewalk bar on Crescent Street, nursing a beer, watching a very respectable-looking middle-aged (white) lady running down the street, her arms full of designer dresses, during the 1986 Stanley Cup riot in Montreal.

Injustice, real or imagined, seems to be a common catalyst for riots, but good ol' high spirits seem to suffice as well.

The other notable riots in Montreal history generally have to do with hockey (certainly not a problem in LA), and involve mostly white people. Oh, and then there's probably the most significant one, way back in 1849 or so, when a bunch of disgruntled, anti-Democratic Scotch/Irish/Brits burned down the Parliament Buildings in Montreal.

Which is why Ottawa is the national capital. Damn whitey, always causing trouble.

Here are a few comments worth pondering...

"Montreal is rotten to the core"
-- Lord Elgin (Canadian governor, after the Montreal Parliament Buildings were burned down)

"Montreal is almost as crooked as we are."
-- Raymond Chandler, LA crime writer, in "Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate"

"Stupid nigs and stupid Beaners who should be kicked out of the country because they are all welfare suckers and are a total waste of good air. Until our politicians stop allowing uneducated people from banana Republics this is going to happen more frequently."
-- some good Montreal citizen, about the Montreal north riots

"At least nobody's dragged language into it. Yet."
-- a citizen from Westmount (formerly an Anglo enclave)

"A riot is the language of the unheard."
-- Martin Luther King

Is Montreal the same as LA? I look at the clips of the riots on UTube and read the vitriol being spewed on blogs and in letters to the editors and see the whole charade being played out and I think about how quietly smug we Canadians (including me) can be sometimes, and in my darkest moments of despair wonder if maybe, just maybe, we're not worse.

Ah, Quebec...

2008-08-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

Quebec City recently celebrated its 400th anniversary, making it one of the oldest cities in Noth America (and still one of the most beautiful). It was evidently quite a party -- there were tons of special events, including a free concert headlined by Paul McCartney, which a teeny but vocal number of separatist members of the National Assembly opposed. Evidently, the presence of Sir Paul, being British, would evoke "painful memories" of the British conquest. Quel horror!

Evidently, there are many 270 or so- year-old French war vets living in Quebec City, still seething over their defeat by Montcalm's forces in 1749. Who knew?

I mean, get a grip. McCartney man wrote "Ebony and Ivory" and "The Dog Gone Girl is Mine" and they complain about his nationality???

Fortunately, the three members of the Loyal Opposition don't reflect the views of anyone but a few other petty-minded, ethnocentric twerps. Most Quebecers didn't mind Sir Paul being British at all. Something like 270,000 showed up for the show.

And really, the yahoo fringe of the PQ should pick its targets more carefully. McCartney isn't some poor Anglo shopkeeper with an "illegal" sign in his Greenfield Park window that they can bash around or drive into bankruptcy with a barrage of fines -- he's one of the richest men in the world. The PQ should just be grateful that McCartney doesn't buy the entire province and turn Quebec City into a seal sanctuary.

Somewhere, the ghost of Mordecai Richler is laughing his ass off.

Sigh....

Ah, Bookstores...

2008-07-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Chain bookstores are a favourite whipping boy for some authors and readers with over-developed opinions of themselves and, perhaps not surprisngly, small struggling indy bookstores.

But I've spent enough time in bookstores, new and used, small and large, miniscule and gargantuan, to realize not all indies are pure gold. Especially the ones that smell of old cat pee and smug pretension.

Let's face it: not all bookstore employees are English majors. Now get over it.

In big chains, morons can obviously still slip through the hiring filters, but they seldom last. In small indies, however, there often aren't any filters at all -- they just hire relatives and friends and friends of friends. Who may not exactly be candidates for Mensa either.

Plus they linger there forever. After all, how do you fire your sister-in-law?

Mind you, having worked the other side of the counter, I now realize the shocking truth.

You think some bookstore employees are dumb?

You should see some of the customers.

"Hi, where's that book they made that movie from at?"
"What movie?"
"I forget the title but it has that guy in it, everyone's talking about it."
"That guy?"
"Yeah, he was also in that other movie with that other guy, you know, the one that went out with that girl from the TV show?"
"That girl? Marlo Thomas?"
"Who? No, man, that girl on FRIENDS."
"She's in the movie?"
"No, but the same guy she was going out with was in that other movie? Some guys are chasing him? In some big city, I think it's New York or maybe LA?"
"And you don't remember the title?"
"Well, it was on sale the last time I was here. You must have moved it."
"When was this?"
"I dunno. Around the holidays? Don't you keep records? "
"Sorry, I really don't remember."
"You must be new here."
"I've worked here three years. Do you remember the author of the book?"
"No, but they made a movie from it."
"You don't remember anything else?"
"It's got yellow on the cover."
"Sorry, sir, that doesn't help much."
"Well, you're not being very helpful. I want to talk to the manager."

Violent Femme

2008-06-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

I first became aware of Chris Mills years ago, way back in 1994, back years before I'd even really heard of the internet, when I stumbled across the first issue of Noir in Nebula, Montreal's late, and much-lamented alternative sci-fi/crime/comic book store.

Noir billed itself as an "Illustrated Crime Fiction Quarterly." It was a great idea, but unfortunately it failed after only three issues (and two publishers), a 64-page, comic-book size modern-day pulp magazine featuring fiction, art and comic strips by some of the greatest talents in the mystery, crime fiction and comics fields of the time. Contributors included Robert Randisi, Ron Goulart, Wendi Lee, C.J. Henderson, and Max Allan Collins. It was just a little too hip for the room; too out there for the newstands and maybe a little too wordy for the comic book stores (except of course for mondo gonzo places like Nebula). I bagged and boarded my much-read copies and stowed 'em away...

I next stumbled across Chris -- or he stumbled across me -- several years later, when he submitted a couple of short stories featuring his Maine P.I. Matthew Dain (both must reads) to Thrilling Detective, and then pitched the idea of running a new weekly web comic -- about a hard-boiled (and masked) female crime fighter -- on my site. We did, and the rest is history. Or at least a moderately amusing story to tell over a few beers one day (suffice it to say that Chris is a very interesting guy with more than a few stories to tell and that I was not the only Kevin Smith to fall under the dame's charms).

Well, that strip, Femme Noir, is finally (finally!) making it into print, revamped and ready to kick ass, and anyone out there who likes detective stories and comic books and isn't getting enough high-fibre pulp in their diet is definitely in for a treat. Imagine Red Harvest meets The Dark Knight, starring the bastard love-child of radio's The Shadow and Eisner's The Spirit set loose in Gotham City, with a script cobbled together by Chester Gould, Dash Hammett and Bob Kane on a three-day bender (possibly at Spillane's house). And then imagine the Spirit as a dame with to-die-for-gams in a broad-brimmed hat, a trenchcoat, fishnets and spike heels. Armed with twin automatics not afraid to sneeze "KA-CHOW!"

Yeah, this is comic book land, so there's plenty of two-fisted, gun-blazing action (and more than a few winks, nods and tips of the fedora to assorted pop culture miscreants), but the story, about a mysterious (but easy on the eyes) masked vigilante out to clean up Port Nocturne one thug at a time, hits all the right notes.

You want it? Femme Noir's got it: mean streets, treacherous back alleys, cold-blooded bad guys, slimy gang lords, killer robots, big city corruption, and a mysterious crime-fighting avenger who definitely knows how to fill out a pair of fishnets, and isn't above serving up her own kind of justice. Blonde justice.

Femme Noir: The Dark City Diaries, a four-issue, full-color miniseries, with art by legendary comic book guy Joe Staton, hits the streets (and hipper comic book joints) this month.

Lord knows, there are plenty of other comic books out there, full of over-developed mouth-breathers and angsty navel-gazers running around in their underwear, all vying for your hard-earned geetus, but there's only one Femme Noir. As the lady herself might say:

"You boys have a choice to make. Choose well."

If You're Going to San Francisco...

2008-06-11T19:47:00.001-07:00

... forget all that flowers in your hair stuff. Instead, slap on a fedora, pull on a trenchcoat and fire up a jasper as local artist Owen Smith pays tribute to Dashiell Hammet's private eye classic The Maltese Falcon (arguably ground zero for the genre), with a series of posters commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art as part of its Market Street 2008 Program. The posters will be installed from Monday, June 16th, to Thursday, September 18th on (where else?) Market Street.

And to kick off the project, Don Herron and Smith will lead one of Herron's popular Dashiell Hammett Tours beginning at the southeast corner of Market and Third Streets on Saturday, June 28th, at 1 PM, absolutely free of charge. You'll get to scope out Spade and Archer’s office and other Falcon landmarks, as well as check out Smith’s posters and hear how he came up with each one.

Artist Owen Smith, of course, was the artist I blabbed on about recently for his amazing Mother Jones "Torture Hits Home" cover.

For more of his Falcon posters, click on the pic below....

I dunno. Maybe it's time for me to finally check out this burg...

If you're going to San Francisco gimme a call.

He Got Game

2008-06-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

Lord knows, I'm not a game guy.

Oh, sure, when I got my first Mac and first fell in love, I was as enthralled as the next geek by Tetris, Eight Ball Deluxe and the then-cutting edge charm of Marathon, one of the very first point and shot games. In fact, some of my best memories of time spent with my son, Dylan, were crouched over that old Power PC, working our way through the intricate levels of Marathon and Rebel Assault and later, Golden Eye and Pod Racer.

But for me, the charm more or less wore off. I'll admit to an occasional on-line round of Text Twist or FreeRice, but for me, the hours spent diddling around on some game are pretty much a thing of the past.

Until now. The folks at Legacy Games asked me if I'd be interested in blogging about their new-on-CD-ROM game, The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes, and of course, scrounger and moocher that I am, I said sure.

But, I warned them, I'm not really a game guy and besides I'ma Mac guy. and haven't all the games gone over to the dark side now? Not a prob, they assured me. The demo on their site is for PC, but the actual game is available as a Mac/PC hybrid on CD. Which they said they would send me if I wanted.

"Free stuff!" I figured.

Well, I played the online demo on The Girl Detective's PC one night after she'd gone to bed (poor chile -- she's on that blasted thing all day long) and I liked it.

And then the game itself arrived, and I got to play a few more levels than the demo allowed. And I'm liking it. A LOT.

Legacy's touting it as the first computer game officially licensed by the Conan Doyle estate, and I've got to amit it's pretty cool -- particularly for those familiar with the canon. There are plenty of tips of the deerstalker here and Mycroft, Inspector Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson and a few other familiar faces make cameos.

Sure, the animation's a little stiff, but otherwise, the artwork's pretty well-done -- the richly detailed settings for the actual games are a feast for the eyes.

There are sixteen cases in it, with a bonus game for the triumphant detective who cracks the first sixteen, and I'm about halfway through. The "cases" all feature a crime of some sort -- sometimes murder, sometimes not. Each one is introduced by Holmes, who confers with a client while Watson plays straight man. The scenario is laid out and the boys journey through Victorian London to the invariably cluttered scene of the crime (a circus tent, a drawing room, the British Museum, a library, Big Ben, The Royal Theatre, etc.), where they must examine the evidence. From here, it's pretty much a glorified version of I Spy -- you have to spot the discrepancies between two photos, or find a list of carefully hidden objects. The discovery of each bit of evidence (a glove, an egg, a dagger, a candlestick, a pistol, etc.) provides additional clues on suspects and possible motives, and some evidence triggers further challenges (a word scramble, a code to break, a jigsaw puzzle, a memory game, Sudoku, etc.) that must also be solved (games within games, if you will). A second (and occasionally third) mini-game generally presents you with another room to toss, and then the 6-12 suspects are gathered together, sorted out (Who has blue eyes, sideburns and is not a woman?), and their motives and evidence summarized.

I guess if you sat down with a pen and paper and really thought it through, the cases do make a certain sense, but with a time limit on each game (generally 25-30 minutes) you don't really have the luxury. And anyway, who cares about pens and paper when they are more clues to find and the clock is ticking?

The actual mystery in each case is more a frame work to hang the games on than an actual mystery. Like I said, it's more like a glorified game of I Spy (the proper term, I've been told, is a "Hidden Object" game) with a healthy dose of Clue tossed in. But that doesn't negate the unexpected charm of this game.

According to their blurb, Legacy is evidently the "leading developer and publisher of casual games for people of all ages," and I think that the word "casual" is part of what makes me enjoy this game so much. It's a pleasant diversion, a half-hour at most, and at the end you either have solved it or you haven't (and you'll have to go back and take another crack). Solving one case lets you proceed to the next.

Sure, hard-core gamers like Dylan may shrug. "It's not really my type," he pointed out, "but for what it is, it's not bad. There are some funny touches, like when you click 'quit' in the menu there's a voice that says 'cheerio!'" And some may dismiss it as "pretty easy... really a kid's game" but for the casual gamer, looking for a break, this is ideal.

And the game only looks easy. Once you get past the first few cases, the cases and mini-games get decidedly trickier and the suspect pool increases. And once you get drawn into its world, well, suffice it to say you DO get drawn into its world. I found myself staying up until two last night playing the damn thing. It was always "Just one more game...."

There's part of me, of course, that wishes that something a little more hard-boiled than Holmes and 221B Baker were available (I haven't come across a gin-soaked floozy or a set of brass knuckles yet!), but for now, this will do just fine.

The Mac version of the game is available for download at Gametreeonline.com and the PC version is available right from Legacy'. . You can also buy the CD-ROM version all over the place.

Slam This City!

2008-05-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

There's a little event planned tomorrow night in LA that might appeal to some of the more progressive-minded crime fic fans out there .

Or anyone who gives a damn about anything more than the bottom line.

Gary Phillips, creator of the Ivan Monk series and editor of the recently blogged-upon Politics Noir, among about a zillion other projects, both will be bringing his considerable activist and literary mojo, MC-ing WRITE TO THE CITY, which is billing itself as "LA's First Writer's Slam on Genrification."

Among those attending are fellow local crime writers Gar Haywood (who writes the Aaron Gunner books), Rick Dakan, Larry Fondation, Denise Hamilton (the Eve Diamond crime novels), and our old pal Robert Ward (Shedding Skin and Red Baker), as well as the Big Man himself. Popping in from the Windy City to lend a hand is Sara Paretsky (the V.I. Warshawski books, of course, and the recent literary memoir Writing in an Age of Silence).

Here's the scoop from the official web site.

Can you imagine Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe hanging out at a gastro-pub? Or Dashiell Hammett writing the Maltese Falcon from a luxury loft?

Today, noir and mystery writers are documenting a common phenomenon.

Their characters’ lives are all facing a big problem: they’re grappling with the changing face of their cities.

The vibrant city celebrated in noir books and stories is fast disappearing. Its residents and local businesses are facing the same fate as those in the non-fiction world.

Gentrification is forcing them out of their communities.

Write to the City is a one-of-a-kind slam that will pair some of the country’s foremost noir and mystery writers with inner-city activists to trade stories in a genre-melding way. We hope you’ll join us on May 29th for a literary and political exploration of the city, and a chance to talk to someone you don’t know over a whiskey sour and a background of good music.

Okay, I'm not sure Chandler "celebrated" Los Angeles in his writing -- even then he was horrified by what was happening to it in the name of "progress." But what's happening now is worse. You look at what's happening in our cities (and our suburbs, for that matter) now and it's clear this cancer can't go on. The residents of Palmdale who snidely refer to Los Angeles as "down below" and think what happens down there doesn't affect their lives in a thousand different ways -- are in for a shock. The birds are coming home to roost -- and they ain't chickens anymore. They're birds of prey. And they're not going to wait for you to drop dead before they start feasting.

My guess is that --given this crowd and the bent of the evening -- there won't be a lot of Hummers in the parking lot.

Quality of life? Making our cities livable? A spit in the face of the strip miners of our cities? Crime fiction?

I'll be there.

Hope you are too.

The Book You Have to Read: "The January Corpse" by Neil Albert

2008-05-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

Perfect timing, Jeff.

Here I am up to my eyeballs in a Lawrence block piece, a slew of reviews and sundry other overdue projects when Rap Sheet head honcho J. Kingston Pierce sneaks up on me and bitch slaps me with a hell of a challenge.

Evidently it’s my turn to ante up for Patti "Don't Call Me 'Cake'" Abbott’s new tag-team Friday blog series, highlighting “books we love but might have forgotten over the years” and then challenging another writer to do the same.

What can I say? At least after chipping in, I get to inflict -- I mean, spread the joy – to another writer…

The irony, of course, is that I CAN’T forget the book I’ve chosen.

In the pantheon of unjustly forgotten private eye writers, the late eighties and early nineties were responsible for a staggering amount of candidates. The usual names bandied about are Stephen Greenleaf, Arthur Lyons and Jonathan Valin, but you could toss in several other lightly more obscure but no less enjoyable authors, such as Gaylord Dold, Rob Kantner and the late Ben Schutz.

All wrote tough, savvy, literate and even poetic private eye tales, always solid and often memorable mysteries full of compassion and hard-boiled integrity, stuff that could cast an unflinching eye upon the mean streets of society one moment and break your (manly) heart the next.

Unfortunately, most of their books are long gone and long out of print, vanished into the black hole of publishing, victims of mainstream indifference and sales that were never quite enough, helped along perhaps partially by the then-popular female private eye boom (which itself would, predictably, grind to a staggering halt in a few years).

But none of the books by any of those writers, all these years down the road, remains as memorable to me as The January Corpse by Neil Albert, the novel that introduced Philadelphia private eye Dave Garrett.

The book came out in 1991 to, as far as I know, pretty solid reviews. The New York Times cited it as a "tantalizingly twisted first novel" and Publisher's Weekly deemed it an "exceptional first mystery... driven by a baffling plot (that) comes to a surprise ending that passes the Holmesian test: after the impossible is eliminated, that which remains, however improbable, is the truth."

It was subsequently nominated for a Shamus for Best First P.I. Novel and even sold well enough to spawn a handful of sequels (The February Trouble, Burning March, Cruel April , etc.), each appearing approximately a year apart and each spouting a month of the year in its tile. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the series ended with Tangled June. Presumably the author, an attorney himself, kept his day job.

Although, based on the promise shown in The January Corpse, one time he coulda been the champion of the world. Because the audacity, the sheer effrontery of his corkscrew of an ending was a challenge to a genre that, even now, still has not responded.

Don't get me wrong. The entire series -- such as it was -- is worth reading. It's smart and literate and subtly-written, with an appealingly fresh voice and an engaging world view. The books will certainly appeal to fans of Ross Macdonald or Stephen Greenleaf, in particular. But that first book is really something special.

And, damn it, I can't even discuss it's ending without destroying much of the effectiveness of this book. Not that it's so original and shocking a plot twist that it's never been used before -- or won't be spotted well in advance by some of the more jaded tabloid junkies out there. Hell, I can think of a couple of mystery novels myself, one dating back to the thirties, that have used it before, but the ending, and particularly its startling denouement, still have the power to provoke and raise eyebrows after all these years.

Dave Garrett is a disbarred lawyer turned private eye, not exactly setting the world on fire. He drives a Honda Civic with more than a few years and miles on it, and he owns two guns, although he confesses he's never really had to use either. His disbarment is, likewise, not the result of any sort of high drama but simply a rather sad set of circumstances and poor judgement -- he got caught trying to take his wife's final law exam (she suffered from anxiety attacks). So he lost his job... and eventually his wife.

Despite all this -- or perhaps because of it, Dave's become a man of principle; an obsessively honest, decent man working as a detective, intent on doing the right thing. Oh, he's still willing to bend a few small rules, if he has to, but he tries to keep his word, and he's uncommonly loyal to his clients, and his small, one-man agency has thus earned a good reputation in Philadelphia law circles.

In The January Corpse, he's hired to find a stiff.

That's right -- the dead man's mother is convinced her lawyer son, Daniel Wilson, is already dead. Long dead. Now she just just wants proof of it, so she and her daughter, Lisa, can collect on Daniel's life insurance and so that they get on with their lives. But it's Danny's former employers, a prestigious law firm, who are the actual clients here, and their motives are a little less obvious. It turns out Danny was something of a hotshot, a mover and a shaker, practicing mostly civil law, but possessing more than his fair share of rather unsavory clients with rumored connections to organized crime. He disappeared seven years ago, leaving behind only his car, "found empty, shot full of holes, and full of blood."

If Dave can provide presumption-of-death evidence in court and prove that Danny didn't simply skip town with the $100,000 he allegedly had in his possession at the time of his disappearance, the family will be able to collect.

It seems like a slam dunk that the man's dead -- there's been no trace of him in all that time; no evidence that he's still alive. But there's more to the case than meets the eye. A well-known local detective agency has already refused the case, all that money is still missing, and Dave has begun to receive threats, warning him to stop poking around.

But Dave, possibly exhibiting more pie-eyed determination than common sense, is soon traipsing all over the Keystone State, from the “sad, worn-out country, full of dead hopes” coal fields to a white-knuckled car chase through Amish territory. Fortunately he’s got Lisa, Danny’s sister, along for much of the ride and she proves to be a surprisingly resourceful and pragmatic (but not always truthful) accomplice, a sharp counterpoint to the idealistic but at times hesitant young private eye. It’s the sort of pragmatism that leads to Lisa coolly shooting a gunman in the foot as a “warning.” An unexpected but entirely believable relationship between Lisa and Dave begins to develop, and it’s the sensitive and deftly handled details of this at-first-unlikely relationship which provide the emotional foundation of this novel.

And then all hell breaks loose. Before the book is done, stereotypes are blown away and tropes flattened, crimes exposed and secrets unearthed. Flabbergasted readers knocked off-balance will find themselves re-evaluating what they've just read, and flipping back and forth through the pages, trying to figure out managed to pull the rug out from under them.

But he did it, alright; fairly and squarely, and it was no fluke or happy accident. As evidenced by "A History of Private Eye Fiction," a thoughtful and provocative short piece Albert once wrote for Mystery.net, the author clearly knew his stuff.

So anyone who enjoys the traditions -- and even more so, the possibilities of the private eye genre -- should track down a copy of The January Corpse post-haste. It's too good a read to let slip by.

There's a conversation still to be had about this book; one a long time in coming. Alas, it won't be here. Even commenting on a plot "twist'" is problematical -- revealing its mere existence will get readers thinking out of the box. It's best if you discover it on your own. (On the other hand, the "COMMENTS" section here may be just right.)

No, really. Read The January Corpse for what it is: a great little private eye novel, and then marvel at the author's skill and pluck. And then try to forget it.

I dare you.

And speaking of dares, I'm throwing one out to one of the genre's more eminent men of letters: Dick Adler. Come on, Dick, pick up the stick for next week.

Dear Mr. Chandler...

2008-05-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

As John Prine once noted, it's a big ol' goofy world out there. And some people don't read very well. Or are just plain hard of thinking.

Anyone doubting that has only to run a web site for a while, or, I guess, simply attempt to offer an opinion or two in public, before that becomes glaringly obvious. People misread, misspeak and misinterpret stuff with such ferocity and come up with such peculiar notions that you wonder if they had to go to Stupid School to get that way, or were just naturally blessed.

Like, on a mailing list recently, I dared poke a little fun at a famous author's PR schtick and his increasing longwindedness, only to be told by an apparent adult on the list that I had no right to voice such an opinion about anyone "who's accomplished so much more than you have" and "are a lot better than you are."

The implication, of course, being that one should keep their mouths shut about one's betters.

Naturally, this genius' own literary accomplishments seem to consist chiefly of a self-published book only available on his MySpace page, but that's beside the point. You still you have to wonder about any "writer" -- published or not -- who thinks so little of the concept of free speech.

And then there's my site. I get letters all the time from people who think I'm a detective agency or a book seller or a DVD vendor or even the fictitious character I'm writing about. And plenty of folks with more technology than imagination who've had nothing better to do than Google their own names, only to discover some private detective who shares their monicker. Most of them assume I'm the author, of course, and are simply curious as to why "I" chose that particular name.

Which is harmless enough, I guess. I answer them, clarify who I am and what I do, pat their butts and send 'em on their way.

But then there are the gumdrops who take it up a big notch, like the latest wingnut who thinks she has a legal case because a relatively well-respected mystery author had a series built around a character who shared her long deceased relative's name.

Not that there is much to link the two beyond a shared bit of nomenclature and a few rough biographical similarities, but this woman's anger seems to have two fronts: she's angry because the name is the same, and she's angry because the details of the detective's life are not the same. In a work of fiction!

But mostly she seems to resent the praise and acclaim the author has garnered over the last ten years or so, over what she sees as the dead body of her relative. Did I mention the woman considers herself a "truly creative person"?

I made the mistake of trying to reason with this fruitcake, and now I've got members of her extended clan also on my case, also threatening me with legal action. And now the woman's boasting she has plans to confront the author.

Suffice it to say that I managed to track him down and warn him, just in case. After all, being a looney toon doesn't necessarily disqualify anyone from being able to purchase a gun in this country. I'd rather risk ridicule for over-reacting than read about some poor mystery author being Cheyneyed in the face.

And this isn't the first time it's happened. I've had correspondence with a few other litigation-happy crackpots over the years, perhaps most notably a few years ago when a woman informed me she was going to sue a British author for ripping off her life for a male character-- and also having the audacity to change almost every bit of her life for his fictional character. She demanded I post "the whole story" on my web site so the world would finally know "the truth."

I tell you, it makes me long for the days when most of my e-mail from the site was more along the lines of:

Dear Mr. Chandler,

I love your books about Phillip Malrowe. Why don't you write more?

Sigh...

Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hell's Door

2008-05-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

I moderate a mystery reading group, the obviously titled Murder Ink, at the local Barn O' Novels, here in sleepy, sunny Palmdale. It's a fun group, a monthly break from the routine, although most months I'm the only guy in the group. And most of the ladies lean to the lighter end of the spectrum (or profess to).

Still, stubborn cuss that I am, I keep trying to occasionally slip some harder, darker fare into the mix -- a Chandler or Hammett here; a Robert Parker or Mosley there. And we try to mix things up a bit, ranging from new or newish writers to old classics (Doyle, Sayers, etc.) to off-the-beaten track cross-over stuff (Elizabeth Lowell, Isaac Asimov).

So, when someone suggested we "do" a Ken Bruen ("that Irish guy you're always talking about"), i jumped at the chance. Jack Taylor, the alcoholic ex-Guard turned Galway eye, the gumshoe with all the heart and hurt of a dozen dead poets, is one of my favourite P.I. series; a literate, uncompromising stroll to the abyss and back that gets me every time. And so I oh-so-subtly lead them to one I hadn't yet read, figuring it would be a good way for me to both catch up on the series (and revisit Galway, the "dirtiest city in Ireland") and meanwhile maybe ruffle a few smug suburbanite feathers.

Oops.

The Taylor series has always been on the dark side, but Priest (2007), the fifth in the series, is something else again, a bruising, brutal blast of sustained white hot rage and bottom of the glass despair as bleak and black as it gets.Taylor doesn't so much go for a look at the abyss this time -- he jumps in and does a few laps. This isn't slipping into darkness; it's a headlong dive.

In fact, the book kicks off with Taylor just finishing up a little dip, and he's dripping wet. He's fresh out of the looneybin, his mind short-circuited by prolonged abuse and raging guilt over the death of a child, with few prospects and fewer friends, facing a hollow and hopefully (but probably not) alcohol-free future. Meanwhile, a nun has just discovered the severed head of a priest in the confessional -- a priest recently accused of child molesting.

And then things get dark. Before the book is finally nailed shut, there will be murder done and a grisly sort of reckless, wild justice meted out, hearts and lives shattered, drinks drunk (or not drunk) and blood spilled, poetry and music (Springsteen, Cash, Zevon) evoked. And souls forever fucked.

Taylor's (and Ireland's) complicated relationship with the Catholic Church, the lies and wreckage left behind by Ireland's economic success, and his own thundering despair -- they're all here, all ratcheted up to ear-bleeding volume. I thought The Magdalen Martyrs, a previous book in the series, where Taylor took on the Church's systemic abuse of unwed mothers and his own tormented relationship with his mother, was fierce, but this one screams like the mother of all banshees.

What was I thinking?

And Taylor's a far cry from an affable character. In the hands of a weaker writer than Bruen, he'd probably be detestable and utterly unreadable. But Bruen does it with seeming ease, one of the freshest, most distinct voices in crime fiction today. He doesn't so much have style as an M.O.: the plots in the Jack Taylor series seem almost assembled, not written, a swirling jangle of stream-of-consciousness rants, random encounters, chance meetings, out-of-nowhere lists, quotes, fever dreams, newspaper clippings and poetry snippets, and even, sometimes, a little detective work. Holding it all together is Bruen's skill and fierce vision, and of course Taylor, a black hole of a hero if there ever was one.

So, yes, Taylor can be obnoxious and a bully, stupid and mean-spirited and nasty to those who would try to love him, a mostly charm-free, self-pitying grade A fuck-up whose tragedy is that he knows he's a fuck-up, but can't seem to keep the decks from tilting. But there's something about him. And there's always a tiny, tiny sliver of hope, of redemption, a compassion in each book that keeps me reading.

Of course, that tiny splinter invariably and inevitably becomes infected and has to be lanced, but hey, this ain't no Lifetime movie.

Long before Bush and Cheyney made torture fashionable, Taylor was doing it to himself.

He's a one-man weapon of self-destruction; a man whose adult life has been one long Sunday morning coming down, puncuated by lost weekends and bad choices. Because his real battle, of course, is not with the Church or the powers that be, with corrupt cops or Celtic Tiger criminals in their shirts and their ties, but with himself. His alcoholism, his obsessions with past crimes, real and imagined, his burning guilt as he slowly circles the last exit to Hell -- rarely has someone conjured up such a vivid and poetic sense of noir and somehow managed to transform it into an ongoing series. And it ain't that pretty at all.

But therein, maybe, lies its beauty.

I can hardly wait to see what the ladies' reactions will be. May God have mercy....

Tales of (Yankee) Power (Senor?)

2008-05-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't you know it? I just fling out an article on the P.I. genre and politics in the latest issue of Mystery Scene when this one comes wandering into my sights.

The corridors of power, it turns out, are even nastier than Chandler's fabled mean streets, although in Gary Phillips' fierce new book, Politics Noir: Dark Tales from the Corridors of Power, a collection of politically-charged tales from the dark side from some of the best of the HB and noir crowd, sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart.

This book is about as in your face as it gets, an unapologetic no-holds-barred slice of venom aimed at the powers that be and the corruption that is. To be sure, a lot of these nasty black-hearted stories have nothing to do -- theoretically -- with the current administration per se, and as editor, Phillips' attempts at a fair and balanced tone in his intro are admirable. But the actual stories (including his own) make it pretty clear which side of the line most of these writers are coming from -- and are all the more powerful for it. Contributors include Mike Davis, Darrell James, John Shannon, Robert Greer, Twist Phelan, Ken Wishnia, Pete Hautman and Sujata Massey, and I haven't come across a dud yet.

This is primo stuff, angry and pissed off, its bleak cynicism and impotent despair perhaps best summed up by a character in Ken Bruen's heartbreaking contribution, "Dead Right": "Call it politics. I call it shite."

I call the entire collection an essential read. Try to get it done before November...

Ten Years Burnin' Down the Road...

2008-04-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Happy Birtyday to us,
Happy Birthday to us,
Happy Birthday, Dear Thrilling Detective Web Site,
Happy Birthday to us.

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Thrilling Detective Web Site. Or at least the "official" anniversary. The site existed unofficially for a few months prior to April 1, 1998 as a sort of rudimentary private resource for a selected die hard P.I. fans and Rara-Avians who kept urging me to go public. I wasn't convinced there'd be much interest, but I gave in, and on so on April 1 I unleashed the beast. It was April Fools' Day, of course, but that seemed appropriate, since the site had started as a joke, more or less, a harmless way to practice html with something that wouldn't bore me to tears. But I figured it would sure bore the hell out of everyone else. I was wrong.

Suffice it to say that the last ten years have been a lot of things, but they've rarely been boring. But ten years, man. That's gotta be worth something, right?

So please forgive the horn-tooting. Ten years on the "information superhighway." That's what? Thirty or forty years in human years? Long enough, anyway, to have outlasted (or out-updated) almost almost every other crime fiction-related site and newsgroup on the internet. I've outlasted Blue Murder, Judas, 3rd Degree, White Fedora, Shred of Evidence, HandHeldCrime, Futures, Hardluck Stories and Plots with Guns (well, version 1.0). As far as I can tell, only DorothyL and Rara-Avis have been arond longer, and they're discussion groups.

(And certainly long enough to say "HAH!" to a few of the naysayers who have gone ballistic every time I opened my mouth anywhere anytime. I'm pleased to say that more people will probably visit my web site in one day than will ever read their sorry ass "reviews" and self-published crapfests.)

The site has been a labour of love, mostly, and occasionally a thorn in my side. Because of the site, I've appeared on radio and televsion (and DVD, of all things), and been cited as a source in newspaper articles on crime fiction. I've met plenty of authors, some of whom I'm honoured to now call friends. It's led to a writing career of sorts, speaking engagements and even a certain minor league celebrity. But just as the site giveth, it also taketh away. I haven't actually had a real vacation -- or even much free time -- in close to ten years.

Hey, it's not like anyone's pointing a gun at my head, right?

But if you feel inclined -- if the spirit moves you -- please sign our "Birthday Card." If you want to slip a little something into the card, well, that's okay too.

But mostly it would just be nice if you just gave us a little word of encouragement or something. Lord knows none of us are going to get rich doing this so feedback is always good. We'll even post a page soon that will let you know what everyone else has said.

Okay, end of the midnight ramble... let's get on with the goodies in this issue...

As usual, fiction editor and the Handsomest Man in CrimeFic Gerald So has come through with a fistful of hard-boiled treats, for all you good little boys and girls. Spring is in the air, and we've got everything you need to enjoy this season of rebirth: stories about hotdogs, baseball, porn and Russian gangsters.

Robert Petyo's "The Truth About Lang Tri" is as timely a story and look into the elusive nature of "truth" as we've ever run, as the U.S. comes into the home stretch of a particulalry divisive election, with the shadow of yet another unpopular war looming large.

From TV writer Paul Guyot comes "Ace in the Hole," as unapologetic and mean-spirited a story as we've seen, a fierce ride you won't soon forget. Logan used to be a private dick. Now he's just a dick. But justice of a sort gets him in the end.

And speaking of justice, it's only fitting that this issue also feature a few old friends. J. Winter returns after far too long an absence from these pages with "Lady Luck," a new story featuring his blue collar gumshoe Nick Kepler on an all-night prowl.

Meanwhile, site favourite Stephen D. Rogers returns with another slice-of-life tale, a low key charmer called "A Friendly Game" that'll have you root-root-rooting for the home team.

We've also got a couple of very special excerpts for long-time fans of the genre.

First up is a short vignette that perfectly captures the essense of Eric Lerner's Pinkerton's Secret, a rollicking historical drama that re-imagines the story of Allen J. Pinkerton, the infamous founder of the world famous detective agency that bears his name (and whose corporate logo inspired the term "private eye.") There's plenty to love in this rousing adventure yarn, including possibly America's first female private eye and plenty of Civil War-era shenanigans. I can't think of a better excerpt to mark our 10th, than this look back at the start of the whole she-bang.

Not that we're in full retro mode. Any genre not being born is busy dying, as Mr. Zimmerman would say, and our second exceprt proves there's plenty of stories yet to be told. John Shannon is a true original; and his sad sack private detective Jack Liffey is a blast of fresh air that blows away most of the competition. The Devils of Bakersfield is yet another excellent novel, the tenth book in the long-running series, and as good an introduction to the series as you can get. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: nobody "gets" L.A. -- or the black holes of our society --like John does.

There's another group of people who have regularly contributed to this site and it's a shame so many of you don't even know they exist. I'm talking about the hard-working, ink-stained wretches who contribute the web comics we've been running on this site for years. If you've never checked out our web comics section, do yourself a favour and head over there. NOW!

In fact, we've even got a new addition to our roster, starting with this issue. Chris Wisnia's Dick Hammer may seem like yet another P.I. parody, but it's not -- it's a gritty, two-fisted slab of hard-boiled storytelling that makes a fine complement to our other two currently active strips, Odd Jobs, Tim Broderick's acclaimed bittersweet noir saga and the unapologetically goofy Detective Fork featuring Kevin J. Guhl's silverware sleuth who is, alas, frequently both tarnished AND afraid.

But wait! there's more... Time being a mother and all that, I didn't quite make my self imposed deadline (so what's new, eh?). There are still plenty of stories and artilces to come, as well as several long-overdue updates to key entries, making this anniversary issue truly an on-going celebration. In the days and weeks ahead, keep your eyes peeled for more new fiction from Sandra Seamen and Tapani Bagge, and new non-fiction pieces from J. Kingston Pierce, Mark Coggins and Duffy Schoenfeld.

And then, I gotta get out of this place, at least for awhile. This will be our last issue before I take a little hiatius. I'd be lying, of course, if I said I won't be updating the site on a semi-regular basis (Like, what? I'm gonna stop now?), but I'm not going to knock myself out about it. I have a book about hard-boiled women writers of the pulp era (tentative title: Stand-Up Dames) that I'm working on with a deadline to meet, I'm planning a trip home in June to attend my daughter's grad and there are a ton of other projects I'm working on. There will be another issue, but don't even look for it until late summer at the very earliest. We will, however, be open (very open) to submissions...

THIS JUST IN

The Antelope Valley NewPress, a sort of cyber-alternative newspaper here in the Antelope Valley, has just unleashed a podcast I did for them a little while back. Honest, I'm not as dopey in real life as I sound here!

Torture Hits Home

2008-04-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

Wow. I've been a fan of Owen Smith and his pulpy cover illustrations for a long time, ever since I first noticed his work on the cover of The Low End of Nowhere, a novel by Michael Stone featuring his hard-ass Denver bounty hunter and sometime private eye Streeter.

Smith's work subsequently appeared on a few other Streeter novels, but then I began to notice his work -- he has a very distinctive style -- popping up all over the place. An Aimee Man album cover (for which he won a Grammy). Maureeen Dowd's Are Men Really Necessary?. Numerous magazine covers, including The New Yorker and, I think, Sports Illustrated.

Owen's illustrative work is a marvel of swirling, pulpish impressionism that harkens back to the days of public works programs and working class murals as much as it does pulp magazines. It's not really "realistic," but it's vibrant and muscular and there's a throbbing, almost disturbing visceral energy about the way he portrays the people in his paintings. There are no wimps or pretty people in his work -- everyone's built like a bruised brick shithouse.

But his cover for the March/April 2008 issue of Mother Jones is something else again. The theme and title of the issue (and presumably the illustration itself) is "Torture Hits Home" and if you don't think a simple illustration can shock or disturb you, if you can look at this and not squirm, if you can study this picture and simply shrug it off, we all know which side of the torture debate you stand on. And it's far, far away from most of us.

This is illustration played for keeps, a mouthful of blood spit out in defiance. One image, and it makes all the rest of the issue, all those well-intentioned passionate words of condemnation and righteous outrage superfluous.

Look at that illustration. Look at it close.

This is pulp. This is hardcore.

Well done, Mr. Smith.

It's a Shame About Ray (Part Two)

2008-02-14T15:29:00.000-08:00

I came across this little bit while reading The Long Embrace. It's an excerpt from Chandler's attempt at a literary short story, "A Couple of Writers" (1951).

"Jesus, we're the most useless people in the world. There must be a hell of a lot of us too, all lonely, all empty, all poor, all gritted with small mean worries that have no dignity. All trying like men caught in a bog to get some firm ground under our feet and knowing all the time it doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether we do or not.... All the world's would-be writers, the guys and girls that have education and will and desire and hope and nothing else. They know all there is to know about how it's done, except they can't do it. They've studied hard and imitated the hell out of everybody that ever rang the bell."

Gee, no wonder he drank...

It's a Shame About Ray

2008-02-14T12:21:00.000-08:00

Judith Freeman's The Long Embrace is a nasty, messy car crash of a book, a purported biography of Raymond Chandler that too often devolves into gossip or seems to have as much to do with its author as its subject. It's a gruesome, bloody wreck; a buffet for rubberneckers.

And in between bouts of wanting to hurl it at the wall, I couldn't put it down.

Freeman, a long-time Chandler fanatic, attempts to plow the uncharted waters of Chandler's personal life, and his long-time marriage to the enigmatic Cissy Pascal, a woman who, it turns out, was almost twenty years older than he was. The subtitle is "Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved,' and the author hits upon a brilliant premise -- she will apply a geographical approach to her literary legwork, trying to track down each of the over thirty different locations in which the nomadic, reclusive Chanders lived in and around Los Angeles.

It's a great angle, but too often it peters out. Although Freeman has done some commendable research, in both LA and the U.K., digging up rare photos, little known anecdotes correspondence and the like, she also has a tendency towards literary and journalistic casualness that would be more at home in glossy supermarket tabloids than a hardcover biography of one of twentieth century literature's most influential writers.

Chandler was a private and obsessive man, and he destroyed most of his personal letters concerning Cissy after her death. But that's no excuse for Freeman's sometimes-fanciful speculations. The book is riddled with phrases like "could have," "probably," "possibly" and even "I'd like to think."

Was he gay? Who did he cheat on Cissy with? Did he have a leg fetish? A thing about his mother? Her ponderings are all the more frustrating because Freeman seems content to mostly raise the questions; her interest seems to dissipate the moment the subjects are broached.

And she continually refers to Chandler as "Ray." I'm not sure the proper, perpetually formal man in the bow tie who once wrote "his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry" would allow a biographer so intent on plowing through his past for dirty linen such familiarity.

Treat him as a proud man? At times she treats him like he's Brittney Spears.

Fair enough, I suppose -- everyone's entitled to their opinions and maybe even their speculations in a non-fiction work. But Freeman does herself no favours by also allowing sloppiness into the book. Photos, for example, are mis-credited in the back of the book, instead of labelled clearly where they appear within the text and Terry Lennox was not a character in The Big Sleep. She pointedly claims the novel Farewell My Lovely was filmed three times, then only discusses two versions -- making us suspect she doesn't know how to count (it was in fact filmed three times; the first version a quickie adaptation tailored to fit RKO's popular Falcon B-franchise) but it's still jarring. And when a work of non-fiction has such obvious errors, a reader can't help but wonder what else is incorrect. An errant typo or two ("to the manner born") doesn't help.

Even more disconcerting, though, is Freeman's attempt to insert herself into the story at every turn. Sometimes this meta, oh-so-po-mo approach works, but too often it doesn't. She devotes almost as much energy to telling us about the writing of the book as she does telling us about Chandler. A pattern emerges: she visits one of Chandler's old haunts, may or may not get out of her car, snaps a few pictures, laments that Chandler's LA (and even hers) is gone, recounts (or speculates upon) what was happening in Chandler and Cissy's life when they lived there, speculates a little more, and then goes off on all sorts of personal tangents, opinions and the like about the city and how it has -- or hasn't -- changed. Her cursory and lop-sided retelling of recent and not-so-recent controversiies (such as the police shooting of a thirteen-year old car thief and the Rampart scandal) are so removed from most generally accepted accounts of the incidents that they verge on irresponsible -- I wondered if she was trying to write about Chandler or incite another riot or two. Her point, as far as I can tell, is that Los Angeles has always had bad cops and corrupt politicians, but it makes you wonder if she's ever read a newspaper.

Its as if the bold, thick lines she attempts to draw between the dots of known fact are so heavy they threaten to obliterate the dots themselves.

Still, despite her narrative and literary stumbles, the book is hard to resist or to put down, and even moving at times. As I said, not all her authorial intrusions fail. Particularly her account of the sad last few years of Chandler's life, as he succumbs to alcohol and grief following the death of his beloved Cissy. Those last years are related in conjunction with Freeman's visits to Chandler's last permanent address: the La Jolla house the restless Chandlers finally settled into, where they lived together until Cissy finally passed away and where a drunken Chandler, overcome with grief, eventually tried to kill himself. It was the only house they ever owned; a beautiful, expensive home overlooking the wild restless sea.

It's a frustrating glimpse of what this book could have been, less a dry recitation of biographical facts and gossip and litany of houses that are no longer there and more an attempt at actual emotional investment in the subject. By the time Freeman tracks down the location, the building is slated for demolition and renovation. Desperate to preserve some sort of record of the home where Chandlers spent their last years together, she gets permission from the owners to videotape the home before it's demolished. The owners are absent, but their teenage daughter is home, watching television in her bedroom -- which at one time served as Chandler's study, where he wrote The Long Goodbye, The Little Sister and Playback.

"She invited us in to look around. This of course was the room I wanted to see, the study in which Ray had worked. I had seen photographs of him taken in this room. I could recognize the windows, the place where his desk had sat...The girl on the bed snapped her gum lazily as we walked around, becoming self-conscious whenever the video camera was pointed in her direction. She said she had never heard of Raymond Chandler. In fact, she said, she didn't really much like to read (preferring) movies and video games."

It's to cry.

Freeman, of course, never really nails down her subject, although she certainly tries to stir up the pot.

There's a photograph included here, a snapshot taken by Chandler of Cissy walking along a path in the woods. By this point, Chandler is well into his fifties; Cissy is in her seventies and in poor -- and rapidly declining -- health.

It is, in fact, a real find, because so few photos of Cissy exist. But, perhaps predictably, her back is to the camera. Freeman confesses to studying the photo "for a long time, as if hoping she might suddenly turn around and look at me."

Of course, Cissy never turns around. And neither does Chandler, really. It's an apt metaphor for this book.

But I'll confess right now, for the Chandler fanatic, that photo alone may be worth it.

Toronto Noir: World Class, My Ass (Maybe)

2008-02-05T10:59:00.000-08:00

Okay, true confessions here. I haven't read Toronto Noir yet, the latest in Akashic's acclaimed "noir" series, which is due out in May. But I've been hearing about it for a while. Quite a while.

You want a Canadian city that justifies a noir anthology, think Montreal. Seriously.

Or Vancouver. Halifax. Hull. St. John's. Yellowknife. Moncton. Sudbury. Even fucking Moose Jaw.

But Toronto? The Queen City may be a lot of things (just ask any Maple Leafs-blue Torontonian) but "noir" is not the term that immediately springs to mind. Smug, superior, self-conscious, nice, bright, clean, self-involved, anal, touristy, squeaky, brassy, well-scrubbed, tight-assed horn-tooters, T.G.I.M., world class-obsessed, faux-American... sure. The city the rest of Canada loves to hate... you bet. But noir?

Still, like I said, I haven't read it. And lord knows, the heart of darkness knows no municipal limits. After all, there's even been a Twin Cities Noir in the series. And a city whose most distinctive landmark is a giant dork certainly ought to be able to get it up. But now that the list of contributors have been released, I'm not being reassured here.

Instead of the usual reliable, if rather predictable, suspects (Bruen, Connelly, Gary Phillips, Block, Rozan, Oates, Estleman, Parrish, Abbott, Lippman, Coleman, etc.) that have made this series so consistently entertaining, the editors, Janine Armin and Nathaniel G. Moore, have opted for a slew of mostly unknown (even by Canadian standards) writers. I assume they were looking for Canadian writers, which is fine, but still...RM Vaughan, Nathan Sellyn, Ibi Kaslik, Heather Birrell, Sean Dixon, Raywat Deonandad, Christine Murray, Emily Schultz, Kim Moritsugu, Mark Sinnet, George Elliott Clarke, Pasha Malla, Michael Redhill?

Who are these guys? Was there some PC checklist? ("Okay, we got a Jew, we need an Arab. And where's our Sikh?")

Sure, they've got Peter Robinson, Gail Bowen and Andrew Pyper to reel in the curious, but the CanCrime scene is a hell of a lot stronger than that. Maybe old school champs like Engel and Wright declined, but where are writers like John McFetridge? Michael Blair? J.D. Carpenter? Mary Jane Maffini? Rosemary Aubert? John Swan? Marc Strange? Giles Blunt? All of them have written tough, often dark and certainly impressive stabs of crime fiction over the last few years, and yet not one of them shows up in these pages. Were they even asked to participate? Or weren't they "Toronto" enough?

(And, of course, even while they're all loudly touting Toronto's much vaunted multiculturalism in all the pre-release publicity, it's quite telling to note that there's not one single French-Canadian contributor. Sad, but typical. "The more that Toronto changes...")

Talk about world class disappointing...

Then again, I haven't heard of either of the authors either. I fear they may be Toronto literary types - or would-be Toronto literary types -- out to "transcend the genre." Certainly nothing in the short bios of Janine and Nathaniel on Akashic's pages suggests any previous connection whatsoever with any sort of crime fiction; much less noir.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, "transcend."

I hope I'm all wrong, and Janine and Nathaniel know exactly what they're doing, and we'll have a solid collection of noir tales that will introduce a whole slew of new and exciting voices to crime fiction readers around the world, giving the CanCrime gang a much-needed and well-deserved shot in the arm and the damn thing will sell a zillion copies.

We'll see...

Unwrapped at Last!!!

2008-01-03T12:54:00.000-08:00

Damn. Right after I uploaded the preliminary -- and very rough -- draft of the new "issue" of the Thrilling Detective Web Site (on Christmas Eve, no less), my health took a nosedive (&^%$# annual holiday cold!) and it's taken me until today to more or less tweak it so that it's fit for human consumption. But yes, we are now open for business.

As usual, fiction editor and Santa's Helper No. 1 Gerald So has dug through his goodie bag to come up with a fistful of hard-boiled treats, for all you good little boys and girls.

We kick off with Dick Stodghill's "Step Into My Parlor", a leisurely jaunt through the 1930s featuring his wide-eyed reporter, Bram Geary, and his considerably more jaded private eye pal/hero, Jack Eddy.

Paul Sundeson also gives us a juicy period piece featuring two buddies. "Piece by Piece" is an early 60s tour of duty through the pre-Civil Rights Big Easy that will stick to your ribs.

And just in case you think we're stuck in reverse this time out R. Narvaez gives us "El Bohemio", a taut little jaunt through the
mean streets about as dated as today's newspaper.

We've also got a very special treat for long-time fans of the genre, courtesy of the boys at HardCaseCrime. We're very pleased to present an excerpt from the new Ms. Tree novel, Deadly Beloved, by Max Allan Collins.

If, after all this time, you guys still don't know who Ms. Tree is, this is the perfect time to get a clue. Created originally as a comic book by Collins and cartoonist Terry Beatty (who did the snazzy painted illo on this issue's cover), Ms. Tree is simply one of the best -- and arguably the toughest -- private eyes to ever slip on a dress and a pair of stillettoes (what Mike Hammer did in his spare time is another story).

If you've never read anything featuring Ms. Tree, you are in for a good time -- Deadly Beloved is her first novel-length appearance in prose, a bold new retelling of her origin and hopefully, marks the return of one of the all-time great characters in detective fiction. In any medium. This is pure pulp for now people.
(Can you tell I'm a big fan?)
-
Not content with short fiction? Like something a bit more substantial than a mere snippet? Here's a Christmas tip for those of you who like your P.I. fiction in longer bursts: Australian writer Susan Geason has made her third Syd Fish novel, Hook, Line and Sinker, originally penned way back in 1998, available for free on her web site.

And what would our Holiday issue be without our always popular Cheap Thrill Awards? The "Thrillies" are, of course, our annual survey of the last year in private detective fiction. As always, we're asking you what YOU think. Vote early, vote often.

Who knows? You might enjoy bering involved in something where what you think actually matters. Plus it beats having to go all the way to Iowa.

Put a bow on it. We're done.

Merry This and That, and Happy Everything...

2007-12-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

That's gotta be the best non-denominational, all-inclusive greeting I've heard this year, even better than my usual "Have a Holly Jolly and a Happy Ho-Ho."

Of course, such a non-offensive salutation will still probably tick off the Yahoo Right's Spiritual Advisor, Bill O'Riley, and his disciples, but he's such an opportunistic windbag of narrow-minded, thin-skinned hate and divisiveness that getting his goat seems like not just the American but even the Christian thing to do.

So have a good one, Bill. Read the Bible sometime, instead of just thumping it. And imagine a world where people of all races and creeds aren't torn apart by petty-minded rabble rousers shilling "the truth" on television. You may think that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...

I mean, come on. If there's a "war" on Christmas, Christmas won long ago, at least on this continent.

So, Merry Christmas everybody, or whatever shakes your tree.I don't care if you're Muslim or Buddhist or Jewish or Christian or left-handed or whatever -- have a good time and a great new year (whenever your new year decides to kick in) and embrace the best wishes of those who offer it to you in the spirit it's intended. That's what the true spirit of the season is.

And Happy Boxing Day. I hope you don't have to work today and can just relax and spend some (relatively) quiet time with you and yours.

Me? I'm going to try to finally wrap up the latest issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE, eat some leftovers, listen to some music and maybe have a beer or two. Then the Girl Detective and I will probably have a nice supper, watch an old movie or two (hopefully something with murder in it) and groan that we ate too much.

A Good Idea, A Bad Idea... (Rant, Rant, Rant)

2007-12-20T14:22:00.000-08:00

Anyone wanna make a zillion?

Toast-it Notes. For office drones too busy for a good breakfast.

And here's an idea that is not a good one: Salvation Army ladies talking on their cellphones. I'd like to think my spare change is going to something more than covering your monthly Verizon bill.

Yeah, I don't know where this stuff comes from either....

Crimes on .45: "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash

2007-12-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

Once again, we dip into the Thrilling Detective Web Site jukebox to bring you the very best in songs of murder and mayhem...

"Folsom Prison Blues"
Written and performed by Johnny Cash
Originally released as a 1955 single.
Available on the 2000 compilation Murder

I wonder what the oh-so-outraged good citizens who wailed so loudly about Ice-T's angry call to violence in Cop Killer have to say about Johnny Cash? As angry as the protagonist in Cop Killer is, at least he's angry ABOUT something. The self-pitying but barely repentant convict in Cash's 1955 song, originally recorded for Sun Records, is in a prison cell because he shot a man in Reno, as he dispassionately admits, “just to watch him die.”

Now THAT'S cold, simply one of the most disturbing but powerful lines in American popular music (and that's saying something). Almost forty-five years after I first heard it, it still sends a shiver up and down my spine. I know we're supposed to pity (or at least empathize) with the prisoner's ongoing torment here, which Cash nails to the wall with unerring accuracy and a few simple images (a howling train whistle, an imagined fancy dining car) but that one line is inescapable. And unrepentant.

Right until the end, Cash, a man who knew all about sin and salvation and personal redemption (not to mention the gray bar hotel) never ceased to explore the dark, violent side of the American dream in his music, and this song, one of his earliest and finest, resonates even now -- even after the Disneyfacation of his life in Walk the Line.

It's available on Murder, a 2000 set that collects some of The Man in Black's favorite recordings of "robbers, liars and murderers" from the last forty odd years. Quentin Tarantino (who tags Cash as the"original hillbilly gangsta") states in the liner notes that these tracks cut "right to the heart of the American underclass. With their brutal sheriffs, pitiless judges, cheatin' tramps, escaped fugitives, condemned men, chain gang prisoners, unjustly accused innocents, and first-person protagonist who'd shoot a man just to watch him die, Cash's songs are poems to the criminal mentality."

Knucklehead gangsta rappers who think they invented bad ass are simply carrying on the tradition. Maybe someone should melt their gold teeth together for a moment and make them listen. They might learn something.

As The Man in Black himself puts it, "These songs are just for listening and singing. Don't go out and do it." Brutal, but real.

Another Hell of a Book: Money Shot

2007-12-11T13:26:00.000-08:00

I know, I know... there's not much point blogging about a book that won't even be officially released until next month. But some stuff is just too good to wait.

As part of the fallout from last week's signing of Meg Abbott's kick ass anthology HELL OF A WOMAN, I moved my ARC of Christa Faust's MONEY SHOT to the top of my TBR file. The verdict? YIKES!

I had fun that day, meeting the assorted writers, and got to wander the streets of Santa Monica for a while with Christa. Lemme tell ya, that woman is something else. That day she was the Betty Boop of noir, decked out in vintage drag (I suspect she has plenty more personas hanging in her closet), walking the walk, talking the whatever, obviously pleased to be the first female writer to be published by Hard Case Crime and then, in the same breath, dismissing it as simply "I, THE JURY with tits."

Yeah, right.

Well, I'm hear to tell you that not only does MONEY SHOT come equipped with tits, but it also comes with balls. Big ones.

It's the story of a former porn star, Angel Dare, now running a talent agency for adult film stars in LA's porn industry, who gets involved in a nasty case of white slavery, smuggling and various shades of murder and betrayal. When the book kicks off, she's locked in the back of a crappy Honda Civic, shot and left for dead, convinced she's on a one-way ride to Hell.

Yeah, it sounds about par for the neo-noir course these days -- plenty of titillation and more than a spot of gratuitousness. The same ol' yadda yadda.

But it turns out MONEY SHOT is my kinda noir. The grown-up kind that has real people and a real story, not just shock tactics and cardboard pawns disguised as characters. The lady knows her stuff.

Sure, in a story set in the world of hookers and porn and stripping, junkies and killers, you'd expect to have your nose rubbed in it. But there isn't an ounce of fat here -- it's a tight ice-hard blast of pure noir; the sorta thing that takes heed of not just classic noir but also the times we live in; a big ballsy update to the genre that never feels like pandering or refried nostalgia.

There are desperate people here, circling the drain, living, breathing (and lying) characters who -- except for their occupation -- wouldn't be out of place in a James M. Cain novel, or a 1946 RKO B-noir. But they're also defiantly of the here and now, as real as tomorrow's headlines. These people are rough, they're tough... and they're fatally flawed. They're damned and doomed, too fucked to live, too hard to die without a fight and too blinded by greed or lust or hate to know it.

I'm not joking about the hard part, either. The combo plate of noir and hard-boiled is served here straight up, with style and tits and balls and without apology.

I didn't even know I was going to say anything until the words came out of my mouth.

"End of the line, bitch."

Then I shot him.

The book's due in late January. Don't say I didn't warn you.

A Hell of a Thing

2007-11-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

Yep, it's a hell of a thing.

Megan Abbott's recent book, A Hell of a Woman, which bills itself as an "anthology of female noir," is just the sort of book I'd love to sink my critical teeth into, and let rip.

But that devious Abbott dame (Queenpin, The Song Is You, Die a Little) is no patsy. She shows she has what it takes to make a great femme fatale -- she outsmarted me. She actually invited me to contribute, thereby puncturing any chance I'd ever really, honestly review it.

Granted, my paltry contributions -- two small "appreciations" of forgotten hard-boiled women writers -- pale in comparison to all-new new stories by the likes of Sara Gran, Vicki Hendricks, Alison Gaylin, Cornelia Read, Naomi Hirahara, Zoë Sharp, Sandra Scoppettone, Charlotte Carter, Lynne Barrett, Annette Meyers, Vin Packer and Libby Fischer Hellman.

Just to rub it in, Pat "Ma" Abbott (no small slouch of a writer herself) became not just a contributor to but an advertiser on the site.

And now, just to pour a little salt in the wounds, I'm invited to attend a couple of signings this Saturday (December 1) in the LA area -- not as a reader but as a writer. Talk about an offer I can't refuse. So there's no way in hell ow that I could ever be fair and balanced about this book.

Damn.

So, uh, let's cut to the chase. it's the greatest book ever written, makes an ideal Christmas gift, and it's perfect for just about anyone who gives a damn about hard-boiled fiction, female noir or just quality writing. Hell, it's even got a few male authors in there (Ken Bruen, Al Guthrie, Charlie Huston, Eddie Muller and Daniel Woodrell) and an intro by Val McDermid, a fairly dangerous dame herself.

So, if you're in the LA area, I'll be at Mysteries to Die For in Thousand Oaks at 10:30 AM and over in Westwood at The Mystery Book Store around 2:30. I'll be joining Meagan, Christa Faust, Naomi Hirahara, Charlie Huston, Eddie Muller, Cornelia Read, Theresa Schweigel and Robert Ward to scrawl on your books.

In such august company, I'm sure I'm only there to cleanse the palate, or maybe to garner a few sympathy purchases, but it should still be fun.

Hope to see you there.

But watch that Abbott twist... I tell ya, she's up to something.

The Return of Crimes on .45: "Spillane" by John Zorn

2007-11-26T12:51:00.000-08:00

Like some particularly cranky elf I'm toiling away in preparation for the holidays. The Holiday Issue of The Thrilling Detective Web Site is slowly coming together --only continents move slower -- so once again this blog is being neglected.

All apologies and all that, and in the meantime here's a bone for you. A few years ago I started a column for Jon and Ruth Jordan's great Crime Spree mag that managed to combine two of my favourite passions -- crime AND music, and a few columns did make it in.

But it seems to have fallen by the wayside -- mostly my fault, I admit. I DID love writing that sucker, though. So I thought I'd give it another shot, this time as an occasional blog right here. I'll recycle some of the old mini-essays, both the ones that were published and some of those that never saw the light of day, and I'll try to do a few new ones every now and then, when the spirit moves me.

As always, for those of you with an overabundance of moral rectitude, please try not to get your panties all twisted. As the late, great Johnny Cash said, “(Here are some) songs of robbers, liars and murderers. These songs are just for listening and singing. Don't go out and do it."

And so, without any further ado, here's the first little ditty from the Thrilling Detective Web Site jukebox, number one in a series. Collect them all.

“Spillane”
Written and performed by John Zorn
From the 1987 album Spillane

As Mike Hammer, the avenging angel of the Cold War, might have put it, "What is this stuff?" But trust me, this disjointed twenty-odd minute (some of it very odd) performance piece from jazzman and pop culture plunderer John Zorn grows on you. It’s a brain-spinning melange of musical outbursts, spoken dialogue (by actor John Lurie), sound bites and other aural debris (including wailing sirens and the blood-curdling woman’s scream that opens the piece) all evoking the late, great Mickey Spillane and his fifties pulp fiction world of hard-bitten detectives, dead-end bars and mean streets. Zorn scribbled assorted ideas on note cards which he then shuffled and cut-and-pasted together to form this piece. The brief musical excerpts swing from country-fried road house stomp to strip joint burlesque, weaving in and out of the piece as though somebody slipped Zorn a Mickey, with some tasty back alley sax and other musical notions occasionally wandering in, only to be interupted by some of the most over-boiled narration I’ve heard (“I felt like I’d smoked a whole deck and forgot to blow out the smoke”). It doesn’t always make much narrative or musical sense, and some of the juxtapositions are jarring. Yet it has a fierce, almost surreal gravity all of its own, and ends up a fitting tribute to late author; a hard-boiled fever dream whose passion and drive can’t be denied – sort of like the work of Spillane himself.

The World is Black, The World is White

2007-11-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

Everything they say about Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith's 1915 silent movie three-hour plus masterpiece depicting the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, is true: it's about as racist and ignorant an American movie as I've seen, insulting to anyone who ever had a heart or half a brain. Yet its historical cinematic importance can't be denied either.

Based on the play and novel The Clansman by Thomas F. Dixon Jr., it follows the story of two families, predictably one Northern, one Southern who meet, make nice and ultimately get torn apart by the war.

It's got a great cast (Lillian Gish, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Ralph Lewis, Spottiswoode Aitken, etc.) and technically it was like nothing anyone had ever seen before. The first part (the "war" section) is impressive in its ambitions, particularly the battlefield scenes, albeit story-wise it drags after a while. The “reconstruction” half is far more interesting, as the characters from the introduced previously finally start to be fleshed out. Unfortunately, the racist overtones only hinted at previosly also come home to roost so that even as you become caught up in a decent (if melodramatic) adventure, you can’t help but squirm at the hateful (and historically dubious) propaganda being dished out.

I mean, in the end it's the Klan coming to the rescue on white (of course) horses, to save white women from fates "worse than death" and white men from the vengeance of them uppity freed slaves.

If you're at all interested in American film, history or the long, sad ocean of racism we're all swimming in, see this film. It's occasionally a long hard slog, but ultimately worth seeing.

Censor it? Hide it from view like a particularly ugly child? No. Rather it should be seen and discussed openly. It would be a start...

And speaking of racism, it has been a long, strange trip, hasn’t it? From Birth of a Nation to American Gangster, which I also caught recently, and is probably played at a multiplex near you.

Once again, the theme of American racism and its attitude towards blacks and lawlessness are explored, in subtle and not so subtle ways. Anyone who whines that nothing's changed in the almost hundred years since Birth was made is someone who probably needs to examine his own issues with race -- or has a vested interest in Racism, Inc.

Birth of a Nation was breath-taking in its hate, depicting blacks as little better than animals (the black congress scene is right out of a white supremacist's nightmare and so over-the-top it's tempting to laugh it off -- almost). American Gangster, by contrast, is a finely wrought, morally ambiguous, extremely nuanced film that raises questions instead of proffering slack-jawed hatred.

In the guise of a typical rags-to-riches success story, wrapped up in a flag by far more than simply its title, this flick charts the real life journey of Frank Lucas who, in the seventies, became the druglord of New York City. Sure, there’s racism here (everyone assumes Lucas is working for somebody), but anyone looking for the simplistic hate-mongering of Birth of a Nation just isn’t going to find it here. Instead, we get a rich, character study of two oddly moral men in professions where such moral conviction aren't always expected. Denzel Washington, in an role that's pure Oscar bait, is a buttoned down, self-driven black man who inherits the Harlem drug trade from his former boss through a mixture of cold-blooded violence and good ol' American business savvy, ultimately building a vast empire by smuggling heroin in the coffins coming in regularly from Vietnam (Frank Lucas, father of globalization?).

Pitted against the stick-up-his-ass Lucas is New Jersey Detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), a heavy set mess of a man, going through a nasty divorce and custody battle, a loose cannon and self-centered womanizer whose own personal (and often misguided) sense of ethics nonetheless rivals that of Frank's.

Black? White? Hah! The sheer vastness and range of grays in this film are staggering. The closest the film comes to a simplistic character is one crooked NY cop whose pure, unadulterated wrongness is the one false note I could spot -- and yet even his dramatic preposterousness is ultimately at least artistically justified when you read the epilogue's stats on police corruption in the era and realize that cops like him almost had to exist.

And that's not even the best part of the epilogue -- there's one final sucker punch in the wrap-up that will have you shaking your head, and almost laughing out loud at a especially ironic twist of fate.

That's how engaging this film is -- after a couple of hours of treachery, violence (mostly dealt with quickly) and plowing through an ocean of moral ambiguity and outright corruption, you end up identifying -- whether you want to or not -- with both leads, even as you despair at their very real flaws, and the sheer cost in lives and moral wear and tear of their ambitions and convictions.

Let's make this clear -- like David Simon's masterful The Wire, this film does NOT glorify the drug trade. Yos and other brain-dead wannabes going to see Denzel as a bad ass bling bling gangstas are going to be solely disappointed -- in one pivotal scene, Lucas puts such buffoons firmly in their place. Nor is it a heavy-handed thumbs-up for the ideals of law enforcement -- the whole notion of effectiveness and justification of the then-new War on Drugs is called into question at one point by Richie -- and indeed, by the entire film.

And that's the real point: American Gangster raises questions. Hard, intelligent questions. Questions we should all be asking.

Birth of a Nation gave answers. Stupid, slack-jawed answers.

But man, I'm glad I saw both these films. These are both films worth seeing, and well worth discussing.

Tonight We Ride...

2007-11-07T21:16:00.000-08:00

LIVE! FROM PALMDALE! It's the Fall issue of The Thrilling Detective Web Site!

Yep, it's the big number 43, by my reckoning, and it's officially up.

Naturally, it's much delayed, but we're here. And we even have enough good stuff in the can for another issue in December (touch wood), our annual Holiday issue.

I've whined elsewhere about the latest stumbling blocks, so I won't go into them here. Suffice it to say, though, that we're here, got beer, get used to it. Or, er, something like that.

As usual, fiction editor Gerald So has weeded through the slush pile to come up with a fistful of hard-boiled gems. We kick off with Richard Helm's THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GORDON BLACK, a tough nugget featuring his series eye Eamon Gold that shows exactly why he keeps getting nominated for Shamus Awards. Mark my words, it's only a matter of time.

From Stephen Blackmoore, making his TD debut, is SUMO, a taut little tale from Hawaii of greed, drugs and a 500-pound corpse. This is paradise?

Another newcomer to this site is Gary Alexander, who coughs up HUMPTY DUMPTY, a sucker punch of a period piece that recalls the glory days of Gold Medal. Don't let the nursery rhyme title fool ya -- this is the real deal. You can practically smell the Brylcreem. And the treachery.

We also have a couple of interesting excerpts this month, both with back stories. Seth Harwood's THIS IS LIFE, featuring former actor Jack palms, was actually first published as a podcast. In fact, the first novel in the series, JACK WAKES UP, was the first crime novel to ever be serialized as a podcast. We're proud to present the first prose publication of THIS IS LIFE, and look forward to (literally) hearing more from Seth.

(By the way, Seth has also contributed a recent review of Richard Aleas' SONGS OF INNOCENCE for this site. Check it out.)

Last issue, we published "Mickey Spillane," fiction editor Gerald So's moving ode to the late, great author. This issue we have something even better: an excerpt from Spillane's latest novel, DEAD STREET, prepared for posthumous publication by Mickey's fellow crime writer (and good friend) Max Allan Collins. A special thanks to HardCaseCrime, the Spillane estate and Max for allowing us to run the excerpt.

And an extra thanks to Charles and the gang at HardCaseCrime, as well as illustrator Athur "Marvel Zombies!" Suydam, for allowing us to use the bitching cover art from DEAD STREET for our cover as well.

Sharp-eyes viewers may have noticed that there's no P.I. Poll this time out, but our annual Thrillies will be returning in December (promise!), and of course we're constantly adding, updating and tweaking our ever-growing database (check out our recent rash of Joes, fer example) , which now numbers somewhere around 2600 entries, and that includes well over two hundred new or revised pages on the site since we last spoke -- and in the next few weeks, there'll be more on the way -- so feel free to browse. And keep coming back. Novembers a catch up month, and I'm aiming for daily updates.

Of course, as always, I couldn't do this alone. This sucker takes a lot of time and money, so I'd like to take this moment to thank all those who make it all possible: Gerald, of course, but also our contributors, the long-suffering Girl Detective and especially our sponsors for this issue, who include Patricia Abbot, Dave White, Anne Sladovich and Rich Harvey. Your support is much appreciated, guys.

A Message of Vital Importance

2007-10-31T11:58:00.000-07:00

Just futzin' around with my new MacBook, which I call Whitey. The Photo Booth gizmo takes pics of me, right in my office. Yet another way for me to be distracted. Thanks, Apple.

That Double Vision Got the Best of Me

2007-10-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

A while back, Jeff Pierce, the rompin' stompin' head honcho at THE RAP SHEET peeled the lid back on one of many nasty little truths of the publishing industry that nobody likes to admit: their covers often suck.

Startling news, I know, but he's since continued in that vein, routinely lambasting the perpetrators, "especially those that use the same imagery, duplicate the arrangement of elements, or bang repeatedly on a theme."

And oh, what glorious yucks there are to be had, gazing at the evidence. The line-up in his August 26, 2007 post "Can We Retire These Photos Yet?" tells all you need to know about the state of cover art these days.

As I said, I had quite the chuckle, checking out stock covers that have been recycled not once, but twice or even three times. All in recent years, and ll on books by some of the most respected writers around. This isn't just banging on a theme -- it's gangbanging on a theme. Yes, I laughed, laughed, laughed.

And then it happened to me.

The first short story I ever sold, "Two Fingers," appeared way back in 2001 in ICED, edited by Kerry Schooley and Peter Sellers, which billed itself as "The New Noir Anthology of Cold, Hard Fiction." It sported a jaunty photo of a smoking gun barrel, the warmth of the gold earthy hues of the photo contrasting nicely, I thought, with the often cold, grm stories inside -- and the implications of the photo itself.

I was proud to be included in that book, and pleased that the cover wasn't an embarrassment. I thought the designer, Mike O'Connor, did a heckuva job.

And then Marc Strange's SUCKER PUNCH arrived at my door. As an editor and reviewer my mailbox is always full of treasures, and nothing delights me more, this errant Canadian, than a package from home. I slashed open the envelope and dumped out the book, flipped it to the back cover, and started to read. Joe Grundy, ex-fighter. Check. Tough guy hotel dick, now working some swank joint in downtown Vancouver. Check. Dipshit, suddenly rich kid gets a premature trip to the pearly gates, while on Joe's watch, and Joe has to do what a Joe's gotta do. Check. Sounds good. I'm always in the market for a good Canadian P.I. and this one looks promising. Very promising, actually, after scanning the first few pages. This is going right to the top of my TBR pile.

Then I flipped the book back to the front cover. Talk about a sucker punch.

Gone Baby Gone: Whoda Thunk it?

2007-10-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Ben Affleck, hot new director?

I'm pleased to report that GONE, BABY, GONE is pretty good stuff.

I've had my fun over the years poking fun at the source of this film, a sterling example of hard-boiled bloat I simply found LONG, BABY, LONG. But first time director Ben Affleck cut out plenty of narrative fat from Dennis "MYSTIC RIVER" Lehane's book, and has delivered one of the best made-for-adults P.I. flicks in a long, long time; a lean, mean directorial debut that I don't think anyone saw coming.

I mean, sure, Affleck got an Oscar for co-writing GOOD WILL HUNTING with Matt Damon, but then, Affleck also has delivered more stinky, smirky cheese than any other actor his age in recent memory. But maybe all those cinematic turkeys served a purpose after all -- maybe Ben was taking notes.

He certainly seems to have learned well. Maybe his last turn as an actor -- a surprisingly solid, nuanced turn in HOLLYWOODLAND -- was the tell.

He gets so much right in GONE BABY GONE that it's hard to know where to start, but perhaps the most obvious is the casting. Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris in particular shine, like the seasoned pros they are, but he coaxes great performances out of the entire cast. In particular his kid brother Casey, in the lead role as P.I. Patrick Kenzie.

Casey looks about twelve, but he pulls it off with surprising effectiveness. The showdown in the bar with the locals is a classic -- the sorta scene that in most flicks usually ends up in an excess of violence and stuntmen working overtime and scenery smashing gets turned on its head; this is hard-boiled reduced to its essence. Not the willingness to loudly go at it, but to quietly stand up to the threat of it.

Both Bubba and Angie's characters have also been stripped down to their essence -- thank god -- and the stories moves quickly and stays focussed on the hunt for a missing little girl, culminating in a satisfyingly noirish ending that recalls CHINATOWN. Favourably.

And the feel for Boston is dead-on, more THE DEPARTED than SPENSER FOR HIRE, thankfully. The language, the attitude, the claustrophobic vibe of guilt and grit and working class dreams that get broken before they even start -- it all works. I'm not sure if rookie director Affleck can ever pull this off again -- being a Boston boy himself no doubt helped immeasurably -- but this is a good one. Not just adequate, or "too too bad," but arguably one of the best P.I. films ever made, and certainly the best in far too long.

No, really....

Meet me in the middle, meet me in the end...

2007-10-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

This is what it's come down to: me quoting lyrics from America.

America!

What's next? Seals and Crofts?

Yes, ladies and germs, once more the road to regular publication of THE THRILLING DETECTIVE has hit a speed bump. Most of it's my fault, of course -- I'm the world's worst time manager, and I simply have too much on my plate. One day I'll learn to say "No," and mean it.

The new issue, what I'd optimistically thought would be a late summer/early fall/back-to-school issue, is now a month and a half late.

Procrastination and a few long promised articles and commitments, kept getting in the way, as well as a change in my work schedule (man does not live by web sites alone), a slew of social engagemnts I couldn't duck out of, my own fiction, and a major new non-fiction writing project (more about that later) have all conspired to keep me from working on the site.

And now my iBook has died. I'm writing this from my old (now almost ancient) iMac, which is still running Classic, a trusty old warrior that, alas, can't keep up with all the bells and whistles that have spread over the web like a cancer over the last few years. Half the pages I visit on the web are incomplete or unable to load, a sad commentary on modern web design. And web-based mail? Yuck!

(And it's not a Mac thing -- even state-of-the-art Windows machines like my sweetie has have trouble displaying some pages. But another problems with using ol' Big Blue is the fact that, well, I got used to the speed and ease of OS X.updating web pages is, of course, still possible, but it's so sloooooooow. On Saturday, I had to revise some pages for some clients, and it took most of the day. Partly it was the re-learning curve, but a big part of it was simply an older operating system struggling at the brink of its abilities. Isn't it amazing how quickly we take for granted improvements in technology? The new MacBook I'm considering will be faster, stronger, bigger... and cheaper than the last one.)

But I digress. Part of what was so disheartening about the breakdown was its timing -- not that there's ever a good time. I was just about to wrap up an article for MYSTERY SCENE (my annual gift guide); the last in a long string of to-dos before buckling down to the site and finally getting it up.

And that's when the God of Computers said "Hah!"

It sounds like a pathetic excuse for a missed deadline. I'm not even sure if Kate Stine, Mystery Scene's two-fisted editor believes me -- I'd sure have my doubts, if I were her. Especially since -- I kid you not -- D.L.'s laptop also died a few weeks ago. Also just as she was about to wrap up a final draft. I mean, what are the odds of thatr happening not once but twice? within weeks? In the same house?

If there is a God of Computers, he's really starting to piss me off.

Anyway. The prognosis, according to the computer doctor? A cracked logic board, probably sustained from a hard fall a few years ago. Repairing a three-and-a-half year old laptop will cost almost half the what a newer, faster, better machine will, so it looks like I'm shopping for a new computer. And this time, a better protected case.

One of the things I've also realized, going through the slow-pokery of web-based e-mail in the last few days, is how out of touch I've become from the mystery community. Once I'm back in the groove, I hope to rectify that. DetecToday, Rara-Avis, Wicked Company, SMFS and several others are all doing very well without me, but I miss them. and it's occurred to me that the more I play with others, the more they'll play with me.

Also, I'm really going to have to come to terms with fiction on the site. What started as a labor of love has become a true burden. Gerald does a great job, but it's often a long ardorous task, on both our parts, whipping them bad boys into shape. We'll muddle through to our tenth anniversary with the fiction, and then I'll come to some sort of a decision.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not dropping the site. I love doing it. A cup of coffee or a few beers, some music blasting and a stack of notes, clippings, e-mails, books and magazines to wade through and enter onto the site, and I can easily and happily blow a whole day off. But once again, I'm feeling the strain (and ain't it a shame?) of finding that time. A hiatus isn't an option at this point (although maybe a brief nap after the holidays may be in order).

So bear with me. Let me get a new computer (should take a few days), let me set it up, and I'll unleash a new "issue" as soon as I can. It'll probably only sport a few new stories. But then, hopefully sometime in December, I'll unleash another "issue," with a few more stories and all the year-end crap I usually do.

And as usual, my apologies to those who've been waiting for about forever for their stories to show up.

They deserve better than this.

Oh, to be in Ireland now that Shamus time is here...

2007-10-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

Well, that does it. I'm moving to Ireland.

Nah, not really.

This year's Shamuses were announced at the Bouchercon and Ken Bruen nabbed the Best Novel for THE DRAMATIST and fellow Irishman Declan Hughes picked up the Best First Novel for THE WRONG KIND OF BLOOD.

And tag-team sister act P.J. Parrish grabbed the Best PBO award, while O'Neil De Noux grabbed Best Short Story.

Let's see... two Micks, two women and a guy with a suspiciously French (FRENCH!) last name. If they all walked into a bar together, it would probably be the start of a helluva joke.

But it's proof, if anything, that the "American" private eye is up for grabs to just about anyone willing to "storm the citadel," as Chandler put it. The authors' gender, nationality and all the rest of that crap isn't really what excites me, so much as the books and stories themselves. These are fresh voices, new experiences, new styles and tones, stuff that pushes what is and is not a "private eye" story; stuff that not just honours but builds on a tradition.

Pretty cool, if you ask me.

And I've been lucky enough to correspond or meet with most of the winners (usually in bars) over the years, so believe me, it's coming from the heart when I say congrats all around. Next one's on me.