And More Charles Willeford... Book Covers

A strange meeting of American originals: Davy Crockett and Charles Willeford. Evan (aka Dave) Lewis runs a great blog called Davy Crockett's Almanack, where he shares a lot of pulp and paperback fiction -- covers and text. Cross-referencing my recent Willeford article on the Mulholland Books site, he has put up a post with about 20 covers from Willeford books from several decades. Check it out here.

I should note too (by way of disclosure and admiration) that Mr. Lewis and I are in a writing group, and the man has a way with words -- and he's starting to pop up. In the last year, he's had a story in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and his work also appears in two new anthologies, Discount Noir (an eb00k with buzz -- Kindle and other formats) and Beat to a Pulp, Round 1.

Charles Willeford on Mulholland Books

Mulholland Books, the new crime imprint of Little, Brown, has been hosting a great blog since the imprint launched. It has musings about noir, appreciations of writers, fiction, interviews, and more. Today, they were kind enough to run a piece of mine on one of my favorite writers, Charles Willeford. Even if you don't want to read about Willeford, it's worth looking at the piece to see two of the pulpy covers from Willeford's books (and a photo of the writer himself). Here's the lead...

When I hit certain moments in works by Charles Willeford (1919–1988), I feel like the top of my head is going to rip right off. This is my brain teetering on the strange mental precipice that is the hallmark of Willeford’s odd and destabilizing fiction.

Read more...

(Addendum: Piece highlighted online in the Oregonian's books section: "Portland writer Doug Levin on Charles Willeford's crime classics.")

The End of War: All Quiet on the Western Front

I'm going to try to wind down my war reading for a bit, but I thought I would read another classic that I've missed: Erich Maria Remarque's World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front. My expectations were moderate: I thought it might strike me as quaint or dated, and somehow I've come to associate the book with high school curriculum -- perhaps accessible and yearning youth in the trenches. Finally, the title made me expect attention to lulls in the war ("All Quiet" -- a questionable translation for "Nichts Neues").

These expectations were misguided, to say the least. This book is bloody, brutal, anguished, and unredemptive. It has several scenes that capture the unspeakable fear, chaos, and inhumanity of battle. Here, a description of a counterattack: "We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form of some other man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill."

The narrator later reflects on the wounded in hospitals, and how hospitals filled with maimed men are spread across Europe: "How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is."

Remarque (so I read in Wikipedia) left Germany in 1931 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1939 (returning to Switzerland after the war). The Nazis burned his books and guillotined his sister.

Simenon Discussed on Mulholland Books

Yesterday on the Mulholland Books website, there was a post focused on two of Georges Simenon non-Maigret novels, "When Businessmen Attack: A Pair of Simenon Hard Novels." I've been reading Simenon on-and-off for a few years, so I added this comment to the discussion...

The New York Review of Books has done a great job republishing some of Simenon’s romans durs. Of additional interest [beyond the two novels discussed in the original post, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By; and Monsieur Monde Vanishes], I’d note two of his books set in the U.S. (where he lived for a time): Three Bedrooms in Manhattan and Red Lights. Neither seems as compelling to me as his best works, but if the titles Mr. McMeel names are existential, then Red Lights is pretty damn noir — especially for a book whose entire plot revolves around a married couple going to pick up their kids at camp in Maine. Two other call-outs: (1) Dirty Snow, also known as The Snow Was Black, is a bleak post-War novel with echoes of Camus’s The Stranger; and (2) Tropic Moon has a great atmosphere and setting — colonial Africa.

Correction/clarification: Dirty Snow was published after the war, but is set in German-occupied France.

The New Centurions, 40 Years Later

I’d never read anything by Joseph Wambaugh, so I went ahead and read his first novel, The New Centurions (1970). Don’t be fooled by the original cheesy cover: Centurions is gritty, harrowing, occasionally sentimental, but ultimately really a pretty great book.

The novel shifts among the lives of three main L.A. policemen, from their academy days through their first five years of service. For the most part, Centurions is episodic -- vignettes from vice, juvenile, domestic, felony crime, etc. -- though it follows the men through personal and, to a lesser extent, professional relationships. Wambaugh also carefully charts a range of attitudes toward police work -- and captures fear, prejudice, maybe nihilism. The novel culminates -- semi-apocalyptically -- in the 1965 Watts riots.

More than other police procedurals (usually with a central case followed to the end), Centurions reminds me of the ensemble World War II books I’ve read lately: Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Jones’s The Thin Red Line. So (and I say this without judgment), Centurions is more a novel about cops than a cop novel.

Because the novel has no single protagonist and no central plot line per se, as good as this book is, I don’t know that it would be published today as a first novel by an unknown writer. Who knows, but I can imagine someone along the way telling Wambaugh he should write either narrative non-fiction (or a memoir) -- or a more tightly plotted police procedural. Those alternatives seem less compelling (or compelling in a different way) than what Wambaugh delivered.

My New Story, "The Docile Shark," Excerpted on EQMM

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine just updated their website to feature the December 2010 issue (yeah, they get a jump on the calendar; cover illustration by Norman Saunders, originally from a 1949 issue of Black Mask). I didn't make the cover of the issue, but my story, "The Docile Shark," has a nice accompanying illustration (by Mark Evans) and it's excerpted on the site at this link. (Note: In a month, the same link will feature a different excerpt.)

If you want to read the harrowing conclusion to this spine-tingling tale, you'll have to go buy the magazine (e.g., at Barnes & Noble; also available in electronic editions, including Kindle), at least for now. I'd certainly like to hear any feedback anyone has on the story (just click "Comments" below). You can also "friend" me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/levin.doug, though I'm still getting used to Facebook (and thus far, there's more everyday minutiae than writing and reading updates).

A Quick Welcome to Ellery Queen Readers

I just received my December 2010 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in the mail today, and was surprised and pleased to see my new story "The Docile Shark" inside, with an illustration, no less. In the little bio blurb, the editors were kind enough to refer to my blog -- that is, this blog. So I thought I would just say hello, encourage you to read my story (and feel free to comment here, of course), and explore the blog, which is mostly a commentary on crime/mystery fiction (and also film and lately, some war books).

I've had a couple of other stories published: "Wilson's Man" in the January 2008 issue of EQMM; and "Fire Lines" in the 2002 collection Measures of Poison. I have a completed novel in manuscript (Jailhouse Pale) and an agent, so please cross your fingers for me. I recently joined Facebook (and its etiquette is new to me), but if you like what you read here and want to hear if I have anything coming out (or what I'm reading), subscribe to this blog or friend me on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/levin.doug). Thanks.

Westlake Shorter Fiction

In 1998, Donald Westlake (under the infamous name, Richard Stark) brought back his heister Parker after a 23-year (or so) absence. By then, I had read all the Parker novels (tracking some of the hard-to-find titles by interlibrary loan).

I never took to Westlake's comic heister Dortmunder in the same way, though I have read and enjoyed several of these books. For me, Dortmunder (and maybe humorous crime fiction more generally) works better in shorter form. The Dortmunder stories, Thieves' Dozen (11 stories!), are pretty great. Dortmunder also appears in a strong (and less slapsticky) novella, "Walking Around Money," in Transgressions (edited by Ed McBain).

Westlake also wrote a series of linked stories about a morose cop, Levine. This collection -- bittersweet, world-weary, bracing -- is really worth reading.

I'm still on my war literature campaign (just read The Thin Red Line -- thumbs up), but I took a break and read Enough, which Westlake called a "two-reeler" (and both "reels" loosely deal with the film industry). The book includes one short novel, A Travesty, and a novelette (?) called "Ordo," which was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (edited by Maxim Jakubowski). A Travesty is a fun, humorous lark about a crime-solving, murderous film critic who is unfairly framed for a murder he commits (think about that?!). "Ordo" is pulpy in its way -- featuring a sailor protagonist and an underage wife (and later starlet) -- but it also has what I might call existential resonance. (And now I've just discovered a French film adaptation, 2004, after I wrote the word "existential." Hmm.) In other words, more Westlake worth reading.

The Strange, Droll Harpur and Iles Books

I've been dashing through all of these war books, so I thought I'd better break up the assault and read something else. For unknown reasons, I pulled Bill James' Eton Crop off the stack. This book falls in the middle on the Harpur and Iles series. Colin Harpur is a police detective and Iles is his amoral boss. I've read maybe five or so in this 20+ book series over the last decade. I've liked others better, though this one offers a good sampling of James' offbeat humor, great dialogue, dealing, and double-dealing.

I found an interesting 2004 interview with James (a pseudonym, so I read, for James Tucker). Notable: "They [the books] are not laboriously realistic. Some would say not realistic at all. Luckily, there are people who appreciate that touch of the unlikely, even fantastic." The books are police procedurals, but the action has its own rules and lives in its own bent world. (The English city where the books take place has no name.)

In 2001, I wrote a "Short Take" review for the Oregonian of Pay Days, which follows...

Bill James’ Harpur and Iles series of mystery novels takes place in an unnamed British coastal city that has seen better times. In the most recent installment, “Pay Days,” the criminal underworld and the police force both begin to unravel. A young Chief Inspector, Dick Nivette, is either taking bribes or pretending to take as part of a clandestine investigation that does not have the approval of his superiors. Meanwhile, the body of a petty drug dealer turns up on an abandoned ship. Gangland violence threatens to run amok. Detective Colin Harpur and his boss, Desmond Iles, go about their investigation in a rather seamy fashion. Iles primarily seems intent on preserving the criminal status quo and protecting a young prostitute whom he patronizes. “Pay Days” is filled with intrigues, shifting loyalties and action. However, it is the droll, offbeat dialogue and extraordinary characterizations that make this novel stand out. The Machiavellian Iles -- the Richard III of fictional police officers -- is a remarkable person to watch and hear. Iles despises most people, “many for being undifferent from themselves.” He spends much of the novel protecting and undermining his own superior, Chief Lane, whom he praises in oxymoron: “‘His soul I prize and his future I know will be hallowed and banal.’” Iles teeters on the edge of violence, culminating in a fine performance on the occasion of a fellow officer’s funeral.

Two Vietnam Memoirs

My armchair and I continue to spend a lot of time in war zones, mostly Vietnam. (I also recently read the pretty good Battle of Mogadishu book, Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down, but I won't comment on it here.)

Back-to-back, I read two well-respected Vietnam memoirs, Tobias Wolff's In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Last War and Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War. These two books provide an interesting contrast because the Vietnam experiences of the authors were significantly different.

At loose ends, Wolff volunteers without a lot of ideological commitment. He comes from a broken family background (father in prison) and has an ironic understanding of his position in the military from the get-go. For instance, he is kept in OCS to help put on a theatrical show. Wolff studied Vietnamese for a year, and then primarily served within an ARVN unit. He saw little combat, though had some close calls and certainly lived in some fear. Still, the memoir has a M*A*S*H-like feel to it: the book opens with 2nd Lt. Woolf and his sergeant attempting to procure a TV on Thanksgiving to watch Bonanza. (They eventually steal a TV.)

Caputo, on the other hand, entered the Marines and the war with significant dedication to their causes. He was among the first combat troops in Vietnam in 1965 and saw the war quickly escalate. This memoir's greatest strength is Caputo's examination of himself and others as line soldiers (platoon leader) under ongoing deployment and combat stress. In this regard, the second half of the book reminded me a bit of Karl Marlantes's recent Marine combat novel, Matterhorn. In the course of his time in Vietnam, Caputo came to see the war as terribly misguided, if not criminal. I couldn't help drawing imperfect but telling comparisons to Afghanistan -- civil war, assistance to local troops, fighting in or near villages, ambivalent civilian populations, etc.

Uh... Marine Sniper and Others

Two-plus years back, I set up this blog to ruminate on crime fiction, occasionally film, and my own writing progress. Of the latter, I have had some progress and success, but I haven't quite grown comfortable with general self-reporting. I have, however, been plowing through a lot of crime fiction... and other books.

Two crime titles to note briefly: Megan Abbott's Queenpin (which won the 2008 Edgar for PBO); Arnaldur Indridason's Jar City. Abbott's book is a fun, occasionally brutal neo-pulp noir. The writing is slick, the fashion thick, and the traditional gender roles somewhat inverted (e.g., there is an homme fatal instead of a femme fatale.) I would note in passing that Abbott has a Ph.D. in English from NYU. When I started writing crime fiction, I thought I would be the only English Ph.D. trying to ply the trade. It turns out we're a dime a dozen. Indridason is Icelandic, and the best part of the book is arguably the (genre expected) Scandinavian dreariness.

And, still on my war-reading path, I read Charles Henderson's Marine Sniper as a follow-up read to Matterhorn (see previous post). Marine Sniper is the non-fictional account of Carlos Hathcock's two tours in Vietnam. The book (subtitled, 93 Confirmed Kills) is largely straightforward heroic reporting on Hathcock's most astounding feats. They are riveting tales: holding off a large contingent of NVA, stalking into an enemy general's compound, killing a man from 2,500 yards. The book does not purport to examine the politics or the strategy of the war much, though it does chart the decline in effectiveness and morale between Hathcock's first tour (1966-67) and second tour (1969). It also does not pull certain punches: for instance, in the opening episode, Hathcock kills an approximately 12-year old boy (transporting rifles by bicycle) at 2,000 yards. Though Hathcock survived many, many dangerous situations, the book does not quite represent his combat struggles or fears (which may have been often contained; he was a smart, confident, brave sniper). In this regard, the fictitious Matterhorn might be the more accurate (or representative) book (though Matterhorn's infantry soldiers are not snipers).

More War: Matterhorn

I'm not quite sure what has happened , but now I have undeniably taken a detour into the fiction of war. It has been a startling, exciting period of reading. The titles I've read -- The Naked and the Dead, The Kindly Ones, and now Karl Marlantes's Matterhorn -- make a good list of epic, monumental war novels.

Each of these three novels has an interesting back story. Marlantes, a Marine veteran of Vietnam, apparently worked on and off on his novel for three decades plus. He tried to find a publisher at various times (e.g., 1977), but the book has only been published now, first by a non-profit, and then picked up by Atlantic Monthly Press (i.e., Morgan Entrekin). It received a glowing review by Sebastian Junger on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.

Matterhorn may not live up to its very highest praise, but it is pretty damn good. Fundamentally, the book offers a grueling, hyper-vivid account of combat and patrols in Vietnam. Marlantes is detailed in his descriptions of tactics and weaponry (and he includes a lengthy glossary and weapons list). Some readers may find the detail exhausting, but I found it interesting and a necessary part of the fiction. The long description of one brutal march (without resupply or medevac) echoes, I think, the exhausting march in The Naked and the Dead. Like Mailer -- though to a lesser extent -- Marlantes also wants to capture the social and economic diversity of the soldiers (and race plays a central role in Matterhorn as well).

This novel's shortcomings are few and excusable. In attempting to depict a wide swath of characters, some inevitably blur. In a small note on the copyright page, Marlantes writes, "Novels need villains and heroes..." In fulfilling this requirement -- and the requirement for a plot beyond the grind of war -- Marlantes lets the fictional mechanisms of his book creep in. But the occasional intrusion of the fictive also underscores how real and lived the novel feels.

More True Crime: Tokyo Vice

Whoa -- the second post in one week and the third in a month (for the first time since January 2008). I'd better lie down and take my temperature or something...

After writing recently that I rarely read book-length non-fiction, I discover that several of the last posts are on the same. Strange. Anyways, Jake Adelstein's Tokyo Vice is well described by its subtitle: "An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan." As the subtitle suggests, much (but not all) of the book is episodic and incidental -- happenings on the beat, learning to be a reporter, etc.

At the same time, I'd note that two of the blurbers are novelists -- George Pelecanos and Barry Eisler: the book has the drama and something of the narrative arc of a novel (or a novella at the start and finish, with episodes in between). If you can ride with this organization -- novel and non-novel, personal narrative and journalism -- then you'll survive fine (as long as you can stomach yakuza threats). It might be a little choppy for some.

For me, the book's greatest strengths are its descriptions of Japanese culture: hierarchy, practices, laws, attitudes toward sex, women, work, etc. For instance, Adelstein spends part of one chapter discussing Japanese "how-to" manuals, such as The Perfect Manual of Suicide. (The best-selling how-to book in Japan offers guidance for arguing with Koreans.)

Another small note: the book might a have been subtitled, "A Jewish-American Reporter..." Adelstein writes a bit about attitudes (and prejudices) toward Jews in Japan. The daughters of his best friend have been told in elementary school that all Jews were killed in World War II, and they want to take him to school for show-and-tell.

The Kindly Ones: Crime and Controversy

It was complicated how I stumbled (back) onto The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. This novel -- narrated by an educated, articulate, gay Nazi SS officer -- was all the talk at the Frankfurt Book Fair a few years ago, and Littell won the two big literary prizes in France in 2006 (the book is written in French; Littell is American by birth, lives in Europe, raised and educated in France (and then Yale)). I forgot about the book, but then someone mentioned it to me; I had just read another WWII epic, The Naked and The Dead (discussed here), so I thought I'd have a look.

First, I'll pat myself on the back: The Naked and The Dead seemed long and harrowing (which it was), but The Kindly Ones is longer and more harrowing -- or at least more transgressive. It is basically a thousand pages (984, to be precise) of death squads, concentration camps, slave labor, urban warfare, Nazi bureaucracy, camaraderie, onanism, and incest. Great stuff, really. The book documents -- deposits readers vividly at -- the worst places and events: Our protagonist, Max Aue, wades among the bodies in the ravine of Babi Yar (where I imagine I had some distant relatives, my grandfather having come from near Kiev); he visits Auschwitz; serves in Stalingrad; survives the destruction of Berlin; confronts (sort of, strangely, laughably) the Fuhrer in the final bunker, etc. The book's greatest strengths are its representations of these nightmarish places. Some critics have called this a "pornography of violence," but that seems unfair. We can estimate the dead at Babi Yar, but that is very different from the experience of herding or being herded. Littell also has Aue describe in pages and pages of detail the Nazi bureaucracy and in-fighting, which belies the mythology of Nazi order and efficiency.

Like other readers, I found the Aue family/personal/psychological story less compelling. This story includes reveries, masturbation, and murder, and Aue is pursued by two Kripo (Reich police) detectives. Thus The Kindly Ones also includes a crime story, though this is a weak narrative thread and relies on fantastical (or action-adventure) coincidence. This weakness -- the artificiality of the crime and pursuit -- arguably ties into Littell's ambitious examination of crime, culpability, guilt, and so on. More important than the crime novel structure is the framework provided by the Oresteia (The Kindly Ones is another name for the Furies (or Erinyes), who pursued Orestes for killing his mother). The most detailed review and the best explanation for the connection to the Oresteia and for the book's transgressive and graphic sex is Daniel Mendelsohn's piece in the New York Review of Books. (Also of note: an interview with the translator, Charlotte Mandell.)

It is easy to be critical of this novel on various counts: it is tedious at times; long-winded here and there; it either falls apart or never quite coheres. And true, the subject matter might have limited appeal for gentle readers. Still, this is a serious, ambitious, complex, detailed historic novel that deserves admiration (even if grudging, which my admiration is not) and notice. It is therefore dispiriting to me (as a reader and writer in the U.S.) to see how terribly panned and dismissed the novel was in major American publications. Kakutani savaged the book in the New York Times; David Gates also reviewed it unfavorably in the Times, as did Melvin Jules Bukiet in The Washington Post.

True Crime and Public Policy: Dangerous Doses

I don't read a lot of non-fiction books (except the occasional Highsmith biography) -- true crime or otherwise, but I picked up and devoured a really great book recently, Katherine Eban's Dangerous Doses (which is subtitled in hardback, How Counterfeiters are Contaminating America's Drug Supply; and in paperback, A True Story of Cops, Counterfeiters, and the Contamination of America's Drug Supply). I'm always looking for a good heist, and recently in Connecticut, there was a $75 million product theft from an Eli Lilly pharmaceutical warehouse. I read the news story and subsequently, the New York Times ran an op-ed ("Are You Buying Illegal Drugs?") co-authored by Eban, which led me to her 2005 book. Boy, does she have a yarn to tell!

Basically, Dangerous Doses tells the story of the illegal and gray markets of bought and resold prescription drugs. Worse, some very expensive drugs (hundreds of dollars or more per dose) are "uplabeled": 200 U/mL doses become falsely labeled 2,000 U/ml (which means a patient is not receiving the prescribed dose, and the medicine has often degenerated). This would be interesting by itself (and was the source of a 60 Minutes segment), but it becomes riveting because Eban has a great cast of characters: an emotional, larger-than-life cop, an unlikely prosecutor, a do-nothing boss, a shady urologist, an over-the-top criminal, and so on. The investigative team does great work -- a good plug for dedicated civil servants -- though today, apparently, our prescription drug supply is far from safe.

The Talented Miss Highsmith

Well, I managed to read my way through the massive and generally interesting new Highsmith biography, The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar. I'm not much of a reader of biography, but since I have a significant readerly attachment to Highsmith, I thought I'd better read this book. (I've already read the previous Highsmith biography, Beautiful Shadow by Andrew Wilson, as well as Marijane Meaker's memoir, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s. I've read 21 of Highsmith's books, including all the major novels except This Sweet Sickness.)

Ultimately, the Schenkar biography casts some light on the novels, but the criticism only goes so far (and granted, Schenkar doesn't pretend to provide in-depth readings of the books). I found the background on Highsmith's work in the Golden Age comics industry illuminating (Highsmith basically tried to suppress this information). Comics superheroes of course have doubles -- Clark Kent and Superman, etc. -- and this sort of doubling and theme of secret, hidden lives is important to understanding Highsmith (and it was important in a number of ways to her own identity). Schenkar also lists some of the emotional sources of Highsmith's characters (which I find more interesting as a writer than a reader).

Because of Highsmith's nature, this book is tough and relentless reading, too. Highsmith was a weird, often isolated, mean, bitter, and hateful person. I basically knew she was misanthropic, but she was impolite, too. Her detachment, anger, obsessiveness, paranoia, and lack of tolerance -- so biographically off-putting -- clearly provide some part of the foundation of her fiction's power. I'm a little wary of cultivating these traits, however.

This biography leaves some questions unanswered, but I don't think there needs to be another Highsmith biography (at least not yet). Maybe some academic critics can say something more about the fiction. For general readers, I'd be more interested in seeing a volume of letters or perhaps excerpts from her "cahiers"--the 38 notebooks found in a linen closet after her death (she also had 18 volumes of diary). Incidentally, she always subdivided her cahiers into the following sections: People and Places, Keime (i.e., "germs" of ideas, stories, etc.), Daily Notes, Favorite Quotes, Ideas for Longer Fictions, and "Notes on an Ever-Present Subject" (i.e., homosexuality).

War Report: The Naked and the Dead

Most of the time, when I'm reading, I'm reading crime fiction, but I take occasional departures. A few years back, for instance, I read a handful of books (fiction and non-fiction) about the Vietnam War. Unrelated, I have a stack of "big" books (generally long, harrowing, ambitious books) that I glance at, but fear I will never read. So, I finally read one of the big books that I've been trucking around for about 15 years, Norman Mailer's first novel and World War II epic, The Naked and the Dead (1948). (The photo is by Carl Van Vechten, taken in the year the book was published.)

The verdict: great stuff. I find it surprising that it never appeared on a syllabus of any class I took (or received mention). It is a big book in the sense that it is long (626 pages in my edition), ambitious in its representation of characters across many social and economic strata, verbally compelling (i.e., intense, poetic descriptions), and detailed in its descriptions of physical and interior worlds. Mailer captures hard men not by giving them inscrutable exteriors, but by sinking deep into their thoughts, fears, half-recognitions, contradictions, and so on. Interiority, I suppose, is associated with sentimentality in some ways, as well as slow action. Not the case here, though at times the action is slowed in an intense way to represent the agony of the soldiers.

Some of Mailer's characterizations seem dated and clichéd -- for instance, the "natural" man Wilson, who has a whiff of Erskine Caldwell about him. Still, this book was one of my most memorable reads in some time. I'm going to try to keep Executioner's Song on my radar, and I may try to read something by James Jones soon (maybe The Thin Red Line).

Poisoner's Handbook and Winter's Bone

Once again, I am reading more than I am writing and blogging (at least here). Actually, I did finish writing a story recently, "Sheltered Assets."; I'll report back if anything happens with it. Quick takes on two books...

I don't read a lot of book-length nonfiction, but I did suck down Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. I read it with something of an eye toward writing crime fiction, and the book provides plenty of nice details about poisons and the symptoms shown by their victims. I haven't written much period fiction, but one point shines clear for such tales: back in the day, it was pretty easy to poison someone. The other strength of this book is its discussion of Prohibition -- and the terrible outcomes of this failed policy. What was the nation thinking?!

Next, I read Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone (2006) (which I just found out has been made into a movie). Woodrell continues to captivate me -- great, weird, eerie, harrowing characters, settings, and scenes. Woodrell writes a thick, intense prose -- and in this book, I got a little lost here and there. One might shelve Woodrell alongside Erskine Caldwell or some Katherine Anne Porter (less with Flannery O'Connor, whom he calls a major influence). Still, Woodrell uses, if obliquely, crime fiction genre elements. In Winter's Bone, a young woman hunts for her missing father, out on bail, so their home is not lost to the bondsmen. One crime is solved, sort of, but another crime remains unsolved, as in Woodrell's Tomato Red.

P.D. James on Detective Fiction, More Pelecanos

I'm squeezing in a quick post before the end of the month.

I read P.D. James' Talking About Detective Fiction. This is a breezy, brief piece of criticism that does not offer a lot of new insight into detective fiction (e.g., the detective restores order to society in traditional mysteries). Two components stand out: first, in passing, James provides a good overview of Golden Age writers and singles out a few titles. Thus, if you want to read a good, representative Dorothy Sayers or Ngaio Marsh, you can find some titles here. The second bit that caught my attention was James' discussion of setting. She writes that setting propels her imagination, the spark comes from a location.

Just finished reading George P. Pelecanos' The Big Blowdown. Set mostly in the 1940s, it is the first of his D.C. Quartet. I've owned it for a while, and in part hadn't brought myself to read it because of the cover (see image); the image should be cool and B movie-ish, but somehow, the guy looks too lost. So, I judged the book by its cover. The book also has an introductory appreciation by James Sallis, another writer I like, but this piece seems out of place, comparing Pelecanos to Balzac and referring to Flaubert -- an attempt, it feels, to sell a "literary" audience on a writer shelved in the mystery/crime section. I liked this book quite a bit, once I got past the cover. The book has two early sections -- a boyhood scene and a WWII combat scene -- that set up the rest of the action, and they seem a little mechanical (especially the Pacific Theater war scene), devices for the action that follows. Once the book reaches its main postwar time period, it's pretty great stuff. Pete Karras steps back from working with some mobsters, pays a cruel price, and then years later aims to redeem himself. As always, Pelecanos draws complex, sympathetic characters, captures the atmosphere of Washington, D.C. (but specifically not the transient world of politics), and shows a vibrant workplace (here, a diner).

Man Alive, Another Month Gone...

Okay, I let another month go by. Excuses: household illness, excessive work, self-recalcitrance. I did keep reading -- and managed some writing, or at least some creative noodling. I read some more Pelecanos and Woodrell -- great stuff as usual.

But I'll comment a little more on a first novel, Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias. It is a murder mystery (the murder comes late, in Carnegie Hall) and a violin theft caper. The author is an accomplished violinist, once with the Boston Symphony and now the Associate Concertmaster at the Utah Symphony.

I have a semi-personal connection to this book. My brother is a professional violinist (and crime fiction reader) and for years, he has been telling me stories of violin thefts, purchases, and catastrophes. I have written two unpublished stories (and part of a third) about instrument thefts, one featuring a violinist. So anyway, this book seemed somewhat up my alley and really up my brother's alley. I missed Elias's appearance in Portland, but picked up a signed copy of the book, which I sent to my brother.

I usually don't read traditional, fair clued, semi-cozy mysteries -- as this one is, more or less -- but I liked it quite a bit. The amateur detective, blind violin teacher Daniel Jacobus, is almost too cranky (and mean to a student), but he grows on you. In the end, the book's strengths are its glimpses into the seamy world of classical music and instrument dealing, and there is also a good dose of musical appreciation guidance.

I am now wrestling with reading yet another book about Patricia Highsmith, my third: The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar. This is the big (or bigger) Highsmith book, in detail, analysis, and heft (nearly 700 pages). I'll report back. Highsmith is even more cranky and crazy than I thought (and I was already pretty scared, though about 20 of her novels have sunk far into my skin).

Peace, 1974

With this post, I hit a dozen for the year. I'm writing more of a monthly review than a blog, so I'll live with that.

To correspond with the holiday season, I read a grisly, feverish Yorkshire crime novel set in the same time of year, 35 years ago. 1974 is David Peace's first novel, published a decade ago. Eddie Dunford, crime reporter, investigates a gruesome child murder -- and links it back to other disappearances of children and ongoing civic and police corruption. The book is harrowing and includes a long, torturous scene where Dunford is tortured by the police.

The prose is elliptical and fast, a little reminiscent of some of James Ellroy's writing. Peace (pictured) maintains a frenetic momentum, strong voice, and dour tone. The book's shortcomings emerge in the plotting and a way over-the-top finale -- Heironymous Bosh does North England. Peace has an understandable cult following, though I would've liked the end to be reined in a bit. I might still pick up one of his subsequent books. For now, I'm back to reading Pelecanos.

Dropping Larsson, Barreling through Pelecanos

I'm back... just in time to get one post in for November.

Over the holidays, I finished a draft of the heist novel that I've been working on for a while. It was very satisfying to write "[END]." This is the first time I have finished a whole novel -- and I've started a few. This one actually has a plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The whole process, if anything, makes me more forgiving of some writers -- or at least maybe gives me better understanding of how we end up with a certain kind of finished book (which is a different sort of understanding than one brings to bear as a critic -- literary, popular, cultural, or otherwise).

I've backed off being a critic over the last few years -- though I'm still a dues-paying member of the National Book Critics Circle. In part, I don't want to say unkind words about books that I don't like -- and even if I don't like them, I now know a little what goes into writing one.

I will, however, be mildly critical (but not cruel) about Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (A literal translation of the title from Swedish would be Men Who Hate Women -- apparently not so appealing for the U.S. publisher.) I probably wouldn't write about it, except that Mr. Larsson has passed on (and my comments won't make a dent in the formidable estate). Basically, I liked Girl okay -- it held my attention, had interesting characters, a complicated set-up, and so on, but I gave it up. The mass market edition is 644 pages, and I stopped at 252. If it were 400 pages, I would've finished, but not 644. It's not to say that it was too long per se, but it was too long relative to the action and general progress of the characters and story. I like brooding Swedish crime novels. More than a decade ago, I read all the Martin Beck novels, and I've read a few Henning Mankell. I like (not to stereotype) the dreary weather, the stark landscapes, the introspective characters, but in the end, I dropped Girl. Now the more interesting question, which I can't answer, is how did this book catch fire in the U.S. (and elsewhere)? My own tastes don't necessarily correspond with an "average" reader's (if there is such a person), but I have a high tolerance for slow pace, meandering, etc., and imagine that if a genre book gains wide popularity, it does so for its pace. Maybe it is Girl's family saga and back story of wealth that find favor with readers. I'm just not sure.

So, I dropped Girl and picked up George Pelecanos's Right as Rain and read it at breakneck speed. It's the first of the Derek Strange-Terry Quinn novels, and I'm going to the next one just as soon as I can. Though Pelecanos has a lot of action and plotting, he always maintains significant focus on character, and almost always has scenes where people are just sitting around, boozing it up, partying, spinning tunes, etc. These scenes are interesting because they are not essential to moving the plot forward, but they add to the pace -- a pause before the next action -- and define character and scene -- make everything more real. And maybe I'm more indulgent of Pelecanos's DC milieu that Larsson's faraway rural Sweden.

Lee Child's First Two, More Woodrell

Okay, I'm back. Traveled a few thousand miles, survived a broken computer, and then some.

Per the previous post, I read another novel by Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red, a great (or at least really good) book that firms up my earlier views. Woodrell writes well, writes about crime and criminals, but he isn't quite writing genre fiction. Tomato Red won a "literary" prize -- best novel from PEN in 1999. Tomato Red includes a murder and detection, but it does not end with a clean resolution (I hope that's not a spoiler). This novel is quite effective, sad and stirring, but if you picked it up with expectations invoked by genre, you will find those expectations thwarted.

Lee Child does not thwart expectations. I read two of his Jack Reacher novels, the first one, Killing Floor, and the first one chronologically, The Enemy. Child does fulfill expectations very well -- he tells fast-moving, intricately plotted stories with strong characters. Reacher is arguably a little too perfect: he's smart, strong and agile, principled, fair, and good-looking. He escapes from dangerous situations, solves conspiratorial crimes, and lands the leading lady. Killing Floor has some plotting elements that stretch too far -- or rely on too much luck -- but even so, it's a ripping yarn. The Enemy, which places the itinerant Reacher back in his former life as an MP investigator, tells the story of an ambitious criminal plot perpetrated within the army in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

If you want a series with an appealing, super-capable hero, check out one of the Reacher books. (I liked The Enemy more, but Killing Floor is Child's first novel.) If you want to read about an impoverished Southern loser with a good heart who makes a lot of bad choices, read Tomato Red.

Woodrell, Johnson, and Crime Genre Considerations

I read two good books recently that were bent genre material: Denis Johnson's Nobody Move and Daniel Woodrell's The Ones You Do. What do I mean by "bent genre"? I'm not sure -- I like the phrase -- but something to the effect that neither writer approached genre on a straight or direct path. Both books have crime elements and were marketed as crime fiction, but I wouldn't hold them up as models of genre execution (though I might have liked both books more than such models).

First, Nobody Move: For Johnson, this book must've been a bit of a lark. He runs with the highbrow crowd -- and won the National Book Award for the Vietnam novel, Tree of Smoke -- but he wrote this book on assignment, serialized in Playboy. Considering that venue, the book is not particularly salacious or consumerist (and is, in the end, pretty damn noir). Perhaps with a nod to his war novel, Nobody Move opens with the protagonist Jimmy Luntz likening his situation to going into battle: he's about to go on stage in a singing competition. That sets the oddball tone. Jimmy is quickly intercepted by a loan shark collector, there's a shooting, Jimmy flees, gets tangled up with a femme fatale who claims to have access (with help) to 2 million dollars, and so on. For all this genre action, Johnson wants to dwell on character, including Gambol, the weathered and gunshot collector. He writes with clarity, emotion, and purpose, which are refreshingly tethered by the crime elements. Incidentally, Jon Breen, the reviewer for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, didn't like this book too much because of its thin plot and unlikable characters. For me, the book might be compelling because of these two factors.

Now, The Ones You Do: I had never read Woodrell and had heard high praise for him for a while. He deserves the praise (based on my reading of this one novel), but I find it strange that he is being blurbed by James Ellroy and shelved with mystery fiction. Maybe his other books run closer to the genre. In this book, there is one character who is a suspended cop and a cameo by his brother, a DA, but really this novel reads closer to Flannery O'Connor or Harry Crews (e.g., Feast of Snakes) than crime fiction. Like Johnson, Woodrell follows the frame of a crime plot: $47K is stolen from thug Lunch Pumphrey, and recognizing that he'll take the blame, washed-up pool hustler John X. Slade flees one southern town for another with his tweener daughter. Woodrell has great dialogue, characterization, and black humor. A few scenes with Lunch are especially memorable and startling. I plan to read more Woodrell, who like O'Connor two generations before him, came through the Iowa Writers' Workshop, but I won't approach him with crime genre expectations in place (but maybe with Southern Noir expectations; Woodrell uses the phrase "Country Noir" to describe his work, and southern writers often detest the label "Southern Gothic," so "Southern Noir" seems a good compromise).

Latest Bernie Gunther Novels from Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr's "Berlin Noir" trilogy has a deserved following. March Violets (1989) introduces Bernie Gunther, a Berlin cop in the 1930s. It's been more than a decade since I read the trilogy, so I'm foggy on the plots. Basically, Bernie hates the Nazis, ends up leaving the police, and becomes a private investigator. With people disappearing right and left after the Nazis come to power, Bernie has a lot of missing persons work. Bernie is a PI somewhat in the Marlowe tradition -- weary, moral, wisecracking, smart, and physical. He lands more women than Marlowe, though. The Nazis are essentially thugs and gangsters -- sort of organized criminals in power. One of the real appeals of Kerr's Gunther novels is the feel of time and place -- fear, rising antisemitism, and later, destroyed cities and desperate people. Historical figures play minor parts in the books.

Kerr put Bernie on a 15-year hiatus and wrote a bunch of other stuff, including a series of books for kids (maybe aiming to catch the Harry Potter wave). Several years ago, I read and enthusiastically reviewed (for The Oregonian) Dark Matter -- a crime novel with Isaac Newton as the central character.

Bernie reappeared a few years ago, but I only noticed when the second novel -- A Quiet Flame -- of the new cycle was released this year in the U.S. I read that one and backtracked to the first, The One From the Other. (The third, If the Dead Rise Not, is not available in the U.S. yet.) In A Quiet Flame, Bernie makes his way to Argentina along with other ex-SS men. (His reasons for fleeing are behind the plot in The One From...) He is hired by an official in Argentine security to find a missing girl after another girl has been gruesomely killed; the killing seems to copy two memorable murders in Germany in the 1930s. Bernie is off and running, delving into the world of ex-Nazis in Argentina, and even pursuing rumors of an Argentine death camp.

Both Flame and The One rely on complicated, multilevel subterfuge. Of course, traditionally, PIs are misdirected by their clients. Especially in The One, the plotting involves a con game of sorts that puts a little strain on the reading experience. Both books are compelling, but Flame is more satisfying. If you haven't read any of the Gunther novels, start with March Violets.

Two Months Later... and Ross Thomas

Oh my -- almost two months between posts. Uh-oh. I think I read that 90 percent of blogs (or thereabouts) haven't been updated in months, so I'm just about contributing to the inertia. I'm vaguely lousy at self-exposure.

I actually have kept busy -- reading and some writing (and the slog of regular work). On July 3, I received acceptance of a story called, "The Docile Shark," from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which was very gratifying (makes the earlier acceptance seem less of a fluke). I'll post when the story hits the stands (probably more than a year away). I also wrote an out-of-character humorous story, which I sent to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Meanwhile, if I could finish that heist novel...

I have been on a roll with reading good books. I backtracked to George Pelecanos's stand-alone heist novel, Shoedog, which was just great (though demoralizing as I look at my own in-progress heist novel). I'll comment in the future on the two latest Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr, which I also recently read. For now, though, a few words about Ross Thomas...

In the last month or so, I read The Eighth Dwarf and The Fools in Town are on Our Side. A few years back, I read Briarpatch, Chinaman's Chance, and The Brass Go-Between (under the pseudonym Oliver Bleeck). Thomas has been dead for more than a decade and seems somewhat forgotten (he won a couple Edgar Awards -- Best First Novel and Best Novel) . He wrote prolifically and his books are ambitious, quasi-capers of sorts. They often have political intrigue, bits of espionage, droll humor, and sex (in that offhand, somewhat gratuitous 1970s sort of way). A couple that I've read are historical or have historical episodes (WWII and post-WWII). In some ways, Thomas was a writer of over-the-top yarns. The books have wild plotting, colorful characters (sample names: Lucifer Dye, Homer Necessary), and lots of action. The two that I read recently veer off track a bit toward the end -- Thomas couldn't deliver on the promise of his formidable build-ups. Thomas may tire some readers, and his books might just be a little dated (Cold War, 1970s ethos, etc.), but he was a skilled and ambitious storyteller who should be given a whirl by any semi-dedicated reader of crime fiction.

Breaking the Blogger Block... and Highsmith and Cain

Okay, I missed posting for the entire month of May. I actually read a bunch of books, saw some movies, and wrote a humorous short story (very unlike my other stories). And I blog all the time -- but on a client's website, not here.

The standout reads recently: (1) James M. Cain's Double Indemnity. I'd read The Postman Always Rings Twice, but not this one (but saw the movie years ago). Great read that shouldn't be skipped because you saw the movie. Brutal and wound tight -- the language and mood. I've been thinking about character back story -- and here the protagonist is young, professional, and successful, and with no malice, he is just ready, naturally and easily, to commit a brutal crime for money and lust.

And (2) Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, a memoir by Marijane Meaker (aka Vin Packer). I have read about 20 books by Highsmith; she is one of my favorites. Her biography, Beautiful Shadow by Andrew Wilson, covers more of her life and her works, but the Meaker book offers personal experiences and a mood that Wilson can't provide. The Meaker book also captures the milieu of intellectual and gay life in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Meaker and Highsmith parted ways in about 1961 and never saw one another again until the early 1990s. At this point, Highsmith was even more cranky, and her antisemitism had become more obsessive and feverish.

Prison Break!

I fell off the blog wagon again. I have made some progress on some fiction (more on that in a different post), and wasn't too inspired to write about the latest books I've been reading.

I'm on the road, and yesterday I was at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It is an influential and now derelict prison that was open from the 1810s to 1971. I have a couple story ideas percolating, using the place as a setting. But now I'm wondering, what good crime novels (or stories) have been set in prisons. I never read Shawshank Redemption. Edward Bunker's No Beast So Fierce discusses prison life, but most of the novel takes place on the outside. A good portion of Highsmith's The Glass Cell is set in prison. I'll have to figure out what else.

Hardboiled Portland from Lono Waiwaiole

On Monday, I went to a presentation and reading by a Portland-local writer, Lono Waiwaiole. St. Martin's Minotaur dropped him after three books (the Wiley series), and his new novel, Dark Paradise, was picked up by Dennis McMillan Publications. (I first got to know Dennis McMillan more than a decade back when I was writing a biographical essay (for the Dictionary of Literary Biography) about Charles Willeford; and Dennis included a story of mine in his 20th anniversary collection, Measures of Poison.) Dark Paradise is set on the Big Island of Hawaii, and since I just got the book on Monday, I haven't read it yet. I'll post about it when I do.

Before going to the event, I read Waiwaiole's first novel, Wiley's Lament, which is set here in my home town of Portland, Oregon (with lots of accurate, local color). It is a fast-paced, ultra-violent "street" (to use McMillan's term) novel -- maybe akin to works by Donald Goines, but with better prose and more sentiment. Wiley, a card player (though that profession is just mentioned in passing) and criminal with a good heart, investigates the murder of his daughter. More to the point, he and friend/crime boss Leon blaze through leads, leaving broken bodies in their wake.

Early on, Waiwaiole alternates points of view between Wiley and the killer Fernando, a Mexican drug cartel man under corrupt DEA protection. The latter part of the book stays closer to Wiley, whose mood appropriately alternates between anguish and rage. The plotting and pace might strike some readers as over the top, but if you're willing to roll with it, the book is pretty fun.

A Missing Author, an Unknown Dwarf

Normally, I would be comfortable boasting that I have a pretty good familiarity with crime and mystery novels. There are plenty of authors whom I haven't read, but I like to think that I have at least heard of established and prolific crime fiction writers worth reading. So I was surprised to read the death notice (in the Mystery Writers of America newsletter) of George C. Chesbro. I had never heard of him. His main series character seems made for my tastes, Dr. Robert Frederickson, also known as Mongo the Magnificent : an ingenious professor of criminology who has a P.I. business on the side; he is also an acrobat, a black belt in karate, a former circus star, and a dwarf.

I went ahead and read the first of the Mongo series, Shadow of a Broken Man (1977). Mongo is hired to investigate the past seemingly accidental death of a celebrity architect, Victor Rafferty. In quick fashion, Mongo discovers strange circumstances around the death and a connected murder. The plot then spins wildly into areas of national security, pitting nations against the United Nations. It also includes elements of parapsychology -- so in its interests and Cold War theme, it is a book of its time. Though it has welcome pulpy and adventure elements, the book is quite serious, and Mongo's dwarfism is never used cheaply. At one point, too, Mongo endures torture and suffers terrible psychological aftereffects. For some readers, this section might be too heavy: a fantastical, though grounded fiction suddenly becomes harrowingly gritty. I plan to read more Chesbro and contemplate why he went out of print and why I had never heard of him before.

The Polish Officer: Character and Form

At the end of December, I was a house guest and pulled a copy of Alan Furst's The Polish Officer off my host's shelf and read it. I tend not to read historical crime novels or spy thrillers too much. Still, I had heard low-key buzz about Furst for a while, and I'm interested in World War II, so I thought I would give this book a whirl. (Incidentally, I highly recommend the Berlin Noir trilogy, or at least the first book, March Violets by Philip Kerr -- a sort of Philip Marlowe in Berlin tale, with Nazis as gangsters and the corrupt upperclass.)

The Furst book was enjoyable and something of a surprise -- in part because of what it was not. I expected a "high-concept" (e.g., intricately plotted, much at stake), breakneck-paced story of derring-do. Instead, The Polish Officer proceeds episodically: it is divided into five sections that essentially are novellas about the same character, an honorable, lucky, and mild-mannered cartographer (and Polish officer) who operates as a spy and quasi-guerilla soldier. The book also includes a few romances -- the flames of passion fanned by the flames of war. Furst also tells small stories, vignettes, about other characters, and those stories (in their level of detail) are sometimes very tangential to the plot, but still interesting.

The Polish Officer, then, sort of defies demands for tight plotting (which perhaps helps earn Furst his "literary" cache) -- and it succeeds in its descriptive intensity and historical vividness. (I would never try to write such a book simply because of the historical research required -- not dates and facts -- but the details of everyday life generations ago.) Because I don't generally read historical mysteries or spy novels, I won't rush out and read another book by Furst, but I would pluck another one off someone's shelf if I were a housebound guest again.

A Few Comments about Donald Westlake

On New Year's Eve, I was kicking around in tropical Mexico (first time there since I was a child) on my 20th anniversary. Donald Westlake was also in Mexico, a few hundred miles north of me apparently, but he never made it to his evening engagement. When I returned to the U.S., the first piece of news I heard from my older daughter was that Westlake had died. I was about as shaken as I've ever been over news of the non-violent death of someone I didn't know personally. I had a couple chances to meet Westlake, but missed both opportunities. But of course, like a gazillion other people, I assumed a special, privileged, imaginative relationship with Westlake simply because I had read a lot of his books. I've read and enjoyed some of the Dortmunder books (and maybe like the collection of Dortmunder stories, Thieves' Dozen, even more) and liked The Ax and The Hook quite a bit. But I was a hugely devoted fan of the Parker books written under the Richard Stark pseudonym. I've read all of them -- 20-plus titles. When I was first reading them, I had to fill the gaps through interlibrary loan. It was a small miracle for me when Westlake resurrected Parker after a 23-year or so hiatus. I wrote a short review of Flashfire for the Oregonian, which I'll paste below. A bunch of other writers wrote memorial posts about Westlake (links here, but more keeps rolling out) -- a reflection of how much Westlake was admired and read by other crime writers. Here's that review:

Richard Stark’s crime novels are a little like amphetamine: fast, frantic and highly addictive.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Donald Westlake -- the author behind Stark and other pseudonyms -- was a king among latter-day pulp writers. Terse, gritty and often amoral, his fiction delivered action and intelligence.
After a 23-year hiatus, Stark brought back his antihero Parker in 1997, and “Flashfire” is the third of the new Parker books. Parker would call himself a heister or a mechanic. He blueprints robberies, puts together a string (the gang) and pulls the job. Inevitably, the score goes sour, and Parker must think on his feet to recover stolen loot, evade police or take down double-crossers.
In “Flashfire,” three “gaudy” robbers steal Parker’s share in a bank robbery to finance an elaborate Palm Beach jewel heist. To get even, Parker establishes a new identity and heads to Florida to catch up with his money. Leslie Mackenzie, a suspicious real estate agent, catches on to Parker’s scheme, so he unwillingly makes her his partner.
If you’re looking for romance, however, Parker is not your man. He never mixes sex and work. Besides, stuck in a dead-end life, Leslie is looking for another type of fulfillment. “She’d known for a long time, you don’t change your life on commissions. You need a score. Somewhere, somehow, a score.” Stark succeeds because he knows that his readers might want a big score too, and he takes them on a wild ride to get there.

Writers Block, Laziness, or Procrastination

I am one of those writers who doesn't particularly believe in writers block -- or at least doesn't suffer from it. But the issue is more complex than this statement implies. Forget beliefs. Hammett famously suffered from writers block (though I don't know if he used the term "writers block"). He basically wanted to be productive, but just couldn't manage it. He frittered away time, and in the end, was only a productive writer of crime fiction for about five years (1929-34), give or take.

I write every weekday (and often on weekends), but usually on corporate projects. I have a quasi-personal investment in this writing, and it requires some creativity, but it mostly gets done because I have to make a living. By contrast, my fiction writing -- usually crime writing -- is sporadic. I would be a more disciplined fiction writer if (distorting and paraphrasing Flannery O'Connor's Misfit from "A Good Man is Hard to Find") there had been someone there to shoot my every minute of my life.

Two other points: I have gone through periods of filling paper creatively, but such writing comes out poorly -- typing rather than writing. I have also started many stories with good first scenes, and/or strong ideas or hooks, but they often (but not always) fall apart without planning or forethought. Writing stories is also a way of avoiding working on a novel. (Highsmith, at her most productive, used to write stories on weekends as a break from the novel she was writing during the week.) Apparently writing a blog is a way of avoiding both.

Off Kilter and On Target: The Big O

About a week ago, I finished reading The Big O (2007), the second crime novel by Declan Burke. It's a compelling, strange, and original novel, marked by the strength of its super-kind, stable, and non-violent protagonist Ray who kidnaps and holds people for hire. Ray isn't just likable; he's chivalrous and falls in love with a part-time heister, Karen. Ray is planning on going straight -- maybe the book's only troubling cliché -- but takes on one last assignment, kidnapping a crooked plastic surgeon's soon-to-be ex-wife. A handful of colorful secondary characters -- a screwy ex-con, his narcoleptic sidekick, a sexy woman cop, a scary giant dog, and so on -- weave in and out of the story. The ending is odd and amusing, combining farcical revelation and viciousness. I won't reveal more.

One interesting point, I think: many of the reviews/blurbs peg Burke as an Irish writer, which he is, but The Big O is not dripping with the overt markers of Ireland -- in terms of landscape, cultural reference, and so on. The plastic surgeon's and his circle's social life generically revolves around a country club. Could be a Dublin suburb -- or a Chicago suburb, perhaps. I recently faced some mild criticism for not geographically locating some stories (and some self-doubt, too), but I like novels (and films) sometimes that seem as if they could be in any city or town, a generic place that could be almost anywhere. David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), for instance, depends on its weird surreal, small town setting -- and some of its effect would be mitigated if we all thought the action was isolated to a place like Eureka, California, or Roseburg, Oregon.

A final note: I saw on Burke's blog (Crime Always Pays) that Harcourt passed on publishing his follow-up book, which is a sequel. I don't know that The Big O demands a sequel or a series (which is not a criticism: there is something satisfying in a book that ends, and you know it's going to stay that way), but the publishing industry seems to want them. Maybe Burke stumbled or The Big O has not produced the sales that Harcourt expected, but the situation is depressing. It would be great to see more unusual, crafty crime books out there. My guess is that some other house will pick up the next book, but it might not be one that has the visibility or muscle of Harcourt (which might be less important these days, for all I know).

***
Addendum: Burke responds to my comments here.

Case Histories

A few years ago, Kate Atkinson received a fair amount of notice in the U.S. for Case Histories. (She had already won the prestigious Whitbread Award, so was presumably better known in the UK.) The buzz seemed to be that Atkinson had written a "literary crime novel" -- a work that garnered attention from mystery readers (the protagonist is a P.I.) and the higher-brow crowd as well. The cover blurb on my trade paperback comes from Stephen King, pronouncing the book, "Not just the best novel I read this year, but the best mystery of the decade." This edition also includes "Questions and Topics for Discussion" -- a book club book.

King's praise seems excessive, but I did enjoy Case Histories quite a bit. The appealing detective, Jackson Brodie, investigates a series of cold cases and a missing cat. While Brodie appears more than other characters, the clients also have chapters from their points of view. Atkinson writes with depth, emotion (but not overwrought or sensational), clarity, and some humor (though the book is sad). The book arguably lacks the pacing (and procedure, perhaps) and of genre mystery or crime fiction. The crimes' solutions present themselves, one feels, more than Brodie uncovers them (though he does still solve the crimes, more or less). Another reader might feel that the novel deserved a certain tightening, but I'm happy to see the genre bent, with characters illuminated against a backdrop of crime, and the muting of a certain breathless sensationalism that infiltrates too much crime fiction.