Book Review Club: Fun and Games by Duane Swiercznyski

(This is the August 2011 entry for Barry Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click the icon at the end of my review.)

Job I would not want: Person trying to classify a Duane Swiercznyski book.

Sure, “crime fiction” is a nice umbrella if you want to use it, but that doesn’t quite do justice to the types of books Swiercznyski writes. Okay, early books like “The Wheelman” are straight up crime-y things, but some of his more recent books—The Blonde, Expiration Date—are not. Put his newest hard-to-classify tale, Fun and Games, into the latter camp.

Charles Hardie makes his living an interesting way: he’s a professional house sitter. He’s also a former Philadelphia cop who is fleeing personal demons from the past. Only things he requires other than the paycheck are booze and old movies, preferably on DVD. His latest contract is the LA home of a musician who has been called away to Europe.

Lane Madden, B-movie actress and A-list druggie, is driving in the Hollywood hills. She, too, has demons in her past, as the tabloids are quite eager to exploit. Those headlights she sees following her? They’re getting closer. Thinking the driver will pass her, she stops (dumb move). She’s attacked, but escapes into the night.

Think these two stories tie in together? Natch. Hardie arrives at the musician’s home and the keys aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Long story short, he has to break in to said house only to be attacked by a woman who turns out to be Madden. She thinks Hardie’s one of Them. Notice the capitalization? “Them” are the Accident People, killers hired to off high profile celebrities and make the deaths look, well, accidental. Hardie doesn’t believe her, until some stuff hits the proverbial fan.

Job I would not want: People who clean up after bloody death scenes.

I’ve read enough Swiercznyski books now to know one of his patterns: many of his tales take place in a short timeframe. The Blonde, in book time, lasted about twelve hours, Severance Package even less. Fun and Games, if I had to count up the hours, maybe clocks in about a day, give or take. The brilliance of this technique—where a reader is halfway through a book realizing only then that only a few hours have passed for the characters—is the distillation of the action down to a science. Jumping in and out of characters’ POVs, Swiercznyski is able to describe the action with balletic grace, giving nuances to violence reserved only for slo-mo shots in action films. Speaking of action films, there’s a great moment when Madden, faced with her own death a few times, relies on all the training she did for her B-movies. Even as she’s kicking ass, she’s marveling (and thanking) all her hours of training.

I’m usually a slower reader, but reading a Swiercznyski breaks the curve. Fun and Games travels at such a high rate of speed that I was devouring this book in chunks, not chapters. And the pop culture references are a scream. It’s one of Swiercznyski’s trademark prose stylings to reference just about anything at a given point. Since he and I are roughly the same age, he knows what I know, and I love it.

Another fun aspect of Fun and Games was the setting. Swiercznyski’s a Philly guy, the City of Brotherly Love plays a vital role in his books. Fun and Games is a California novel. In the afterward, you learn the thing Swiercznyski experienced that triggered the germ of this story. I’ve only visited California a couple of times, but I seriously got the vibe from this book. Heck, now I want to visit again.

The Accident People. Now, this concept is scary, but, in Swiercznyski’s hands, they’re a little bit funny, too. Don’t get me wrong. They kill people, staging the deaths as accidents. But you get enough background here to want to know more about these guys. Best thing about the book: the cliffhanger ending. You see, Fun and Games is the first of a trilogy of Charlie Hardie stories. Usually, Swiercznyski’s characters are so beat to hell by the end of the book that any thought of a continuing series is moot. Well, Hardie gets his ass handed to him again and again, but he keeps getting up. Yeah, the book ends on a cliffhanger, but guess what? You get chapter one of Hell and Gone, the next book, as a bonus. (Checking the calendar) How long until October?

Classifying a Swiercznyski book: pulp fiction, pure and simple, just like they used to write back in the day. Guy and gal get into a bad situation and have to fight their way out of it. Are they gonna make it? Read and find out.

Job I do want: Reader of anything Duane Swiercznyski writes.

P.S. Once you are done reading, head on over to Do Some Damage's book club. We're chatting about Fun and Games this month.

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Book Review Club: The Pallbearers by Stephen J. Cannell

(This is the June 2010 entry in Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click the icon at the end of this review.)

Reading Stephen J. Cannell's The Pallbearers was like being introduced to an old friend for the first time. Even if you don't know Cannell's name, you know his work in television and movies. Here are just a smattering of the shows he's created: The Rockford Files, The A-Team, The Greatest American Hero, 21 Jump Street, The Commish. The list, over at IMDB, is long and worthy of admiration. It's even landed him in a couple of cameos in the television show, "Castle," where the main character plays poker with Cannell, James Patterson, and Michael Connelly. Throughout all these years, however, I've never read one of Cannell's novels. With the publication of his most recent book, that has changed.

In reading The Pallbearers, I broke one of my reading rules: never start a series with any book other than the first one. The Pallbearers is book nine of the Shane Scully series. I toyed with the idea of starting with The Tin Collectors (book one) but decided against it. If I enjoyed this latest book, I'd return and read the earlier books. Shane Scully is a LA homicide detective working in the elite squad, the one that handles all the high-profile cases. He's married to Alexa who just happens to be his boss down at the station. As the story opens, they are packing for a two-week trip to Hawaii when the phone rings. Walter "Pop" Dix, the director of the orphanage where Scully spent twelve years of his young life, has been found dead. Suicide. And Pop has requested Scully to be one of his pallbearers. Good-bye Hawaii.

The other five pallbearers are all former residents of Huntington House. Each owe Pop their lives but each, for their own reasons, turned their backs on Pop as they grew up and left the House. Now, each of them must come to grips with Pop's death. Knowing the only father figure as they do, they all don't think Pop would have killed themselves. Grudgingly working together, they engineer a second autopsy, looking for any shred of evidence to overturn the coroner's findings. With a ruling of suicide, Huntington House won't get the half million dollar insurance check from Pop's estate. The second autopsy finds the one thing that sets this unlikely group of six orphans on a quest to avenge Pop's murder and come to terms with their own upbringing and lives.

The crime genre is littered by a bunch of single people who find partners throughout their adventures. As such, I was pleasantly surprised at the relationship between Shane and Alexa. They are a loving couple who have each other's backs at all times. They love each other, as Shane's first person narrative constantly reminds the reader. It's refreshing.

Shane, as a main character, is your typical cop. He's brash where Alexa is a rule follower. He wants to squeeze out the other pallbearers since he's a cop and they are not. He likes to go it alone and it gets himself in trouble more often than not. Nonetheless, I found his storytelling (Cannell's really) clean and precise. Shane is just a guy--an elite detective, yes--but just a normal guy. No overuse of profanity to make him appear tougher, no keeping secrets from others (he always "fills in" the group after he learns something), and no over-the-top gunplay. For all the unrealness that a work of fiction brings to the table, I found Shane and Alexa to be real cops.

The pacing of the book is another nice break from other crime and mystery stories, both on television and in books. I'm generalizing here but basically, you've got the thriller-type stories (with lots of action and violence), traditional mysteries (where very little action happens), and the blend show. The Pallbearers was definitely a blend. It was a slow-burn story where, frankly, the mystery wasn't all that compelling, that built to a pretty cool showdown finale scene. What drove the mystery at the beginning was Shane's guilt over abandoning Pop Dix and how that guilt drove him to keep digging. There was just enough interesting questions to keep turning the pages (or listening, as I did via the file from Audible.com by the always reliable narrator Scott Brick).

I enjoyed the Pallbearers and will certainly read more Shane Scully novels, not necessarily for the stories themselves but for Shane and Alexa. I thoroughly enjoyed their relationship, their love and devotion for each other, and their "realness." As someone who enjoys reading and writing larger-than-life characters (think: Gabriel Hunt or Doc Savage), I found a certain resonance with normalcy of the Scullys. It's the same reason I enjoy Christopher Foyle, from the BBC's "Foyle's War," so much. The character isn't super. He's a normal guy just doing his job. His job just happens to be collaring criminals and turning over rocks. That Scully found happiness in his life despite his bad start is what makes him super.

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Book Review Club: The Way Home by George Pelecanos

(Here is my September contribution to Barrie Summy's Book Review Club)

The thing to remember when you read George Pelecanos's latest novel, The Way Home, is this: it could happen to you.

Now, you may be thinking "hey, I don't live near the inner city, the setting for so many of his novels so I don't think so." Or you may be thinking "Yeah, I live in those types of neighborhoods and there ain't no book gonna capture what I live with every day." Okay, those things are probably both true. But Pelecanos gets you as close as you want to get with the real life.

Since so many of Pelecanos's themes revolve around race, it's important to note that the main character, Chris Flynn, is white, raised in a well-to-do white family in a well-to-do neighborhood far removed from the African-Americans of inner city DC. No matter. Chris makes a series of bad decisions and lands himself in a juvenile detention facility, the only white. About the only thing that keeps him from getting his ass kicked every day are the exploits that got him in there. He's stoic about his life and his predicament while his father, Thomas, safe at home, feels like a failure. Oh, and Thomas is the type of dad who can't talk to his son and, thus, misunderstands just about everything Chris does or says.

Cut to the future: Chris is out of prison and is working for his father's carpet laying business. He's convinced his dad to hire some of his fellow "graduates" and, while things are difficult, they're not untenable. Chris has a girl, he's trying to turn over a new leaf and succeeds, mostly, not that his dad notices. The problem occurs when Chris and another man, Ben, find a bag of cash ($50,000) under the floorboards of a house. Chris and Ben do the right thing and leave it but Ben talks to Lawrence, another graduate but one a little farther off the main street of life. Various miscommunication ensues, guys don't talk to other guys, and it all boils over when the true owners of the money come looking for it. Then, Chris, his dad, and all his friends find out what they're made of.

One of the great traits of Pelecanos's writing is his ability to make you feel empathy for just about anyone in his story, even some of the more brutal characters. Not the owners of the money--they're pretty dang awful and easy to root against. What I'm referring to is a character like Lawrence. He's had a bad childhood, not many chances in life, and when it came time to make a decision about anything, he made the wrong one. Lawrence is the type of young man that most of us, frankly, would cross the street to avoid. In Pelecanos's hands, however, Lawrence becomes someone you can understand. He's a product of his environment and he's where he is because of it. Chris *was* a product of his own environment until he went off the straight and narrow and landed himself in the company of guys like Lawrence. It could happen to any one of us. That's the point I think Pelecanos makes with this book.

The Way Home, while not preachy, is an issue book. Pelecanos makes the case via his characters for a different type of juvenile justice system, one that promotes rehabilitation and education over punishment. As one character in the story says, until he went to prison, he wasn't educated. Prison taught him all he needed to know. Reading between the lines, prison created a monster. Granted, this character is a monster and had it in him all along, but prison exacerbated the character flaws.

I'm a dad and a son and I found lots of "Yeah" moments in the book. My dad and I have a much better relationship that Chris and Thomas Flynn. But there were moments of genuine emotion that flooded from the book into my heart. Yeah, that's a bit weepy but it's true. The book is filled with emotion, honest feelings about family and one's way in life. Sooner or later, you'll find your way home. Of that, Pelecanos has no doubt. The only issue to deal with is how you get there.

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"Do Some Damage" group blog

I have some exciting news: starting 1 August, I will be one of the participants in Do Some Damage: An Inside Look at Crime Fiction. The brainchild of Steve Weddle, I think the mission statement says all you need to know:

Do Some Damage is a group of seven crime writers, each with a different voice and something to say. From grizzled vets to grizzly rooks, they pull back the curtain on the way the industry works. Whether beating deadlines or beating characters, each week they share their thoughts on reading, writing, plot, voice and all the sordid junk that goes through a writer’s brain.

Count me in as a 'grizzly rook' since I don't, as yet, have a published book. We all have a scheduled day, as you can see here:

Monday - Steve Weddle
Tuesday - Jay Stringer
Wednesday - John McFetridge
Thursday - Dave White
Friday - Russel D. McLean
Saturday - Scott D. Parker
Sunday - Mike Knowles

We're going to have a couple of days of introductory material this weekend and the regular columns start on Monday, 3 August. Thus, my first regular column will be next Saturday, 8 August.

I have to tell I'm quite excited about this new venture. I read other group blogs regularly (Murderati, Women of Mystery, and others) and I've always liked the idea of a regular column. I did that last year with this blog where I posted certain types of posts on certain days. Now, I have a place for a weekly column. I'm jazzed. I have a few ideas for the first few columns but I'll leave myself open to change them as circumstances allow. It should be fun.

Come check us out this Saturday, put Do Some Damage (http://dosomedamage.blogspot.com/) on your blog reader of choice (I use Google Reader), and join us in an ongoing conversation about the ins, the outs, the triumphs, and the heartaches of crime fiction.

Here's a hint at probably (note the word "probably") my first posting topic: I've been undergoing an analysis of my writing life in recent days. I've been in a valley, steep walls blocking me in. I've made some decisions in my writing life that should allow me to crawl up those walls and peer over the edge. What I intend to see is sunlight dawning. I'll let you know.

Forgotten Books: Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos

(My latest entry in Patti Abbott's Friday Forgotten Books. For the complete list, head on over to her blog.)

Let’s be honest: among crime fiction aficionados, none of the books of George Pelecanos are forgotten. If you had to pick one, it would probably be Shoedog, the one that doesn’t fit neatly anywhere else. But that’s just quibbling. So, in honor of Pelecanos’s talk this evening at Houston’s Murder by the Book, I’m going to offer up one of my favorites: Hard Revolution.

Why, you ask, do I love this particular novel so much? Two reasons: history and music. As a historian, I appreciate a good historical novel. It’s an experience to immerse yourself in another time and place. In Hard Revolution, it’s the spring of 1968 in Washington, D.C. African-American Derek Strange is a young, rookie cop on patrol with a white partner. If you know Strange at all before this book, you’d know him for the trilogy of novels that take place in the early 2000s where Strange is a middle-aged private investigator. For all the power of those three books (Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus), you learn in Hard Revolution what made Strange the man he became.

The story is a good, typical Pelecanos story. Young men, trapped in dead-end jobs and dead-end prospects facing the looming possibility of being drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam, think the way out of their hard life is crime and the thrills it can provide. One of those young men is Strange’s older brother, Dennis, a character mentioned in the original trilogy. Dennis gets himself wrapped up with some bad ‘friends’ and the end result ain’t pretty. The other plot thread involves a group of white boys who want to rob a bank but also killed a black man just for the hell of it. Brutal stuff, the prose version of a Springsteen song.

What sets this novel apart is the setting. These events take place in a critical time in Washington’s, and the nation’s history. On Sunday, March 31, President Lyndon Johnson told the nation that “shall not seek, not will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Four days later, on Thursday, April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. The riots that ensued in the District are the literally fiery backdrop to Derek Strange’s odyssey. As a reader in the 2000s, we know what’s going to happen and that provides a nice, extra tension along with what the characters are doing.

Like the Star Wars prequels and the new Star Trek film (how’d SF get into this?), you really ought to read Hard Revolution after you’ve read the Strange trilogy. There are quite a number of little nods to the original trilogy in Hard Revolution that you, frankly, wouldn't get if you hadn't already read the other books. That's not to say that Hard Revolution isn't a good stand-alone book. It is. You'll just get more out of if if you know all the actions Strange did in the original trilogy especially the last one (Soul Circus). Hard Revolution isn’t to be missed.

Hard Revolution is also special because of the soundtrack. Pelecanos has rightly been praised for infusing his prose with the music of the times. He always tells you what certain characters are listening to. It makes his stories even more real, if that’s possible. With Hard Revolution, however, you got a literal soundtrack. Certain versions of the original hardcover came with an eight-track (heh) CD. It’s chock full of the songs Strange, his brother, and their friends would have been listening to in 1968. In a short paragraph on the sleeve, Pelecanos says it best: “This was the best of deep soul, describing the joy and pain of love, played and sung with mind-blowing passion, coming through the radio as the fury was building on the street.” You’ve got towering names on this disc: Wilson Pickett, Albert King, Curtis Mayfield (as a member of The Impressions), Percy Sledge, Sam and Dave, and Otis Redding. All the tracks are great and you can’t help but find yourself whisked back to the era. There are horns a-plenty in these songs, many of which have the bari sax blatting itself through the chorus. A favorite of mine is William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water.” This slow-burn song about lost love, of course, with the metaphor of a well run dry, but what makes this song is the cymbal. Throughout the entire song, the drummer plays high on the cymbal, a constant buzz that sounds like the sizzle Bell’s heart would make as his dissed lover burns it in a cast-iron skillet on the stove. Fantastic!

Albert King, in “Born under a bad sign,” sings “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” Well, for me, without George Pelecanos, I wouldn’t be reading crime fiction. He’s one of two reasons I am firmly and irrevocably a passionate devotee of crime fiction. Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River was the book that blew open the doors of the crime fiction world for me. Pelecanos’s Right as Rain (and Derek Strange the character) took the door off the hinges, smashed it, and burned the remains, basically telling me there ain’t no going back. Hard Revolution, thankfully, is the origin story of Derek Strange, set amid the turbulence of 1968, complete with soundtrack. What more could you ask for?

Oh, and if you're up for an audiobook, Lance Reddick, of "The Wire," reads this story. I listened to the audio version (an abridgment) then read the novel. Reddick's deep baritone timbre really gives voice to Strange.

Wonderful Hard Case Crime News

Wow! This Monday just got a lot more exciting. Want to know why? Head on over to Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine blog where he reprints the latest updates from Charles Ardai, one of the founders of Hard Case Crime.

And you thought 2008 was a good year for Hard Case Crime? Wait until 2009. Here are the teases:

• Something from Robert Parker (no, not that one)
• Chance to win a free book!
• Lester Dent

(Thanks, Bill)

George Pelecanos on "Behind the Black Mask"

Just up last Friday, the latest entry in the wonderful Clute and Edwards excellent podcast, "Behind the Black Mask." This time, one of my favorite authors: George Pelecanos.

If you haven't already, subscribe (its free) to this podcast and listen every month. As a writer, I've learned some good lessons. As a reader, it's great to go in-depth into an author's book and writing process.

Duane Swierczynski and Inspiration

I went to see Duane Swierczynski Saturday at Murder by the Book. I got to talk with him a little before his 4:30pm talk. Fan Boy Moment: when I introduced myself to him, he remembered me from my comment on his blog. Moreover, he thanked me for the review of his book, Severance Package, I posted on my regular Tuesday book review feature. That was, to say the least, quite cool.

Then, David Thompson of MBTB, came over and the three of us chatted for a few minutes. Since I was wearing my Chicago tee shirt, David mentioned that he’d read the first page of the short story I write back in 1998 about incorporating Chicago songs into a story. All in all, a good experience.

Swierczynski’s talk was good. He riffed on the differences between mystery readers and comic book readers (mystery readers are much nicer), what it’s like to write novels with your own characters and write comics with established characters, and the other exciting opportunities he’s had with his writing. I don't know his entire bio but it seems like he's now able to write his own material full-time since he mentioned quitting his day job at a Philadelphia magazine.

I've met a few writers at MBTB and there's something about meeting writers during book signings that is simply neat. It's visible proof that they are regular people, just like you and me. Sure, big-time movie stars are people, too, but writers don't usually have entourages. Writers are just folks, happy that you turned out to meet them and hear them talk, gracious that you're holding one of their books. Swierczynski is just like that: nice, kind, gracious.

When I mentioned that I was working on my second novel and that my first book, although agented, has yet to find a publisher, Swierczynski commiserated. His first novel, Secret Dead Men, gestated a long time before it was published. Eight years I think he said. But here's what really struck home and is the reason I'm sitting at my computer on a Saturday night writing instead of watching the Olympics: Love What You Write. After he wrote that first book and it didn't sell, he wrote more books, books about what got him jazzed up: a mute getaway driver, a businessman whose drink has been poisoned, or a public relations guy who discovers his boss wants to kill him. Swierczynski enjoyed the stories, wrote the books, and, guess what? They got published. He didn't care about what might sell. He wrote for the first reader: himself.

Which brings me to my writing career, to date. I wrote Treason at Hanford, my Harry Truman story, and I loved it. Each night, when I sat down to write, I was excited about it and I wanted to know what happened next...and I *knew* what happened next. I fell in love with my book. And the folks who have read it (not all family or close friends, mind you) have commented on the passion of the story. There's a part of the book, 3/4 of the way in, when all different groups of characters are starting to put two-and-two together. I got butterflies in my stomach *writing* it and I still get them every time I read those chapters. They may not be great, but they darn sure satisfied me.

What am I trying to say, to myself or any wannabe writers out there? Don't over think the story. That's been my problem with book #2, my own sophomore slump. Just friggin' write the thing. Write it because you love it. If I don't love it, it'll show in the prose and no one else will care about it.

Thanks to David and McKenna and the good folks at Murder by the Book for making their wonderful store the place where writers and reader can meet. Thanks to Mr. Swierczynski for coming down to Houston and giving some Texans a chance to meet you. And thanks for helping me off the mat. You probably didn't even know it but you gave me the kick in the ass I needed to fine-tune the focus on my second book and finish it.

Yet Another George Pelecanos Interview

It's from Philadelphia City Paper (thanks Crime Always Pays, Declan Burke's great blog).

Here's a quote from it:

CP: One of the things I've always been so impressed by is your ability to use space and render D.C. almost like a character. In reading the work of some of your peers, I'm struck by how important place is to the success of a book. How much of your D.C. is real and founded in the streets and how much is created in your mind?

GP: Of course the characters are fictional and they're sort of walking through this fictional world, but as far as the grid goes, it's all pretty much real. I go out and check stupid things like, Is there a T in that alley behind Otis Place NW? I have to go to the alley and make sure that there is. In the historical books like Hard Revolution, if a character is walking down the street in April '68 in a particular week of that month, and the movie theater marquee says Guess Who's Coming to Dinner or something, it was playing in that movie theater on that day. I can guarantee you that. I don't make shit like that up. Even where it's crippling. In other words, [in The Turnaround] when Alex walks into the diner for the first time when he's a kid and the James Brown song is playing, and it's June in the book — if that song was released not until September of that year, I don't put it in there. It wouldn't have been coming through the radio. It's a long-winded way of saying I'm trying to leave a record.

I can relate to Pelecanos's comment about historical novels. When I was writing Treason at Hanford, my characters walked past a movie theater and they went to see a movie. I made a point of doing some research and finding out what films were playing in the spring of 1944. It's a fun way of writing but, like Pelecanos says, it can be a pain...if you care about getting things correct.

Where's Houston (and the rest of Texas)?

I found some more incentive yesterday to keep writing my current book and others.

Over at Crime Fiction Dossier yesterday, David J. Montgomery posted a link from the UK publication, The Independent, listing 80 locations around the world and the best crime fiction books to read about those locations. On his blog, Montgomery lists four of his favorite locales. He also links to his own list of various locations and books/authors to read.

The Independent listed no Texas cities. In Montgomery's longer list, he mentions only "Texas" and puts forth Joe R. Lansdale and Jay Brandon. Nothing wrong with those guys (and the list is a few years old and, thus, does not include Harry Hunsicker's Lee Henry Oswald novels) but this highlights what I'd like to do with my fiction: put Houston on the crime fiction map. I would be vain to think I could do it alone. I mean, I'm not even published yet. But I'd like to join the list of authors people think of when they think of Texas crime fiction. Who knows? One day, I might just get myself on those lists.

Book Review: Shooting Star & Spiderweb by Robert Bloch

If the private detective is the modern incarnation of the cowboy and the city the stand-in for the western town, what are we supposed to make of a PI who wears an eye patch in Hollywood? That is the first question upon seeing the cover of Shooting Star, Hard Case Crime's first (and not last?) foray into flip books, or doubles. Oh, and of course, who is that woman on the cover?

In Shooting Star, Mark Clayton is the PI (pirate?) who has a PI license and takes odd jobs whenever his job as an agent is slow. Clayton is asked by a friend to clear the name of one Dick Ryan, cowboy movie star, now murdered. You see, Clayton's friend, Harry Bannock, bought the rights to the films and is prepping them for television distribution. The only problem is that pot was found with Ryan, sullying the name of the once-clean star and Bannock's future profits.

This is the first Robert Bloch book I have ever read. I knew his name because of the novel, and later movie, Psycho. Honestly, there were parts of this story that slowed me down, trudging along. The topic was never too bad, it was the pace. It all goes back to expectations: when you get a Hard Case Crime novel, you expect fast paced material. Bloch's prose was slower, delving into the minds of the characters more than standard pulp fiction.

The best thing about Shooting Star was the ending where the culprit is revealed and I didn't really see it coming.

The flip side of this twofer is Spiderweb (1954) and this one hooked me right off the bat. Eddie Haines is about to kill himself when a C-note slides under the door. Before he knows it, he is in collusion with Professor Otto Hermann, con-man to the stars (this book is also set in Hollywood). Hermann gives Haines an alias under which Haines helps reel in suckers and relieve them of their money. But the desperate man Hermann lured away from death has a soul, and a conscience. And it is here where the story gets really interesting because Hermann has the goods on Haines and blackmails him. It's what Haines does next that provides the book its soul.

I enjoyed both books mainly because of their historical peek into 1950s Hollywood. Shooting Star, with its character Bannock and his transitioning to television, was pretty interesting to read. You got to hand it to Bloch: he had Bannock see the future pretty clearly. The ending of Star is much better than the ending of Web but Web is, I think, a more entertaining read. Bloch, I've read, loved Hollywood and wrote about it often. It shows. He has a knowledge only insiders have and it infuses both books with life.

What I Learned as a Writer: The one thing that did shine in both books is Bloch's prose. It's typical pulp prose, strong and muscular. Professor Hermann did come across a bit over-the-top but that's part of his charm. Bloch's use of action verbs and sentence fragments keeps the reader on edge and propels him forward. Characters never 'walked', they strode or paced.

Another aspect of Bloch's writing is his limited use of attributions like 'said' or 'asked.' He wrote his paragraphs in such a way that you don't need them to follow what's going on. It keeps the author out of the way and allows the characters to speak for themselves.

One of my favorite passages is this paragraph from Shooting Star:

This was Broadway. Not Broadway, New York. Broadway in L.A.; just a knife's throw from Main and a blind stagger from Olive. Bumway. Skidway. Wrongway. The kind of a street you find in every big city. Even in that nice eastern city where the newspaper doesn't want to contaminate its readers with sordid stories of unpleasant people.

I can just see the old grainy black-and-white film with a tough guy voiceover.

There's a quote from Stephen King inside the front cover of Spiderweb: "Perhaps the finest psychological horror writer." On the flip side, Peter Straub writes "Robert Bloch is one of the all-time masters." These quotes are obviously true but I'm guessing King and Straub were not referring to these books when they wrote those quotes. What these quotes, along with these good, but not great, crime novels tell me is that I need to read Psycho and other horror novels by Robert Bloch and find out what all the fuss is about.

P.S. (to Charles Ardai): please let this not be the last Hard Case Crime double novel.

Batman as Crime Fiction: A Dark Knight Movie Review

What to say that hasn’t already been said. Easily the best Batman movie. Period. End of story. It ranks as one of the two best superhero stories ever (Spider-man 2 still is a fantastic piece of filmmaking). But Dark Knight wins in my own list merely because Batman is, and has always been, my favorite hero. Whereas I have a comic book box full of random DC titles, I have boxes full of Batman stuff.

Enough about my credentials as a Bat-geek. The film will literally knock your socks off. Some observations about the filmgoers on a Friday afternoon. Every type of person seemed to be represented: couples, youngsters (too young in my honest opinion), teenagers of both genders, geek boys (like me). Heck, there were even a couple of women, not young, coming to see the film. And, yes, it’s probably because Heath Ledger died earlier this year. But still: this is a superhero movie and everyone is coming to see it.

But this film is more than a superhero film. It’s a crime saga with a costumed hero and villain. In leading up to the film, I read very few reviews because I didn’t want to get influenced by anyone. I wanted my thoughts and experiences as pure as could be. Afterward, I read all the sites I regularly visit. The geek sites were ecstatic. The mainstream media was ecstatic. I was ecstatic. My wife loved the film and uttered the words I certainly wanted to hear: “I want to see it again.”

Many sources have linked TDK with the Michael Mann movie, “Heat.” I watched it for the second time in my life the day after I saw TDK. I see why the two movies are mentioned in the same breath. But the scope of TDK is bigger, broader. Heat is really about two men and their immediate groups. TDK is about a city and, ultimately, about us in 2008. TDK could not have been written or filmed pre-9/11. It’s post-9/11 is its outlook and soul. Joker finally gets a nom de guerre that truly represents what he is: a terrorist.

In the mad rush to compare the incomparable TDK, movies like “Heat” and “The Departed” are mentioned. But Devin Faraci, over at CHUD.com, hit the nail on the head when he compared TDK with HBO’s “The Wire.” Just like The Wire is a story about Baltimore, TDK is a story about Gotham City. GC came alive in this film. It lived, breathed, got beaten, knocked down, got up, and kept walking.

The reason that the Spider-man movies and Batman Begins work so well is that they are films about Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne. These two characters are interesting. You just want to keep digging into their psyche. There’s an everyman quality to these movies (even though Wayne is a billionaire) that gets to the hearts of the viewers. And it’s regular citizens stood up and shone, too. As much as Batman and the Joker occupy the center of this film, Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent provide the everyman soul for this movie. It was the scenes that did not contain explosions that I relished just as much as when the two costumed foes faced off against one another. In the review over at Christianity Today, the author has some questions to ponder including the nature of evil and how good, normal people—folks without capes, cowls, and gadgets (or guns?)—cope when faced with evil. TDK answered those questions. Some will endure. Some will fall. We’re just lucky enough if we never have to find out what we really are at those times.

This is the first Batman movie where you honestly see Bruce Wayne being the famous detective he is. He is constantly behind the curve in this film, reacting instead of acting. Bruce finally takes an action that gets him more up-to-speed but then a character, having learned what Bruce did, asks a fundamental post-9/11 question: at what cost?

One of the best things about Batman’s villains is their scale. Most of them want to rule Gotham or rob banks or screw with the police or Batman’s mind. Sure, there are times when Batman travels abroad or has a villain (Ra’s al Ghul) with some global scheme but the bulk of Batman’s foes just want to keep it local. That’s what was great about Batman Begins and the same applies here for TDK. Joker doesn’t want to rule the world, he just wants to destroy Gotham. You see crime bosses at odds with each other, double-dealing, scheming. It’s what links TDK with The Wire. One of the things I’d love to see is a TV version of Gotham Central, the series of comics that focuses on the GCPD. But, to do that, filmmakers would have to top The Wire and that’s a tall order.

Speaking of topping things, I have to admit something: there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to see a third Batman film from Christopher Nolan. This film, for its flaws, is so near-perfect that to top it, Nolan may have to make choices he’d rather not make (Spider-Man 3 anyone?). However, come 2011, you know a third film will likely be here merely for the fact of how TDK ends. But how do you top Heath Ledger’s Joker? Simply put, you can’t and they shouldn’t even try. It was sublime, funny, poignant, scary, over-the-top, sadistic, unforgettable. I think a nomination is a lock.

But I have faith. Back a few years ago, when the news that Nolan cast Ledger, I was skeptical. However, knowing what Nolan did with Batman Begins, I deferred to him. Perhaps he saw something in Ledger that I didn’t. Boy did he ever. So I’ll trust Nolan to make his third film and make it like he wants to. And now that TDK has joined The Empire Strikes Back, Spider-Man 2, Star Trek II, and Godfather II in the ranks of superb sequels, I now lay down the mantle of third film flops (Return of the Jedi, Godfather III, Spider-Man 3, Superman 3, Star Trek 3, etc.) at his feet. If anyone can make a third film fantastic, I leave it to Christopher Nolan.

But, really, Chris, you don’t have to. You got it all right with this film. You said all that really needs to be said about Batman and Bruce Wayne. You and Ledger brought us the ultimate Joker. You brought us the ultimate crime drama with superheroes. It’s all been said and done. There’s nothing more to say.

Is there?

Crime WAV - Podcasting Crime Stories

Seth Harwood, one of the pioneers of podcasting, has started a wonderful new website. Crime WAV is the place to go for crime story podcasts. He is starting out with known authors reading their material. First up is Vicki Hendricks. If you like podcasts and great crime fiction, this is going to be *the* place in the not-so-far future.

Also, you will find a link to Seth's website, where you can enjoy the adventures of Jack Palms.

And, I have to add, getting one of my stories at this site is now another goal on my writing goal sheet.