Ellery Queen Magazine: November 2008

Since Ellery Queen is one of only two major magazines for mystery short stories, I think it's important to support the magazine and purchase most issues. This year has been easy since the editors brought in a Black Mask feature most months. This feature is usually an old story first published in the Black Mask Magazine from the heyday of the pulp era or a new story written in that style. The August 2008 issue featured a new story by Mickey Spillane.

Blogger David Cranmer over at The Education of a Pulp Writer has submitted a review of the November 2008 issue of EQMM. And, as of now, there's a lively discussion with 15 comments. Head on over to David's site and take a look. Then, find your nearest bookstore and pick up a copy. Or you can go to Fictionwise.com and purchase the electronic version for your Palm Pilot or Blackberry.

Busted Flush Press: Now on the Blogosphere

Thanks to Patti Abbott's blog, I discovered that Busted Flush Press now has a blog. Busted Flush, founded by David Thompson of Houston's own Murder by the Book, publishes out of print books and anthologies of new work. I've written about four stories from two of Busted Flush's books: A Hell of a Woman and Damn Near Dead. A nice feature at the site is a list of independent book stores around the country that sells and stocks Busted Flush titles. If you are like me, I'd much rather buy from one of the indie stores than the monoliths of B&N or Amazon.

Go on over and give David a big blogosphere welcome.

Music Review: Two Men and the Blues by Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis

I know what you’re thinking? Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis? Together? I thought the same thing, too, when I saw them on The Tonight Show earlier this year. I mean, we are talking about Willie Nelson, the Texas troubadour who will duet with, well, just about anyone who asks. And then there’s Wynton Marsalis, the jazz purist—puritan?—who disdained even his brother, Branford, for touring with Sting back in the 1980s. How in the world did these two get together?

That’s something I haven’t discovered yet, even in the nice little behind-the-scenes video up on YouTube. Upon closer inspection, the pairing is not as far from left field as you might think. Nelson has covered everything including reggae (yeah, really) but one of his biggest albums was Stardust (1978), an album of standards from the Great American Songbook, that helped to define what Nelson does best: blend many varied genres and elements to create something different, if not original. Marsalis, in the meantime, has spent the bulk of his twenty-five year career bringing back the prominence of acoustic jazz, the jazz before Miles Davis “corrupted” the genre by plugging in and going electric. And Marsalis succeeded, reminding folks (and record executives) that traditional jazz can be good and make money at the same time. The songs Marsalis used to usher in the Young Lions movement in jazz were those from The Great American Songbook.

Beyond the two men drinking from the same well of music, look at their backgrounds. They are both southerners, Nelson from Texas and Marsalis from New Orleans. Southern music is a smorgasbord of sounds and influences. Gospel, blues, jazz, bluegrass, folk, country, Texas swing, and more all can be found in almost any song by a southerner. So it was, two southerners and their band members went up to New York and recorded a concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

"Two Men and the Blues" is a live recording. It serves the music well because, I think, the perfection of a studio would have lessened the impact and spontaneity of the performance. You get the sense that these seven men are not on a stage at a prestigious concert hall but in the drummer’s garage. It’s a Saturday night, it’s hot, the door’s open, the beer getting warm in the ice chest full of melting ice, and these guys are just jammin’ for no other reason that they love music.

“Bright Lights Big City” kicks off the set. Wynton’s band—he brought himself on trumpet, Walter Blanding (sax), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Dan Nimmer (piano), and Ali Jackson (drums)—sets up the nice lilting shuffle feel. Mickey Raphael’s harmonica is also there, adding that certain flourish that only a harmonica can. All the instrumentalists take a turn at soloing, even Nelson on guitar. You know going into this recording that Wynton’s band is top notch. If there was going to be a weak link, it was going to be Nelson’s guitar playing. I was interested in hearing if Nelson took a turn on soloing. He did, and, while it’s not superb, this is the type of song where fancy pyrotechnics are out of place. So Nelson did just fine.

The longer you listen to this recording, you realize how close the phrasing of Nelson’s vocals and his guitar really are. His Martin nylon string guitar does not hold the sustain like a steel-string guitar. Nelson usually compensates by repeatedly striking whichever string he’s playing. But on this recording, he doesn’t do that a lot. He lets the struck string fade when it wants to, much like his voice. Nelson is not a singer who can hold a note for a long period of time. Where a singer like, say, Sinatra, would carry his phrasing past the four-measure break, Nelson breaks his vocal phrasing short. As a result, there are usually more silences in a Nelson tune. That’s his style and it really works in this set.

“Night Life” is one of those tracks where you imagine it being played in a late-night jazz club, after midnight but before closing time, the smoke hanging low from the ceiling, all but the die-hard have gone home. It’s the time of night for the faithful, the friends, and for the girls in the audience who want to date a jazz performer. Wynton’s trumpet shines here, opening the track with a long solo that sets the down tempo mood. But it’s his flutter sound during the chorus that really takes the roof off. Out of nowhere, it blasts above Nelson’s vocals. And Willie brings out a better solo on guitar, a nice, soft theme that put my worries about his abilities to rest. He also played a good melody on “Basin Street Blues.”

Since Stardust is still one of Nelson’s most famous records, you knew the band was going to cover some of those songs. They do the title track and, of course, “Georgia, On My Mind.” "Stardust" has a beautiful, lush tenor sax solo, the kind where you can hear the air passing over the reed in the lower register, a nuance that, for me, a sax player, I love. “Georgia” starts off showcasing Nelson’s vocals as the centerpiece but the soloist shine just as brightly. Marsalis’s wah-wah trumpet wails, Raphael’s harmonica sings, and Nimmer’s piano playing bring a new, but slower, energy to this song. If I had to pick a definitive version of this song as sung by Nelson, it would be this one.

When you listen to the record, it’s at this point where the audience and the band start to let loose. From the band side, this is the first tune where you can hear Nelson compliment his fellow players during the song. From the audience, they knew the song as it began and they cheered audibly at its conclusion. I could say the audience was polite but tepid in their applause at the beginning of the set. Perhaps they, like new listeners, don’t know what to make of this seemingly strange pairing. By the end of “Georgia,” they knew they were a part of something special. And they let the band know it. For the rest of the set, you can hear cat calls from the audience as they get into the spirit of the night.

An old Hank Williams tune, “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It,” has the vibe of the New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band, complete with a squeaky clarinet and a drum solo, greeted with whistles and cheers of the audience. They cheer Nelson’s best guitar solo in Cole Porter’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business. ” They laugh as Wynton brings his only vocal performance on this song, telling Nelson and the audience all the things he might do that are, you guessed it, nobody’s business. The set closes with “That’s All,” a fast blues shuffle where everybody has their last chance to shine. Amid the audience clapping along (wonder if they were standing?), you get a taste of the power of Wynton’s trumpet as he let’s loose with one of his famous long notes, high and a little dirty.

By the end, the band and the audience have relaxed and just let the night sweep them away. And we as listeners can get a taste of what it was like those two nights at Lincoln Center. When performances like this crop up, my immediate impulse is to want more of it. Sometimes, the sequel does not live up to the promise of the original. In this case, however, another CD would be more than welcome. And I’d love to see the band perform down in Austin at the South by Southwest or Austin City Limits festival.

I love it when two musicians realize that there are more things that unite them than differences in their approaches to music. It reminds you that music is universal and can bring just about anyone together. And, if the results of unique pairings are like that of this CD—where you can’t help but smile and tap your foot—it really is lightening in a bottle.

Elizabeth Crook Interview @ The Louis L'amour Project

One of the side effects of my joining Patti Abbott's Forgotten Books Fridays is that I've read two westerns. That's two westerns read in my entire life. My grandfather and dad love westerns but they were never my thing.

Until now. After reading two westerns (William Colt MacDonald's Mascarada Pass and Day Keene's Guns on the Brazos), I will forge ahead and read many more westerns. Never knew what I was missing.

In my research into things western, I stumbled upon a cool blog, The Louis L'amour Project. I love experiments and, based on the sub-title and mission statement, blogger Chris Jones is on a quest: "Reading a bunch of Louis L'amour and seeing what happens." From what I've read so far, all good things have happened.

A nice feature of The Louis L'amour Project are his author interviews. Today he publishes an interview with native Texan Elizabeth Crook. I've not read her work--yet--but her reminiscences of Aquarina Springs in San Marcos, TX, really took me back thirty years. And how many of us writers can relate to how she took up the pen and started writing?

Good interview and a good site to bookmark on your Google Reader. You won't be disappointed in either.

New Dennis Lehane Tidbits

Over at Bang!, Clayton Moore writes about Dennis Lehane and the fleeting hopes that another Patrick/Angie book is out there. Moore links to his review of The Given Day, Lehane's latest, in the Rocky Mountain News and also back to Lehane's website which has a nice video interview and pictures of Boston in 1919.

As most of y'all know, I credit Lehane and Mystic River as the demarcation line of my love of crime fiction. Before MR, I barely gave crime fiction a thought. After MR, the world had changed for me. The Kenzie/Gennaro stories are wonderful and Lehane can count himself fortunate that good movies have been made from his books. Whether or not Lehane ever returns to crime fiction is a matter only he can decide. But, for me, he was the door into the crime fiction room in which I now happily live.

Forgotten Books: Cop Hater by Ed McBain

Visionaries are those people who look at nothing and see something. They are inventors of things, pioneers of the possible. Our history is teeming with visionaries: larger-than-life figures who stepped onto the stage and made a difference. You might even argue that they knew that they would be remembered. Pulp writers are not usually associated with this type of forethought. I don’t think Edgar Allan Poe consciously thought he was creating a new genre when he wrote his August Dupin stories. I don’t think Mark Twain thought he was creating something new when he wrote Huckleberry Finn. The same holds true for Hammett, Chandler, or any of the other pioneers of crime fiction.

Ed McBain seems to be different. I have a 1989 edition of his first 87th Precinct novel, Cop Hater, and he writes a new introduction. He remembers that in 1956 he looked at the landscape of crime fiction and saw a hole, a blank spot. No author was writing fiction that focused on a group of detectives. The large majority of crime fiction featured single-character series many of whom were PIs. PIs or lawyers are not supposed to investigate a murder, McBain thought, detectives are. Then he got an idea: why not feature a series of books about a group of detectives. One detective would take center stage in one book and another guy who step up in the next book. Thus was born the 87th Precinct, the precursor to Hill Street Blues, Patricia Cornwall, Law and Order, CSI, The Wire, Joseph Wambaugh, and others.

And it all started with Cop Hater. In my review of The Postman Always Rings Twice, I wrote that James Cain, in two pages, sets up the entire novel. Well, it takes McBain only three pages. And it’s a wallop. McBain shows Mike Reardon, regular guy, getting up for work, kissing his wife, seeing his kids sleeping, sipping coffee, and slipping quietly out of the house. Next thing you know, half his face has been blown away from a .45. That’s not the coup de grace. The last sentence of the chapter is: “Mike Reardon was a cop.” If that doesn’t wake you up and grab you by the collar, I don’t know what does.

With the murder of one of their own, the detectives--or “bulls” as they are known by the criminal element--attack the case with the gumption of a cop. Steve Carella and Hank Bush emerge as this story’s lead characters. And they do their cop thing. Anyone who has read the books or watched any of the ‘real’ cop shows on TV know what I’m talking about. Carella and Bush talk to bar owners, youth gangs, snitches, a woman who thinks alien cockroaches are invading Earth (seriously). Reardon’s murder was bad but it got worse when Reardon’s partner was also gunned down. Now, they had something more on their hands. A cop killer, a cop hater, and each man on the squad--and their loved ones--started wondering if they’d be next.

The prose style of this book is unlike anything I’ve read to date in my exploration of crime fiction. It’s quick, terse even, a direct contrast to the plodding nature of the 87th’s investigation. In certain interrogation scenes, there are two, three pages of mere dialogue. No prose except the occasional attribution just to help the reader. These scenes clipped along, rapid fire, just like guys in the old movies. It’s not unlike Erle Stanley Gardner’s use of continuous paragraphs by the same speaker without any prose to get in the way. It works well.

One thing that did not work well was the narrator. Ed McBain, as most everyone knows, is a pen name for a, what, pen name? The man who was born Salvatore Albert Lombino had, by 1952, officially changed his real name to one of his pen names, Evan Hunter. Got all that? Anyway, Cop Hater has a narrator and he sticks his authorial nose in the middle of the prose often. The narrator needs to but in when talking about procedural stuff that the characters would know by heart. But other times, the narrator literally shows up and comments on the action, like a Greek chorus. For example, after a page and a half description of a bar Carella and Bush are going to in order to ask some questions, McBain writes this: “So what did those two big jerks at the end of the bar want?” It was weird because most of the action and thought stay in the head of whatever character leads off the chapter or section.

And speaking of character, the City is a character. Many folks have commented that Pelecanos’s DC, Lehane’s Boston, Connelly’s LA, or Hunsicker’s Dallas are characters in their own books. Yes, they are, but the city of Isola--a fictionalized version of New York--seems to breathe on its own. There were numerous sections where McBain started off a chapter with what Isola was doing or what its citizens were doing. It was the prose equivalent of a wide screen shot. It was almost like McBain was playing tour guide for us in his own town. Regarding the fictionalizing of NYC, with just one book under my belt, I didn’t like it. Folks who live in New York can smile knowingly when the characters talk about the river or the docks on the East side because New Yorkers have a frame of reference. I don’t. I’m one of those readers who likes his crime fiction to be based in reality. It’s what sets the Marvel Comics characters apart from their DC Comics counterparts. Spider-man lived and worked in New York. Batman lived in Gotham which is and isn’t New York. Just set the story in NYC and be done with it.

Joy in writing is something you can feel when you read a book. If the author loves what’s being written, you’re going to know it. Ed McBain certainly has a wonderful way with words, especially his pulp fiction verbs. With a book as short as Cop Hater, every word counts. Here’s that elevator in the downtown police headquarters building: “The elevator crawled up the intestinal tract of the building. It creaked. It whined. Its walls were moist with the beaded exhalations of its occupants.” With one metaphor, McBain puts more in your brain than a paragraph of description. He does this on almost every page. It’s refreshing to have a writer channel his inner thesaurus with good results.

McBain’s gift is bringing these characters to life. They are presented as real, honest, living, breathing, humans and all the baggage that entails. Real people talk about random stuff even when they are focused on something else. This kind of randomness shows up in movies like Pulp Fiction or Saving Private Ryan, television shows like The Wire, or books like those of Pelecanos. It’s here in Cop Hater. The detectives just talk about stuff, women, booze, the weather, whatever. It makes them more three dimensional. Late in the book, Carella goes in to talk with his lieutenant, a man named Byrnes. The lieutenant is on the phone with his wife. In the hands of another novelist, Byrnes would hang up the phone instantly and get down to business. Not here. He finishes his call--like any regular person--and then the two men commiserate on women. Only after that does Carella relate to Byrnes the update of the case. This kind of realism is superb and makes you like these guys even more.

Even for 1956, McBain took some bold choices. The graphic descriptions of the gunshot victims surprised me. The overlty sexual nature of some of the scenes surprised me, too. But what surprised me most was the choice of Carella’s girlfriend. She’s deaf and mute. You just don’t see that kind of attention paid to folks with disabilities unless the person in question witnessed some crime and the killer now stalked them. The scenes between Carella and Teddy were sweet, not cloying at all. It was two people in love and that love came through, even when, say, Carella had always to look directly at Teddy so she could read his lips. With this being the first of the series, I look forward to seeing how their relationship develops.

Which is to say I will certainly be reading more 87th precinct novels. In the past three weeks, I have examined Perry Mason (80 books), Cool and Lam (29), and the detectives of the 87th precinct (54). I enjoyed these characters and books immensely. I have already applied some of the traits of these accomplished writers into my own fiction. If I read nothing else but these three series, it would take awhile and y’all would become quite bored with my reviews. The thing is, I wouldn’t be bored at all. I’d be in crime fiction heaven.

Note: I have my list for my Forgotten Books already laid out. Only after I wrote this review did I realize that Cop Hater was covered in August by Anthony Rainone over at his blog. I missed it at the time but I’ve read it tonight after finishing up my review. In case y’all haven’t read it or if you missed it like me, go on over and take a read. He touches on things I don’t.

Time Travel Back to 1978 with Star Wars

Over at SFSignal.com, there is a link to an old filmstrip version of Star Wars. For those of a certain age, you will know what I mean by the word "filmstrip." The artwork in this strip doesn't seem to be the Marvel Comics version of Star Wars so it must me newly-commissioned art. It's fun to see what the narrator leaves out.

Man! The nostalgia!

Minor Rant (fueled by Nostalgia) - There will be nothing like the feeling most of us kids had in that wonderful time between Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). In those years, the sense of wonder, the sense that we were in the middle of something "new," that the story had so much more to tell us, was palpable. It was so simple. Vader killed Luke's dad. Period. Greedo shot first. Period. And what was cool for us with imaginations is that we were able to fill in all the blanks that we wanted to. I am one who likes all those details in the SF and fantasy worlds I enjoy (Star Wars, Tolkien, Narnia, etc.). But there's also a part of me that doesn't want to know. I just want to make it up myself. That way, you can never be disappointed, like with midi-chlorians or having to have Kenobi, in Return of the Jedi, parse the words he spoke in the first movie, giving Luke a grammar lesson regarding "it's true from a certain point of view." [sigh]

Treason at Hanford: Chapters 15 & 16 online

Everyone gets a double-shot today. Chapter 15 and Chapter 16 are now available over at Texas Pulp Writer.

Enjoy.

“Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy" by Duane Swierczynski

Everybody has an inner geek. Whether its love of films, comics, carpentry, art, whatever, most people really dig into their passion. (I hate to say hobby because it degrades the passion; it’s like when I cringe at being called a history buff when I’m a trained historian with a Master’s degree.) These junkies learn the history of their chosen passion and can recite trivia ad nauseum to anyone out there, especially to fellow members of said geekdom. It’s like telling grammar jokes to a bunch of English teachers. When the punch line is “No, it’s a gerund!” only English teachers and tech writers laugh.

Count among this group the narrator of Duane Swierczynski’s short story “Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy.” The unnamed narrator loves crime fiction the way some people like “Star Wars.” He knows all, even the most trivial of stuff. He buys old issues of mystery magazines on eBay. And when the story opens, he’s found a long-lost author, Cole Ford.

In 1954, Ford set the crime fiction world on fire with the publication of one 1,200-word story. The narrator tells us what kind of impact the story had.

“It was the Clash, circa 1954.
It was the H-bomb in your den.
Nobody who read it fresh off the newsstand was ever the same again.”

Famous real-life mystery authors are quoted, included David Goodis, the Philadelphia native that Swierczynski loves. Goodis, it seems, read Ford’s story and had to move back in with his parents to get his life right again.”

It’s this kind of humor and wink of an eye Swierczynski gives us on this entertaining story. Swierczynski wrote this story for anyone but, like those grammar jokes for the English teacher crowd, there’s a lot more to this story that crime fiction geeks will get.

The title of the story refers to a lost manuscript written by Ford and it’s the narrator’s quest to find the man and the manuscript. He finds Ford through Ford’s agent, Luther McCall. Both men are now in their 80s. Unfortunately for the narrator, he gets more than he bargained for. Fortunately for us—geeks all who would take a similar quest searching out our own hold grail—the story ends with a lovely twist. I liked, also, how Swierczynski drops in references to Philly, bringing the city to the forefront as well as his love of crime fiction.

“Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy” is a story published in Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir (Busted Flush Press). The anthology title alone is worth a few chuckles as is Swierczynski’s introduction relating how he approached these authors, some of whom he’s admired for years. One of those writers is the recently-deceased James Crumley who provides a guest introduction. Crumley thanks Swierczynski “…for talking me into this…” Wouldn’t you have liked to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation. I can’t help but wonder if Swierczynski wrote his story after meeting and contacting these other writers. Something tells me it’s a good possibility.

Book Review: The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

The novels of George Pelecanos breathe with life. They radiate reality. Not the pseudo-reality of, say, reality television. Most of that stuff is all contrived anyway. I’m not even talking about the reality of other works of crime fiction where the protagonist is, say, an unpublished writer/blogger who reviews crime fiction and solves one case by happenstance and, then, solves fifteen more as the series keeps getting renewed, the life of the hero never in doubt.

I’m talking about something more, something human, something true. These books are fiction, natch, but they don’t read like it. They read like a newspaper article or a story from "Dateline." The suspense in a Pelecanos novel starts its slow but inexorable rush early in each novel when he introduces each set of characters. Again, that’s not new or unusual. But there’s a certain originality to the way Pelecanos structures a novel. He shows you Group A and their daily life and he shows you Group B and their daily life. In a thriller or other mystery books, you know that Hero and Villain will meet and said meeting is inevitable and preordained. What makes a Pelecanos book unique is that, often, the two groups would never interact except for one event, something by chance, the event that is the central focus of whatever book you are reading.

Take Pelecanos’s latest novel, The Turnaround (2008). In 1972, when three white boys get drunk and high and decide to drive into an all-black neighborhood, nothing good will come from it. You know it, one of the main characters even knows it, but drive in they do. Yes, there is suspense as you read about their actions. But the real suspense starts in your head when you realize what the boys are going to do and what might happen. You’re mind plays tricks on you, making your heart beat faster and your palms sweat. You come up with all sorts of dire results. Pelecanos gives you one result and then shows you how it ripples across the decades.

The three teenage white boys drive into the black neighborhood, hurling racial epithets and food at three black youths. The problem occurs when the boys in the car realize that the neighborhood has no outlet, that there is a turnaround at the far end. There is only one way out and that road is now blocked by the three black teenagers. The lives of all six boys now come down to their actions that day. One white boy runs away, one white boy is killed, and the third is scarred for life. Two of the black teenagers go to jail while the third has to come to terms with his actions. The scene of the attack, told from the perspective of Alex Pappas, the boy who gets scarred, is heartbreakingly tragic. It shows the moment of clarity that laid bare the alcohol-fueled decisions that led him to that moment. And in that moment, he called for his dad.

The story shift to 2007 and reintroduces the five living men whose lives came together for a moment thirty-five years ago. Alex Pappas, the son of a man who ran a coffee shop, now runs the same coffee shop with his older son. Alex’s younger boy died in Iraq and Alex lives with the loss every day. Raymond Monroe, the black boy who didn’t go to jail, is now a physical therapist at Walter Reed Army Hospital in D.C. His son fights in Afghanistan. These two men meet again one day after Alex brings sweet treats to the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed. The two men start talking, about life, about their decisions, about how their lives changed after “the incident.”

Into this normal life storms Charles Baker, the man who, as a teen in 1972, gave Alex his scars. Baker’s out for some payback, both from the white boy who ran away (now a successful lawyer) and Pappas. The other black youth, James Monroe, Raymond’s older brother, the one who went to prison for the murder of the white boy, is an ex-con whose life is nothing more than beer and being abused by his boss, the owner of the auto garage where Monroe works. Baker’s got designs on Pappas, his family, and things owed him. And, just like in 1972 when he was the bad kid, he’s still a bad influence on everybody. He wants what’s his and he’s gonna get it, one way or another.

Pelecanos’s books are part of the modern sub-genre of crime fiction that focuses on society and social issues. Actual crimes are committed in his books but they are not the focus of the story. These books are not whodunits. His books investigate the reasons behind a crime or, in the case of Washington, D.C., the environment that produces crime. Some of Pelecanos’s best books—Hard Revolution, Drama City, Soul Circus—have dealt with this theme. It’s a theme echoed in HBO’s “The Wire”—which Pelecanos helped to produce and even wrote a few episodes over five seasons, even recruiting two other members of this social crime fiction group, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price.

You could drop the label “Dickensian” on Pelecanos. I’m not talking prose-wise or intricate plots. I’m referring to Pelecanos’s penchant for airing the issues of the day without flair or fanfare. Life is life and here is what it’s like for the kinds of folks not normally the characters in mainstream fiction: blue-collar workers, black youth, ex-cons, parole officers, police. It’s probably this focus that keeps Pelecanos from gaining the fame and fortune some see as owed to the Dickens of D.C. When he gets his big book, his Mystic River, his overnight success will be decades in the making. (Note: you could argue that Hard Revolution is that big book. To date, I think it is.)

As a writer, what strikes me most is the way Pelecanos goes about presenting his stories and the tension and suspense therein. Some authors marvel at their own mastery of the English language and the myriad ways to write about two groups of teenagers about to inflict harm on one another. Even I fall prey to this kind of writing as readers of this blog can attest. Pelecanos is a blue-collar man and he is a blue-collar writer. He is a student of the Elmore Leonard School of Writing: don’t let the author be present in the prose. Pelecanos writes short sentences, without flair, workmanlike, unadorned, straightforward. He just writes what happens and lets the events and characters speak for themselves. You see, his stories are sufficient. I can’t help but wonder if some of those books out there with a lot of authorial flourish are not merely masking a sub-par story. I think that’s the case for some.

There’s a clear bravado to his prose, something Ernest Hemingway might appreciate. The men—and they are usually men—who live in Pelecanos’s world are tough. Their language is tough and it spills into the prose. Pelecanos’s love of westerns, both film and novel, infuse the feel of his novels. You certainly get that sense with the Derek Strange novels (Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus) even if it doesn’t show up with quite the same intensity here in The Turnaround. You could really feel the influence of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” with Pelecanos’s previous novel, The Night Gardener.

Not that Pelecanos is perfect. The Turnaround is a good Pelecanos book, but not great when compared to other titles in his bibliography. However, a good Pelecanos title is often head and shoulders above much of what’s out there. And he has his quirks. Late in the book, there’s a scene with two new characters so Pelecanos writes, “Two men sat in a gray Dodge Magnum that was facing east on Longfellow Street.” Nothing wrong there. But when the focus shifts back to Alex, Raymond, and James, sitting around drinking beer, we already know who they are and we knew they were going to get together. Pelecanos opens the scene as if Chapter 28 is really Chapter 1: “Three men sat in an alley under the light of a security lamp and a crudely painted sign reading ‘Gavin’s Garage.’” He then proceeds to introduce us to our three main characters as if for the first time. Same thing happens early on after he’s introduced the three white boys and then writes this: “Three teenage boys cruised the streets in a Grand Torino, drinking beer, smoking weed, and listening to the radio.” I think this might be the visual aesthetic coming to the fore, like directions for a screenplay. Nonetheless, it’s a little annoying. Introduce characters and move on, using their names.

As you can expect, violence plays a role in this book but there’s less of it than you might think. When you think of crime fiction or mysteries, you might expect shoot-outs between gangsters and cops or books where the characters are not changed by violence. You want that kind of stuff—and I love it, I’ll be honest—look elsewhere. You don’t get that kind of thing in a Pelecanos book. You get real, honest-to-goodness violence, not contrived or convoluted. It’s the same type of random violence I mentioned in my review of Allan Guthrie’s Kiss-Her Good-bye. One moment there isn’t violence, the next second it’s there, and the last second, everything has changed and you can’t go back. Another dose of reality Pelecanos injects in The Turnaround and his other novels is the various reactions of the characters to violence. One of the characters in this book is killed and, right before the end, when he knows he’s going to die, the character loses bladder control. It’s wholly natural, a reaction any one of us would probably have. It helps books like The Turnaround ring true in a world where murder is real and lasting.

What I Learned As A Writer: Trust your story. George Pelecanos trusts that you, the reader, will read his book and go where he leads you. Granted, with this, his fifteenth book, he doesn’t have to start the novel with a killer sentence or paragraph like undiscovered writers like me have to do. But he does move ahead at a certain pace, never wavering, through the entire story, his workmanlike prose doing its job. He lets his characters act and speak for themselves. He doesn’t try to commit some literary gymnastics in order to keep you reading. The characters, as they are presented, are gripping. You want to read. You want to find out what happens when three white boys drive into a black neighborhood. You want to find out how, as men, these characters interact with each other after so many years gone by. Pelecanos believes in these characters. He compels the same of you.

If it is of a certain quality, good art—whether music, literature, art, dance, film, television, etc.—can change you. Some of this art stays with you long after you’ve closed the book or left the museum or turned off your TV. I read a lot of books and I’ll admit that not all of it is lasting. They were good at the time but the memories have faded. Not so with the novels of George Pelecanos. They stay with you, embed themselves in your brain, becoming part of your memory. That is a trait of a true artist. That is what it is like to read George Pelecanos. Do yourself a favor: make some new memories.

Music Review: No Place Left to Fall by Bill Champlin

Bill Champlin wears the mantle of a musician’s musician. He’s a studio wizard. He’s an in-demand vocal stylist and arranger. He shows up in places you’d expect—Toto CDs or on albums from other west coast musicians—and places you may not expect—from Amy Grant’s 1988 “Lead Me On,” Paulinho Da Costa’s 1978 album “Happy People.” He sang the theme song for the TV show “In the Heat of the Night.” He’s won Grammy’s for writing (Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “After the Love Has Gone” and George Bensen’s “Turn Your Love Around”). And he’s virtually unknown to the general public.

Well, except for his tenure with Chicago. And even then, folks might have a difficult time actually naming him. “Isn’t he the other guy singing ‘Hard Habit to Break’ with Peter Cetera?” Yes. “Is he the guy that sings ‘Look Away’?” Still yes. After that, most folks draw a blank. Even his first band—with the hint right there in the band name—don’t give folks a clue as to who Bill Champlin is. That band name? The Sons of Champlin.

Like many artist, Champlin explores other musical ideas in solo albums. And last week, after a thirteen-year absence, Champlin released a new CD of all-original material. Not that Champlin hasn’t been busy. He toured extensively with Chicago every year, played a large role in Chicago’s Christmas CDs as well as 2006’s Chicago XXX, and released a CD of new material with his first band, The Sons. With “No Place Left to Fall,” many of the musical influences that have percolated in his other musical endeavors come to surface and shine.

One thing you immediately notice with any Champlin-touched tune is the impeccable musicianship. These things are slickly produced. Some might argue that they are over produced but, when you consider all the things you can do in a studio, it’s Champlin’s restraint that is a hallmark of his work. The thirteen songs on this new CD have lots of elements to them. It really takes some concentrated listening with headphones to make out all the little nuances Champlin deploys.

A major presence of this album is Champlin’s B3 organ. For folks like me who discovered Champlin’s work via Chicago, Champlin’s B3 organ sound was gradually introduced, first in concert in the early 90s. It showed up on the 22nd album, Stone of Sisyphus but, then that CD was never formally released until 2008. It wasn’t until Chicago’s big band CD, Night and Day (1995) that the B3 organ got it studio premiere. And it’s there, right on track one and playing underneath most every track. Chicago 25: The Christmas Album featured the B3 on more songs, especially on what I now consider to be the definitive take on “The Little Drummer Boy.” The B3 is prominent on Champlin’s other 1990s solo releases (be sure to check out “Mayday,” the live recording from 1997) as well. You can tell when Champlin plays a real one, too. The organic, natural quality of a real B3 is heads and shoulders above anything a synth can produce.

All this is to say that the B3 shines on this new album. Literally, from the opening notes on track one, the B3 is spread like honey over all of these songs, sweetening and making it all just taste a little better. The coolest thing about the B3 is the judicious way most organists play the instrument. It’s little tidbits here, a riff there, a counter melody under a rhythm guitar, the syrupy foundation of a swampy blues song, it’s just there. The smooth, silky quality of the B3 and blue-eyed soul of Champlin’s voice just go together you wonder why he didn’t start sooner. Two highlights of the B3 on the new album is “I Want You to Stay” and the opening, funkified riff of “Tuggin’ on Your Sleeve.”

Speaking of riffs, this Champlin dude can tear it up on rhythm guitar. Not like Van Halen or any of those guys who play thousands of notes per minute. (Remember the Emperor in Amadeus: “Too many notes.”) I’m talking about a competent musician who knows the instrument, what it can do, and, most importantly, how it can compliment the song in question or his singing. I know Champlin collaborated with long-time friend Bruce Gaitsch (the iTunes download does not include liner notes) but I don’t know which songs on which he actually plays guitar. But any Chicago concertgoer of the past couple of years where Champlin got out from behind the keyboard and strapped on a guitar knows what the man can do. And he does it well here.

One interesting acoustic guitar-based piece on the new album is “Look Away.” Yes, it’s the same song that went to #1 in 1988 and was transformed into an acoustic rendition on the 1995 Night and Day tour. Champlin uses the acoustic version as a starting point but basically creates a new song. He takes the song—where the intent of the words can certainly get lost amid the trappings of a power ballad—and brings out its quite personal and painful message. It’s not too big a stretch to say that if Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young ever sang a love ballad, it would not sound too different that this version. Oh, and if you want to know the kinds of jibs and jabs the B3 can add to a song, check out this song after the whole band kicks in.

Another feature of a Champlin-created song or album are the vocal arrangements. The Chicago Christmas CD is infused with multiple voices, layer upon layer, creating a vocal mélange that is greater than the whole. The same holds true here. More often than not, Champlin sings the lead and the harmony. It works although I have to admit it’s always been strange hearing a lead singer being backed up by himself. The opening vocal ensemble on “Never Let Go” is a perfect example of this type of vocal stacking. This song reminded me of the neat experiment Champlin did in the 1990s with Jason Scheff and two singers from Toto. On the CD, “California Dreamin’,” the four vocalist cover famous rock songs a capella with a lead singer and the backup singers (each man takes a turn at lead) doing all the instrumental parts. How cool is it to hear “Hotel California,” complete with the ending guitar solos, all done with voices. It’s a little like Take 6 if you need a different avenue into your memory.

When it came time to ask Champlin to join Chicago in 1981, it seemed like a no-brainer because both Chicago and The Sons of Champlin had horns. All of Champlin’s CDs have at least one song that puts the horns up front and in your face. This time out, it’s the Fat City Horns from Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns. And when they say fat, they really mean it. “Stone Cold Hollywood” is that song on this album. Six horns, bleeting and blowing, complete with a nasty bari sax, man, it’s like a tune from the dirty side of town. Did I mention the bari sax? Man, throw on some headphones and just listen for it. It’ll make you grin like you just ate all the cranberry sauce before the Thanksgiving dinner was supposed to start. You know it’s wrong but, damn, it’s so good.

Bill Champlin emerged from the San Francisco scene in the late 1960s. In his outlook on life, making music, and the music biz, he’s never really left that time. You go on over to his webpage and the forum there—yes, he interacts with fans—and you can get a taste of what I’m talking about. He doesn’t say “thing,” he says “thang.” He doesn’t say “love,” he says “Luv,” drawing it out, nodding and winking, where you know how he’s meaning it. And he doesn’t mince words. There’s a great interview up on YouTube (here’s the link from my page) from earlier this year where Champlin tells you what he thinks and doesn’t back down from it. A nice quality from a member of a business that too often tries to please the suits and the audience with pablum and platitudes.

And it is this truthfulness—in the music, the lyrics, the spirit—of this CD that makes the thirteen-year gestation seem short. “No Place Left to Fall” is a consummate album of songs by an exceptional musician, lyricist, and singer. Bill Champlin may not be a household name but you get the sense that he doesn’t care about that stuff one way or another. Certainly he wishes mid-level artists who never get the recognition they deserve—while the talent-less phonies rake in the dough—and lends his name around. And other musicians know his reputation and bring him in for an assist. All that is well and good and part of what it takes to be a professional musician. But you can tell that it’s the Music that drives him. And it is through his music that he is known…even if you don’t know it.

Later update: I posted the link to this review on Bill Champlin's forum. The man himself read my review and wrote the following back on October 7:

Scott, I read your review and I thank you for the kind words. Not a lot of people get where my stuff's comin' from and you seemed to get it. People like it but not many "Get It". Thanks again, bill c.