Clete
Purcel is of course a literary landmark, in that he reflects the hero’s
weaknesses as well as his strengths. As
a trope, the Lone Ranger has Tonto, and the sidekick is a mechanism – sometimes
comic relief, sometimes standing in for the reader, sometimes an atavistic
force. To take one example, I like Elvis
Cole, but I adore Joe Pike. Joe does stuff Elvis couldn’t bring himself
to. I like to cite the exchange in one
of Robert Parker’s novels. Spenser tells
Hawk, the difference between us is that I’ve got rules. Hawk lets a beat go by, and says, I got rules, I just got fewer than you
do. (Fewer, maybe, but Hawk’s rules are inflexible.) Clete Purcel, in James Lee Burke’s Dave
Robicheaux books, is more than a convention, and a lot less comforting.
“Clete’s
most dangerous adversary lived in his own breast.”(The
Glass Rainbow)
Dave
Robicheaux has many flaws; disloyalty isn’t one of them.The same may be said of Clete.Clete is often to be found pulling Dave’s
chestnuts out of the fire, even while Dave is doing his best to rescue Clete
from his own worst impulses.The dynamic
is like two drowning men trying to save each other, the struggle may pull them
both under.Dave, an alcoholic in
recovery, can be passive-aggressive, and can’t help himself, although he
recognizes his behavior as
damaged.Clete’s in recovery from a
lifetime of poor choices, and keeps making them, not hoping the results will turn
out differently, but wanting them to be the same.
The
word you might think we’re looking for, here, is enabling. One of the
curiosities of the Robicheaux series is that Dave, an honest man with a good
heart, can so consistently fail to protect himself from his own
vulnerabilities. But the deeper point is
that Dave’s relationship with Clete isn’t a quid
pro quo, there isn’t any one hand washing the other. The two men aren’t codependent
– which is therapeutic language – they’re in love.Their trust in one
another is unconditional.Facing
predators, it’s a primal, animal survival instinct.
This
is a meta sort of comment, following
on the above, about trusting your instincts.I’ve read most of the Dave Robicheaux books, and I noticed something consciously,
as a writer, this time around.James Lee Burke doesn’t get in his own way;
if fury, or emotion, threatens to overwhelm the narrative, he leans into it, he doesn’t hedge his bets, or
second-guess the demonic.He lets it
roll, and the effect is startling.It
doesn’t break through the wall, it’s still in character, you’re hearing Dave’s
voice, but it’s unfiltered, or uncalculated, it’s Dave in the raw.He appears to be in flames.
As it
happens, just as I suddenly became aware of this, in the second act of The Glass Rainbow, Burke proceeded to
jump the shark, or so it seemed.He
reels it in, but it was a little disconcerting.I was ready to follow wherever it led, and where it was leading was over
a cliff.
Didn’t
happen.The lesson I took from it from
is, yeah, when the demon tempts you, surrender.If you dare nothing, nothing will come of it.Burke, at his best, runs hot.Which can be
scary.Is he going to pull his own chestnuts out of the fire?And it’s even scarier when it’s you doing it.Strike a match.Light the fuse.
My current read is The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's seminal play about greed and revenge. The play is often criticized for its anti-Semitic tone and rightfully so. The characters' main beef with ruthless money lender Skylock is he's a Jew. And yet, Will seems to be giving Elizabethan England a well-deserved punch in the eye for it. After all, this is where the line, "Tickle us, do we not laugh; prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us, shall we not revenge?" (And I cannot not hear that in Christopher Plummer's voice.) It's Shakespeare's way of saying, "Well, if you treat me like a monster, don't be surprised if I become one."
But Shylock is by no means a hero. The prejudice against him fuels his rage, but at only five scenes in, I've only seen him in one. That's actually a brilliant piece of writing. (Well, it is Shakespeare. Even his duds are impressive. Except Edward III, and he was likely the script doctor on that one. "Why didn't I give this to Marlowe to fix. Joan of Kent? Zounds!") Shylock is such a presence that he shifts the center of gravity in every scene he's in. I'm just reading this, not watching Plummer or Patrick Stewart or Al Pacino play him, and he immediately grabs one's attention, a malevolence rivaling Shakespeare's Richard III in the play of the same name.
But we know Shakespeare for two types of plays: Histories and comedies. His comedies are hit or miss, and I admit, I don't really connect with those very much. They are probably best seen performed rather than read. The histories, more often than not, are what grab my attention. But Shakespeare wrote in a transitional period, moving from poems to prose, from the epic to the everyday. Had Shakespeare lived two centuries later, might he have adapted Tom Jones (current Audible listen), complete with all the bawdiness he held back on in the days of Elizabeth and King James I? (Yeah. The Bible guy. Who clearly never read it. That's a rant for a different forum.)
Henry V and Julius Caesar and Richard III, however, are epic figures, heroes and villains (and sometimes both) who operate on Olympian levels. But what of The Merchant of Venice? It's the titular merchant, Antonio, who takes out a loan for his friend, Bassanio, then defaults on it. The penalty is, legally, "a pound of flesh."
Wait a minute. You take out a loan and, instead of debtors prison or the lender taking all your stuff, as usually happens, he gets a literal piece of you? That sounds a lot like...
A loan shark. Now, I've known an actual loan shark, as in he worked for one of the Five Families back in the day. You hear stories of leg-breaking, but more often, an actual loan shark would prefer breaking things and intimidation. Your broken leg impedes your ability to earn the vig. However, Shylock is, to put it mildly, a bit of a jerk. There's animosity between Shylock and Antonio, and it goes beyond the prejudice Shakespeare saddles his characters with. Shylock hates Antonio's guts, and helping himself to a pound of those guts drives that home. Antonio knows this and takes the loan intending to pay it back and rub Shylock's nose in it. Antonio is not a nice guy, nor is he Shakespeare's standard hero. Like Shylock, he's ruthless.
So, does that mean The Merchant of Venice is noir?
In some ways. Typically, in noir, the protagonist is screwed and comes either to a bad end or winds up diminished. (If Shylock had his way, Antonio would be diminished by a pound.) But the First Folio listed Merchant as a comedy. Why? Because the fair Portia and her friend Nerissa pose as lawyers and con Shylock in a move worthy of Tom Cruise in the movie version of The Firm. (I still like that better than what Grisham wrote, if only for the look on Paul Sorvino's face when he realizes the kid he came to whack just outmaneuvered his own law firm.) So the comedy aspect, in terms of the classical definition of a comedy, fits.
But this is really, really dark. Antonio's scheme to put one over on Shylock backfires. We already know Shylock is a vengeful, angry man. So while his methods are abhorrent, you have to recall the old Chris Rock line, "I'm not saying I approve, but I understand!" Kind of like watching a Hannibal Lector movie and wonder when he'll just eat some annoying character. (They were legion in Hannibal.)
But Antonio is the arrogant rich man. Shylock is the ruthless money lender. The mob even named the slang for loan shark after him. Head-to-head, it's almost an episode of Penguin or Tulsa King.
I got
a call from the laundromat where I drop off my stuff for wash, dry, and fold,
and they’d been broken into. Whoever it
was had rifled the laundry bags, and mine was light a couple of pounds. I was a little nonplussed. Maybe a junkie, or maybe just kids, random
mischief. Maybe they thought they’d get
lucky, and find rolls of quarters, who knows?
But suppose somebody so desperate, they were looking through people’s
dirty clothes hoping to find a pair of jeans that fit, or a sweatshirt. It’s like stealing from the Goodwill drop
box, or diving the dumpster behind a supermarket for bruised fruit. There are people in this country who can’t
imagine such a thing, just as there are people living hand-to-mouth, who can’t
imagine it any other way.
The
next thing that crossed my radar was in The
New Yorker archive, a profile of David Simon while he was shooting the last
season of The Wire.He remarks at one point that they’d taken the
ideas of Greek tragedy, of fated, doomed people, and used them in the context
of a contemporary urban environment.“Instead of these Olympian gods,” he says, “indifferent, venal, selfish,
hurling lightning bolts, … postmodern institutions are the indifferent gods.” The
social contract, in other words, has failed.
What
this reminds me of is the postwar world of the 1940’s, noir and its discontents.The
subtext of noir has always been the
collapse of moral order, and the foreground has always been a rat in a
maze.The indifferent gods are the forces
of brute capital, in one reading, or simply the exercise of power.The noir
hero is reduced to bare essentials, and pitted against Fate.He maneuvers across a hostile landscape, and
internalizes the darkness.
Another
point, here, is that noir is often
about people on the margins.But this
goes back to the 20’s and 30’s.Warners,
for example, was more class-conscious – or more socially self-conscious – than, say, Fox.It’s the difference between Ida Lupino and
Greer Garson (and meaning no disrespect to Greer Garson, either), and there’s
an enormous contrast in social content between a movie like My Man Godfrey and Wild Boys of the Road.Jack
Warner got wise to Hitler early on, too, and wasn’t shy about speaking his
mind, although it cost the studio money: Germany was a big market, and the
price of doing business there was to keep your voice down.Warners had always been big in gangster
pictures, too, and there’s a certain subversive glamor there.I think, though, that it took the war, and
the exhaustion that followed, with the Red Scare, to create the necessary
conditions.
It isn’t
simply cynicism; that’s a misreading.It’s weariness, and mistrust, and the deeper paranoia that the Cold War
brought.Look, for instance, at Shack Out on 101, or Pickup on South Street, or the almost
definitive Kiss Me, Deadly.At the end, when Gaby Rodgers opens the case,
and the white-hot Furies spill out, what is it that’s lured her to this
Doom?The moth to the flame, it would
seem.
Are we
seeing something similar, in this uncertain and mistrustful present?Is the Zombie Apocalypse a metaphor for the
dispossessed, or should it be taken literally?We internalize the darkness, and we seem to have fallen into a place
that’s dangerously familiar.The noir world is narrow.It’s persecuted and conspiratorial.Nothing is what it seems.Authority is suspect.The only constant is treachery, each of us isolated
in our fear.
We’re
trapped in generic conventions, and we know the story ends badly.We’ve seen it before.
Last week, Rob Lopresti posed an intriguing question on the Short Mystery Fiction Society thread. He wanted the titles of peoples' favorite noir-ish short story with a female protagonist. Many people responded with stories I will check out if I haven't read them already, but it made me think long and hard before I answered. Many of my favorite novelists are women, and I read so many short stories that it's insane to keep track.
Rob's question made me look at my own work, too, because I prefer strong female characters. According to my spreadsheets, over half of my short stories feature women who do bad things (often very well), even if it's in the name of "justice." Nearly a third of them are the protagonist of their particular tale, but only four are narrators. There's some overlap, of course. I made an arbitrary decision that unless the woman was the 1st-person narrator or the story used detached-3rd person through her, she wasn't technically the protagonist.
Six of my sixteen novels involve women who resort to violence, sometimes for the home team, but sometimes for personal gain. I suspect that male and female writers might have different percentages on that issue, and mine lean more toward women than some other male writers would. On the other hand, several of my favorite male crime writers introduce women who kick serious ass, too.
I've been around strong women my entire life. My grandmother still drove at age 86, and my mother kept control of her finances until a stroke incapacitate her at age 83. My sister and I didn't know she was a millionaire until I gained power of attorney only months before she passed away. My sister was the valedictorian (and ace softball pitcher) at her private school--where she won the state Latin prize twice--and graduated from Harvard law School. The family joke when she's out of earshot is that she got the brains and I got the looks.
Those are the role models I grew up with, not to mention several of my teachers.
When I drifted into theater, I met many strong and intteligent actresses (my wife, of course), one of whom I met through her brother, who was a member of Mensa. I directed twenty productions in several theaters, all with a female stage manager and several with a female producer. If you don't do community theater, you should know that the stage manager is the absolute boss in the building while a show is in production, and that the producer oversees finances and all personnel working on a show, although I hand-picked my tech crew.
My favorite lighting designer, lights technician (also a great actress), and sound technician were women. So was our theater photographer for several years. That lights designer started as one of my favorite stage managers and became an excellent director, too. And wrote a couple of short plays.
Women tend to be smarter than me--the men on the blog are an exception, of course--possibly because the last several centuries have forced them to find creative and flexible ways to get around restrictive rules made by men (See me avoid getting political here). The could shop, take care of the house and kids, maybe even balance the household budget and pay the bills, and maybe haold a part-time job, but they couldn't vote. Directly.
These women certainly influenced my writing. I can't take a bimbo character serioulsy, and the helpless damsel makes me squirm. My characters like puppies, kittens, cooking (within reason) and sex, but several of them have concealed-carry permits.
Shoobie Dube, Rasheena Maldonado and Valerie Karpelinski are or were police officers at one time. Valerie stripped to earn her college tuition, and that helped her learn to read people, especially men. She and Rasheena are also bi-lingual. Severa of my favorite characters skate in roller derby under names like Annebelle Lector, Grace Anatomy, Ginger Slap, Denver Mint Julep, Raisin Cain, or Desolation Rose.
Few of my short stories really qualify as "noir," and two that feature viewpoint female protagonists are still awaiting publication, one not for about another year. But my first seven published short stories all feature a woman who commits a crime. Sometimes, it's not murder...exactly.
Virus? What virus? It’s a bit like that here in New Zealand.
We had a couple of lock downs and our share of mandatory mask wearing, but we’ve
gone several months now without any further trouble.
The point is: public
gatherings here (sans masks and distancing) are fine, and lately there’s been a
bunch of them in libraries around the country, where panels of mystery authors
have talked about their books and the craft of writing in front of an audience.
I moderated one recently at the Takapuna Library on Auckland's North Shore.
The Mystery in the Library events began
at the Takapuna library in back in 2015. Conceived by Craig Sisterson (more on
him in a moment). The format is your basic author panel: a handful of authors, and a moderator to guide a low-key, coffee shop type of conversation about the craft
of crime and mystery writing, with an audience eavesdropping on the chat. Book
signing afterward. Refreshments (wine, juice, snacks) provided.
Each year
since 2015, more and more libraries around the country have hosted MITL
evenings, with this year (April, May, June) seeing more than a dozen scheduled.
So many, in fact, that each event has now gotten its own subtitle. Ours was BLOOD BY THE BEACH. Because the Takapuna library is right next to Takapuna Beach.
At our event, we chatted about what makes a mystery compelling, tools of
the trade, do you plot or pants, advice for aspiring writers, and so on (with digressions into writing as meditation and how do you 'write what you
know' when the know is murder?). I was blessed with four authors who were
happy and eager to chat, and a captive audience of about 100 who had lots of
questions. We all had a thoroughly pleasant evening. I've said it before,
I'll say it again: Mystery writers (and readers) are the nicest of people.
(L-R) Me, Ben Sanders, Patricia Snelling, Madeleine Eskedahl, SL Beaumont
The authors on the panel, in alphabetical order:
SL Beaumont is the bestselling author
of eight books, all of which are set in her native England. Shadow of a Doubt won
the 2020 Indie Reader Discovery Award for Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, and her
latest, Death Count, has been long listed for the Ngaio Marsh Award
for Best Novel.
Madeleine Eskedahl's recently released
debut novel, Blood on Vines, is already a bestseller and is set in the wine
growing region of Matakana (about 30 minutes north of Auckland).
Ben Sanders is the bestselling author
of eight books (three have been short listed for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel). His first three were set in Auckland and the following five in the
US; American Blood was optioned by Warner Bros. His latest book is The Devils You Know.
A decade ago (time flies), I wrote an
article for Criminal Briefabout New Zealand's crime/mystery writing scene, and I had to really scratch around to find any local authors to mention. Now there
are lots. The scene is growing. We don't have an MWA type of organization here yet,
but the roots for one are in place. The Auckland Crime Writers group (a private
group on Facebook) has 60+ active members. We hang out, real time, in coffee
shops or on Zoom meetings. The local scene is growing and lively; we even have
our own local label for it: Yeah, Noir (a play on the Kiwi slang expression, "yeah, nah").
About Craig Sisterson. Craig is New Zealand mystery writing’s Wizard of OZ; he’s the man behind the curtain. He’s the leading reviewer, blogger, interviewer, and authority in the field. His book, Southern Cross Crime, is the definitive guidebook to NZ and Australian crime fiction. As I mentioned, Craig set up the very first MITL (and every following years' events, including all of this year's). Craig was also the principal instigator and administrator of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, which is New Zealand's highest (and only) award for mystery writing (sadly, gripe, no category for short stories).
I won't leave it another ten years before I write about New Zealand crime writers again. Promise.
I've been incorporating a few songs by Warren Zevon into my open-mic repertoire. I've played "Mr. Bad Example" and a couple of others off and on for several years, but lately I've been polishing "My Ride's Here." It's the title track from the CD Zevon released soon after he knew he had terminal lung cancer. He always had gallows humor.
If he hadn't been a musician (Mostly piano, but also guitar and harmonica), he might have become a hardboiled crime writer. He co-wrote a song with novelist Thomas McGuane and collaborated on a song and novel with Carl Hiaasen, both called Basket Case ("My baby is a basket case/A bi-polar mama in leather and lace"). He dedicated an early album to Ken Millar, AKA "Ross Macdonald," and was good friends with Hunter S Thompson, whose Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas book cover may have inspired one of his own covers.
Zevon was born in January 1947, two months before me, and died in September 2003, three months after I left teaching and the same month I returned to writing after a 20-year hiatus. His father was once a bookie for gangster Mickey Cohen and had been a prizefighter before moving from Chicago, where Warren was born.
In his nearly 40-year career, Zevon met Igor Stravinsky and performed, wrote, or drank with half the rock and roll hall of fame, including the Everly Brothers, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Lindsay Buckingham, Emmylou Harris, and members of R.E.M. Many of them performed on his last CD, The Wind, released less than two weeks before he died. Two songs on that CD posthumously won his only Grammie awards. The CD also features a cover version of Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" that will give you chills.
Because Zevon's humor was often dark and his stories and imagery jarring or downright disturbing, few of his songs got airplay except "Werewolves of London," but he also wrote songs for the Turtles in the 60s, and Linda Ronstadt covered "Hasten Down the Wind" and "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me" in the 70s.
"Carmelita," a ballad about a junkie, offers the chorus "I'm all strung out on heroin on the outskirts of town." Not quite what they were looking for in Peoria. "Excitable Boy" tells of a young man who murders the girl he takes to the junior prom. Zevon called the victim "Little Susie," a wink at the girl who fell asleep at the movies in the Everly Brothers song. "Werewolves of London" offers this gem of wordplay: "Little old lady got mutilated late last night/Werewolves of London again."
OK, not everyone's bucket of blood...
He played piano behind the Everly Brothers, then worked with each of them individually after their break-up. He co-wrote several songs with Phil (Who may have given him the idea for "Werewolves"). He also filled in for Paul Shaffer as music director for David Letterman, one of his lifelong friends. Letterman had him as his only guest for a one-hour segment after he announced that he was dying.
Zevon told great noir stories, including "Excitable Boy." "Lawyers, Guns and Money" is about a rich screw-up trying to buy his way out of trouble, and one of his most bizarre songs (Which every Zevon fan knows by heart) is "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner." It tells of a mercenary who is killed by another mercenary, and his headless ghost comes back to get revenge. "Boom Boom Mancini" is an homage to the boxer, probably inspired by his own father's early boxing career. "Mr. Bad Example" chronicles the life of a perpetual con man and gives an autobiographical nod to his father's carpet store in Arizona. "I got a part-time job in my father's carpet store/laying tackless stripping and housewives by the score." Zevon's son Jordan hypothesizes that the old building may have been where Dad got the asbestos exposure that caused his cancer years later. Taken as a whole, the song feels like a Donald Westlake caper set to music.
He could be tender and sentimental, too. "Keep Me in Your Heart," one of his posthumous Grammy winners, tells his lover, "If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less/ ...You know I'm tied to you like the buttons on you blouse/ ...Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams/Touch me as I fall into view..."
He also wrote one of the great earworms. "Hit Sombody (The Hockey Song)" introduces us to Buddy, who "wasn't that good with a puck."
"Buddy's real talent was beating people up/His heart wasn't in it, but the crowd ate it up.../ A scout from the Flames came down from Saskatoon/ Said, "There's always room on our team for a goon."
The ending is both funny and poignant. Find it on Youtube and accept that it will stick in your head for the rest of the day. I used the title for one of my Roller Derby novels because it captures the raunchy humor of the self-described Bitches on Wheels. If he'd lived longer, Zevon might have written a song about them, too.
My Ride's Here has a cover photo of Zevon peering from the window of a hearse. The title track mentions Jesus, Milton, Shelly, Keats, Lord Byron, and John Wayne (Who also died of lung cancer) and alludes to Elmore Leonard's twice-filmed 3:10 to Yuma.
Jordan assembled a songbook of his father's songs that I wish were three times as thick. It gathers most of the cult "hits," but omits a few I've used in my own writing. "Hit Somebody," for example. "Run Straight Down" became the title of my standalone novel about a shooting in a public high school (David Gilmour of Pink Floyd plays guitar). I'd love to find an accurate transcription of "The Hula Hula Boys" about a man with a philandering wife that could be a Raymond Chandler novel. "Ain't That Pretty At All" and "Looking For the Next Best Thing" could be novels or stories, too. And, again, funny...sort of.
I still want to create a story matching the wisdom Zevon shared with David Letterman on that TV segment when Letterman asked him if he'd learned more about life and death since his terminal diagnosis:
Penguin/Random
House has reissued John D. MacDonald’s twenty-one Travis McGee novels in
nicely-packaged trade paper, with tasteful cover art and a preface by Lee Child.
I might prefer some of the more lurid original jackets, not quite so restrained, but
I admire the enterprise. Some of
MacDonald’s books, Slam the Big Door,
or One Monday We Killed Them All, even
The Last One Left, have been in and
out of print, over the years; McGee has never fallen out of favor.
I don’t think it’s any secret that MacDonald was reluctant to do a series
character. It was Knox Burger, at
Fawcett Gold Medal, who convinced him. MacDonald
was getting along just fine, by all accounts, knocking out a couple or even
three novels a year, and then McGee moved the goalposts. It took half a dozen books, but Travis McGee
turned John D. MacDonald into a brand name.
This
is a phenomenon that I’m guessing is particular to the time. Gold Medal was a paperback original imprint,
like Ace, which put out SF titles in a double-novel format, two books
back-to-back. It was the Republic
Pictures of the publishing business.
Paperbacks had come in big during the war, cheap editions for GI’s. Pocket Books was an early entry, and postwar,
publishers realized they could expand the market to drugstores and newsstands,
railroad stations and airports and hotel lobbies, and avail themselves of the
impulse buyer. The books cost a quarter,
in the 1950’s, and in ‘64, The Deep Blue
Goodbye, MacDonald’s first McGee title, sold for forty cents. They were below the salt, mind you. The New
York Times Book Review didn’t deign to acknowledge paperback originals;
they were pulp, they were Poverty Row.
And they were mostly generic, hardboiled noir and science fiction, women in prison or youth led astray.
Readers
gobbled them up. Granted, our tastes
might not have been that discriminating.
I ran across The Deep Blue Goodbye
at a PX newsstand when I was in the military – dating myself – and I grabbed
every single book afterwards as soon as they came out.
The visceral appeal, for sure. The laid-back life, the long sunsets, ice
clicking against a tall glass, the careless, carefree women. It was an adolescent fantasy. There was something darker, and more
subversive. MacDonald was one of the
first guys, along with Frank Herbert in Dune,
to talk about the environment.
One of
the constants in the McGee books (and in MacDonald’s later stand-alones, A Flash of Green and Condominium) is the greed and waste of
accelerated development. No wonder that
Carl Hiassen counts MacDonald as an influence.
And
the deeper, yawning, reptilian darkness.
The sexism was backward and Neanderthal; the environmentalism was
forward-looking; the bad guys are
psychopaths. McGee, by his own
admission, is a throwback. If he
weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to handle the bottom-feeders and predators that
lurk, not on the periphery, but in plain sight.
Bad guys, in a McGee novel, aren’t ambiguous. They may be sly, or
slippery, or possessed of a certain charm.
Nor are they, necessarily, guys.
But there’s a clear line MacDonald draws: the
luckless, the gullible, the innocent, don’t deserve to be shorn simply because
they’re sheep. We protect the weakest, by
reason of their very weakness.
Reading
the books again, and not in order - the first one I picked up was The Scarlet Ruse. I’m struck by their
economy. There’s no wasted motion.
Dutch Leonard says you should leave out the
stuff the reader’s going to skip, and you
don’t care about, either. You can see Leonard
do it, and Hiassen, or Lee Child.
Stay
with the essentials, spend your energy on the parts that matter.
In other words, if it holds your interest, it’ll show. If you’re going through the
motions, you’ll bore yourself, and
the reader.
The set-up
for The Scarlet Ruse is relaxed but brisk. First,
the rare stamps. We’re perhaps reminded
of the Brasher Doubloon. “The only known
vertical pair of the famous error in blue… The top stamp has one pulled perf and a slight gum disturbance.”
Then, the switcheroo. Who had access to the safe deposit box? Next, the whys and wherefores of the
investor, who turns out to be mobbed up, a money launderer who’s skimming, and
the stolen stamps, in demand and fungible, represent his getaway money.
For a
hook, so far, so good. But this is just
the bottom crust, not the filling. It
isn’t the story MacDonald is interested in telling. The real
story, once the broad brushstrokes are laid in, is about trusting the wrong
people, and each relationship, McGee and Meyer, McGee and the damsel in
distress, McGee and the heavy, for that matter, is dependent on good faith or
bad.
The final trap, the ruse of the
title, is in effect a pigeon drop.
The
moral, as in every McGee story, is about ownership, and personal responsibility,
whether the results work to your advantage or not. Once you set events in motion, you have to
live with the consequences, and those consequences can be severe. McGee’s world isn’t Manichean, or absolute,
and black and white are often blurred, but the choices tend to narrow toward
the violent and final. You can argue
this is characteristic of the genre – when you run out of ideas, Hammett tells
us, have a guy come through the door with a gun - but here the violence isn’t lazy,
it’s exhausting and inevitable.
He was
very much of his time, let’s be honest.
MacDonald and McGee flourished during the Cold War, but unlike the
nihilism of Spillane and Mike Hammer, actual events don’t much impinge on
McGee’s world.
There’s a sidelong look
at the Markov assassination in The Green
Ripper, ricin being the instrument of choice, but generally, what’s going
on in the larger political atmosphere isn’t pertinent. What is,
is a sense of growing malaise.
McGee
seems lonelier as time passes, more
isolated (excepting Meyer). The Green Ripper, actually, finds him
completely out on a limb, with no support system whatsoever. Not that he isn’t the archetypal loner, in
many ways, but he’s also embedded in a personal ecology, the marina, the
houseboat, the culture of south Florida and the offshore islands.
This context is vital and specific. Taken without it, McGee is himself less
specific. So, although contemporary
events may not affect the characters directly, the place, the weather and the water, the color of the sky, the heat in
the air, the pull of the tides, provides a canvas. Not as backdrop, but as a constant, the
horizon line, the curve of the earth.
Do the
books age well, does McGee have legs?
I’m not the guy to ask. He’s a
sentimental favorite. There are things
that are awkward and squirmy – truth to tell, they were awkward and squirmy
back when – and there are things that make you pump your fist and go, Pow! John MacDonald is as rock-solid a writer as
they come. Is it pulp? Depends.
It’s vigorous, and brassy, and hot to the touch. You don’t get much better.
Two weeks ago, I discussed the singles that nourished my summer of 1966. 1967 was another good year for pop, but we didn't notice how things were changing until two or three years later.
In mystery terms, it was like moving from cozies to noir. We didn't see it at the time, but by 1969, FM radio gained more traction and played longer album cuts while AM singles began to lose their influence. The whole phenomenon was like clues hidden in a complex golden age mystery plot.
The top SELLING albums of 1967 were overwhelmingly pop. The Monkees' first four LPs topped Billboard's chart for 28 weeks during that year, and their first two albums ruled from New Year's Day into June. Herb Alpert and the TJ brass were up there, along with Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, and the soundtrack for The Sound of Music. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Andy Williams and Petula Clark all had big albums, too, and Peter, Paul & Mary's Album 1700 was required listening for all the folkies in my dorm.
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band rode the top of the charts from early July to October, and we didn't appreciate how it would change the landscape. Other bands were experimenting, too, both musically and chemically, and their work burrowed into our consciousness along with the Fab Four.
In January, the Doors released their first LP. It didn't sell until Elektra released a shorter single version of "Light My Fire" that got lots of AM airplay. It even got banned in Detroit during the July riot. This may have been the beginning of bands releasing a single and a different version of the same song with a long instrumental break on an album. The San Francisco bands, who began to make their presence known in '67, played long breaks for the dancers at the clubs, and it began to catch on.
That same January, Cream released their first LP, Fresh Cream.
They put out Disraeli Gears in December, and by then the "Clapton is God" buzz was almost as deafening as their Marshall stacks. They were British, but echoed the San Francisco trend to long instrumental breaks (Jack Bruce even said that started when they played the Fillmore West). When I saw them live in '68, they filled a 75-minute set with five songs.
Jefferson Airplane gave us Surrealistic Pillow in February, and it charted in March. Their first album was a competent collection of mostly covers before Grace Slick (Vocals) and Spencer Dryden (Formerly the drummer with the Peanut Butter Conspiracy) joined on this record, for which band members wrote all the songs. Those songs ranged from folk-rock to full-bore psychedelia (White Rabbit, 3/5 Mile in Ten Seconds) and it may have been the rest of the country's introduction to Haight Ashbury chic. Only weeks later, the Grateful Dead released their first album. It collected covers, too, but two of them featured extended jams like "Light My Fire." The Airplane LP had two hit singles, so it got AM attention. Not so the Dead.
Buffalo Springfield's first album came out in December '66, but Atlantic added their (only) hit single "For What It's Worth" and re-released the record in May, about the same time the band appeared on The Smothers Brothers TV show. FWIW was the band's big hit, but "Sit Down, I Think I Love You" made Billboard's top 20 for the now-forgotten Mojo Men, and several other songs deserve more respect. The Springfield was one of the great coulda-shoulds-woulda bands that didn't make it, but Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay and Jim Messina all went on to produce more fine work. Like the Airplane, the Springfield record was a combination or rock, country, folk, and ballads. Nobody was looking at a unified concept for an album...yet.
In June, the world turned upside-down. The Beatles unleashed Sergeant Pepper, and AM radio stations played every song because EMI didn't release a single. This may have been the beginning of album-oriented programming.
Only weeks later, Moby Grape appeared on the scene. Their album also has folkish ballads, countryish twang and petal-to-the-metal rock and roll. All five members sang, composed, and played like monsters. They recorded the entire album, including overdubs, in five days of studio time. Guitarist Skip Spence played drums on the first Airplane LP, but he was a guitarist at heart, and here he was in his element. The Grape is another great "might-have-been" band, but Columbia released five singles on the same day, cancelling each other out and offending the hippy following. Bad drugs and bad karma haunted the rest of the band's short career.
The Association gave us Insight Out in June, too. It had two legit singles, "Never My Love" and "Windy," but the song everyone remembers is "Requiem for the Masses," the choral anti-war song. I saw the band perform it at Yale Bowl a year later, all the stadium lights turned off as Terry Kirkman played the horn solo at the end. It gave me chills. This is the beginning of the end of albums with lots of singles.
To finish off the Summer of Love, Jimi Hendrix produced Are You Experienced? in September. Like the Beatles, Hendrix forced the engineers to dub, overdub, and re-overdub eight or twelve guitar lines onto four-channel boards. The recording industry had to make technical strides to accommodate the new music, and eight, twelve, and even sixteen-channel boards became common, the biggest advance since Les Paul perfected tape delay in the early 50s. Hendrix gave us a hybrid of blues, jazz, rock, and everything else combined with effects pedals and volume like the eruption of Krakatoa. This record did release a couple of singles in England, where it was recorded, but American stations played every song, especially late at night.
Speaking of Krakatoa, The Who released The Who Sell Out in December. It's a full-concept album (Their next release will be Tommy) with tongue-in-cheek commercials mixed among terrific songs. It's my favorite Who album, especially in the expanded CD. Townshend comes into his own as a lyricist and composer on this one, and it features "I Can See For Miles" with the all-out volume assault that's been the band's trademark forever...and the reason Townshend still suffers from tinnitus.
December gave us the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request, their most psychedelic work. It had a three-dimensional cover and no singles, and it proved Mick and Keith could do far-out, too. Then they went back to blues-rooted rock for their best work over the next several years.
December also saw Paul Butterfield reinvent himself. The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw has Elvin Bishop replacing the departed Michael Bloomfield on lead guitar, and it's Butterfield's first record with a horn section. He's learning to share harmonica solo duties with the saxes and trumpet, and it works. Nobody else I know owns this record, but it's one of many resons Butterfield is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Al Kooper was turning to horns at the same time with Blood Sweat & Tears, and Bloomfield left Butterfield to form his own horn band, The Electric Flag.
Sergeant Pepper is the only album here to top the charts. Several of the others barely dented the basement, but their influence was huge. Think of what will emerge in the next three years:
Led Zeppelin, Yes, Santana, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Chicago Transit Authority, Bitches Brew...
I’m happy to announce that the third volume in our Coast to Coast crime fiction series dropped last week. (See how cool I am: “dropped”.) I’m also happy to say, we’ve had some success with the first two volumes, Coast to Coast: Murder from Sea to Shining Sea and Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea. When the last volume came out I did a piece here on editing for it:click here. For this volume—Noir—I’m going to talk a little about noir, what we decided our definition of it is, and a little tease about each author’s story.
The authors in this volume are: Colleen Collins, Brendan DuBois, Alison Gaylin, Tom MacDonald, Andrew McAleer, Michael Mallory, Paul D. Marks, Dennis Palumbo, Stephen D. Rogers, John Shepphird, Jaden Terrell, Dave Zeltserman.
Coast to Coast: Noir from Sea to Shining Sea is the third in our series of Coast to Coast crime anthologies from Down and Out Books. The first two Coast to Coast collections garnered fifteen nominations and/or awards between them. Hopefully we’ll keep our record going with volume three. We have twelve terrific writers and stories.
The way that all the books have been laid out so far is that the stories start on the West Coast and each succeeding story moves a little farther east until we hit the East Coast. The thinking on this, at least in my mind, is to move left to right because that’s how we read on a page and it just seems comfortable.
From the intro to the book and pretty much what we suggested to the authors:
“What we asked for was noir in the classic tradition of David Goodis and Jim Thompson or movies like Double Indemnity. Our definition of noir is basically somebody tripping over their own faults: somebody who has an Achilles heel, some kind of greed, or want, or desire that leads them down a dark path. But within that the authors could be as down and dirty as they wanted. Time frame wasn’t an issue either. The stories could be set anywhere in time from now till back when.
We also don’t think noir has to be the dark of a rainy night or ominous shadows from Venetian blinds. There doesn’t even have to be a femme fatale. But one definite thing about noir: No one is safe. There’s no place to hide in this collection of twelve stories from the dark side of the American Dream. Noir can happen anywhere to anyone who’s just a little greedy, a little too proud, or a little naive. It can happen to a college student working at a steel mill or the chef-owner of an upscale Greek restaurant. Even the most pure of heart can succumb: a correctional officer at a maximum security prison or a father seeking justice. And it’s not always about money, sometimes it’s about power, fame, revenge, payback.”
So here’s a little tease for each story, in author alphabetical order:
Look your Last by Colleen Collins
Location: Denver, Colorado
Story: A young woman follows in the footsteps of her P.I. father who was murdered. She takes on a case that has ties to her father’s murder.
Noir themes: private eye, revenge, fate, the past haunts the present.
The Dark Side of the River by Brendan DuBois
Location: rural Massachusetts
Story: An ex-con trying to get on the right track again is persuaded by his brother to help him in a drug scheme.
Noir themes: femme fatale, ex-con trying to reform, family and loved ones can drag you down.
Where I Belong by Alison Gaylin
Location: Hudson Valley, New York
Story: A teenager leaves home after a video of him beating up his stepfather makes him an internet sensation.
Noir themes: outsider, loner, greed, some people are born bad.
Nashua River Floater by Tom MacDonald
Location: Nashua, New Hampshire
Story: A detective is hired under the table by a state trooper to investigate a homicide of a criminal who was recently released from prison. He uncovers some secrets from the past.
Noir themes: private eye, secrets from the past, alcoholism.
On an Eyeball by Andrew McAleer
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Story: A woman C.O. at a high security prison endures sexual harassment in her job. She isn’t happy about it…
Noir themes: femme fatale, sex, revenge is best served cold.
The Dark Underside of Eden by Michael Mallory
Location: Springfield, Missouri
Story: A reporter for a local radio station looks into the apparent suicide of a young intern at the station who he was having an affair with.
Noir themes: sex, power, corruption, the innocent are sacrificed.
Nowhere Man by Paul D. Marks
Location: Santa Monica/Venice Beach, California
In 1965, a guy working at the DMV sells information on the side and causes a young woman’s murder. It affects him more than he thought it would…
Noir themes: greed, the innocent are sacrificed, you can't escape fate.
Steel City Blues by Dennis Palumbo
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Story: A young college student works in the local steel plant and finds himself embroiled in a steamy affair with the foreman’s wife. But nothing is quite as it seems.
Noir themes: sex, seduction, greed, femme fatale.
Detour to Dolmades by Stephen D. Rogers
Location: Providence, Rhode Island
Story: The chef-owner of a high-class Greek restaurant is the master of her domain, until she lets her defenses down.
Noir themes: homme fatale, gangsters, pride can bring you down.
Pandora’s Box by John Shepphird
Location: Los Alamos, New Mexico
A young college student is seduced into joining a group of grifters in a plot involving the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Grateful Dead rock concert.
Noir themes: sex, drugs, loss of innocence, a con man luring a young woman into crime.
Sins of the Father by Jaden Terrell
Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Story: A former Night Stalker special forces helicopter pilot comes to his daughter’s rescue…
Noir themes: mistakes made in the past, regrets, revenge, redemption.
The Long Road by Dave Zelsterman
Location: small town, Kansas
Story: A husband can’t remember what happened before he was in a car accident. His wife discourages him from thinking about it, but he won’t leave it alone.
Noir themes: lies, deception, you can never escape your own past.
We also did a Zoom panel with 9 of the 12 authors you might want to check out:
So there you have it. This collection shows that noir can be many different things in many different settings. And, much as I like classic noir films and books, the stories don’t have to have unceasing rain, Venetian blind shadows or flashing neon signs. But I think there is a theme to them and that theme shows up in each of these varied stories.
“On one level it’s a mystery where Bobby Saxon, with secrets he wants no one to find out, works to solve a murder and clear his name under extraordinary racially tinged circumstances. With a lot of twists and turns, this is an excellent mystery. It takes place in World War II-era Los Angeles, and the author does a brilliant job that brings the long-gone era alive with memorable characters, scents, descriptions, and most of all, jazz. Highly recommended."
I’m tired of downer books. I don’t want to be depressed after reading for
three hours. Bear with me: I’ll explain
further.
The problem is, most of the downer
elements of grim books involve women who are victims. Either victims of crime,
or victims of a patriarchal society.
Scandinavian Noir is full of the first.
In fact, most noir novels include a female who is murdered and often
hideously mutilated. That’s so much fun
for women to read.
So here goes:
I don’t want to read any more books about
women who are abused or downtrodden. I
know there are several good books out there right now featuring such
women. Some are historical. Some are current day. It’s not that they aren’t good. It’s just that I don’t want to read any more
of them. I’ve read enough.
Imagine, men, if most of the books you had read involved men
who had been victimized, or relegated to second class status by another
gender. One or a few might be interesting
to read. But a steady diet of
these? Would you not find it
depressing? Not to mention,
discouraging?
I don’t want to read any more
books about neurotic women, or women who can’t get it together.
I dread more
‘unreliable narrators.’ Salient point: did
you notice that most (okay, every single one I can think of) unreliable
narrators on the bestseller lists recently are women? Does that say something to you about how
society views women? It does to me. No more ‘girl’ books.
I don’t want to read
any more books this year with female protagonists that are written by men. Yes, that means some of the bestselling crime
books out there. They may be very well
written. But these rarely sound like
women’s stories to me. They aren’t
written with the same lens.
What I want: books
with intelligent female protagonists written by women. I want more women’s stories. Books that I can be proud to hand on to my
daughters, and say, see what is possible?
She isn’t a victim! She’s someone
like you.
Trouble is, I can’t FIND many books like that. The bestseller lists today are filled with
protagonists who are unstable, neurotic women.
Let me be clear: a lot of people
enjoy these books. They may be very well
written. They wouldn’t be on bestseller
lists, otherwise.
But I’m tired of them.
I want a ripping good story with a female protagonist, written by a
woman. I want a strong, admirable
protagonist I can relate to and care about.
Hell, I want to *be* the protagonist for a few hours.
And not come away feeling downtrodden.
Bad Girl writes loopy comedies to blow away the blues. And she guarantees that the women protagonist and secondaries in her books kick butt.
THE GODDAUGHTER DOES VEGAS - latest in the "Hilarious" (EQMM) mob goddaughter series - no blues allowed! On Amazon
Everybody has too many Christmas parties and get-togethers in December, so the Connecticut MWA members threw a procrastinator's bash on January 11 in Middletown. Middletown is, of course, in the middle of the State, home of Wesleyan University and several fine restaurants, so we gathered at Esca, three blocks from the college and on a main intersection.
Chris Knopf addresses the motley crew. He mostly obscures Mark Dressler.
Bill Curatolo and Mike Beil are at the upper right.
Chris Knopf and Jill Fletcher, who organized the event, suggested that in addition to the usual gift grab bag, drinks and meals and catching up on everyone's accomplishments for the year, people write a 200-word story on the theme of Santa Noir to share with their accomplices. Alas, loud hungry patrons mobbed the eatery on a Saturday evening, so we abandoned the readings. Some of our recent predictions on this blog have made the upcoming year look a little bleak, and I agree, so the stories seemed like a definite counterbalance.
Here are four of them.
Santa Claus and Me by Mark L. Dressler
Jill posted this graphic, which inspired Mark's tale
I stared at that red Santa Claus outfit for several minutes. The lifeless man inside sent an eerie feeling through me matching the bitter night chill. I knew I'd never see that costume again.
Year after year, it was a never-ending journey, make-believe to many, but I knew differently. This was the night it would finally end. No more toys, no more nagging kids, no more workshops with elves, no more agonizing trips to the ends of each continent...and no more reindeer slaves.
I took another glance at that red uniform before walking away. I had no idea who that homeless man inside it was, but his clothes fit me perfectly. It was time for me to find a new home because I couldn't go back to the North Pole. I'd cleanse myself of this long white beard in the morning and become a free man. My name would no longer be Kris Kringle.
(Mark Dressler has published two novels featuring Hartford cop Dan Shields.)
At Burke's Tavern in Woodside, Queens, December 24, 1969 by William O'Neill Curatolo
Recently discharged marine Luis Martinez, high bar champion of the 43rd Street playground, sits alone on the broad windowsill across from the end of the bar nursing his fourth beer. He looks in need of cheering up. It's possible, no, it's certain, that the only advantage of having left his right leg back in Vietnam is that he now never has to pay for a drink, ever, in any of the watering holes up and down the length of Greenpoint Avenue.
Burly cop Georgie Corrigan bursts through the barroom door, dressed as Santa Claus. "Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas!" Santa Georgie moves along the bar clapping people hard on the back, and turns over to a couple of friends the bags of pot he took from a kid on his beat in Brooklyn a few hours ago. As he makes his way along the bar, he notices his old friend Luis, glassy eyed, staring off into space. Georgie sits down next to him and uses a burly arm to clamp him in a headlock. "Semper Fi, Jarhead!" and then, "Get up off your ass and onto those crutches. We're going outside to smoke a joint. Santa wants to see you smile."
(Bill Curatolo has published two novels.)
Santa By a Nose by Michael D. Beil
Christmas Eve at the Subway Inn, a dive bar that's a dead possum's throw from Bloomingdale's. Beside me is a bag with Isotoner gloves and a faux-cashmere scarf for the old lady. Three stools down is a schmoe in a Santa suit. The line of dead soldiers on the bar tells me the poor bastard is trying to forget how many brats had pissed their pants on his lap. For about a second, I consider sending a drink his way. But when he lifts his head, I realize he's the SOB I've been chasing for a week about a B&E in a bike shop on Second Avenue. No doubt about it. Eight million people in New York, but there's only one nose like that one. Fill it full of nickels and he could buy everybody in the place a drink.
I'm reaching into my coat pocket for my shield when a blast of frigid air blows in a tired dame in a coat that probably looked good during the Clinton administration, with three kiddies in tow.
"Daddy!"
I throw a twenty on the bar and nod to the bartender on the way out.
(Michael Beil was an Edgar finalist for Best Children's Novel for the first of five books in the Red Blazer Girls series.)
I Saw Mommy Killing Santa Claus by Steve Liskow
Detective Angel Noelle looked at the body, a fat man with a white beard and a red suit, underneath the mistletoe. Wrapped presents, grungy with fingerprint powder, lay under the tree.
"Your first, Noelle?" That was Detective Shepherd.
"Violent night," Angel said. "Got an ID yet?"
"We're waiting on fingerprints, but we've got a suspect and a witness."
Noelle turned to the woman in the green robe, the slit revealing black fishnets--previously hung by the chimney with care--and four-inch stilettos.
"I'm a dancer," she said. "All my son wanted for Christmas was his two front teeth..."
The small boy peeking from the stairs nodded.
"But instead, he brought..." The prancing vixen buried her face in her hands. "He deserved it..."
Noelle turned to the tech filling out the evidence label. "What was the weapon?"
"Well, right now it looks like a fruitcake."
"Fruitcake?"
"Yeah, been re-gifted so many times it's hard as a Jersey barrier. The label on the can says, 'Do not sell after 2004.'"
Noelle looked at the body, deep in dreamless sleep.
"The contusions fit?" The open fire crackled in the fireplace.
"Yeah. Really roasted his chestnuts."
Outside, the black and whites rolled by.
(Steve Liskow practices piano about fifteen minutes a week.)
