Secret Dead Blog Recommends: Following the Detectives

Place is important to me, as a writer and a reader. As much as I love Ed McBain's books, I've always had a problem with the 87th Precinct series, because I know that "Isola" is just an inverted Manhattan, and I end up trying to do the math in my head. (Wait... is this supposed to be Greenwich Village? Ah, damnit...) See, I want pieces of the real Manhattan in my crime novels, just like I want pieces of real L.A., real New York City, and real San Francisco in my film noir. There's nothing like seeing a place through the eyes of its crime writers and screenwriters.

Which is why Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction (New Holland Publishers), edited by Maxim Jakubowski, is such a pure delight. Jakubowski has gathered a crack team of contributors (Sarah Weinman, Barry Forshaw, Declan Burke, Martin Edwards, J. Kingston Pierce, and Philly's own Peter Rozovsky, among others) to examine 21 locales through the prism of crime fiction. You've got Ian Rankin's Edinburgh; Lawrence Block's New York City; John Harvey's Nottingham; George Pelecanos's D.C., Dashiell Hammett's San Francisco, Arthur Conan Doyle's London... as well as maps, sidebars, and photos galore. Hell, I feel like I've been to Nottingham, after Harvey's candid and revealing essay.

Sure, you could quibble about what you wish might have been included -- personally, I was hoping for Laura Lippman's Baltimore and David Goodis's Philadelphia. But a.) you've gotta draw the line somewhere, and b.) you've gotta save something for the sequel.

And here's hoping there will be a sequel, because I scarfed this baby down in one night.

This is a UK book; I found my copy via Book Depository. But you can also your local indie bookstore to order a copy for you.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: Assassination and Senseless

Assassination of a High School President, Brett Simon's dark, weird and funny debut, is out on DVD this week. You all need to watch it immediately.

Sure, I'm a bit biased, since Brett and I have adapted my novel Severance Package, and someday soon (hopefully) Brett will be directing the thing. But Assassination is the reason I teamed up with Brett in the first place. I was sent a top-secret screener about a year and a half ago, and I knew right away Brett was a sick fuck, and I needed to team up with him as soon as possible. Assassination is about a high school journalist named Bobby Funke (pronounced "funky") who's dead set on breaking an S.A.T. scandal, only to be blindsided, betrayed, and -- in that great James Ellroy tradition -- tied, dyed and swept to the side. Like all great noirs, there's a femme fatale (Mischa Barton). There's a hard-ass, possibly psychotic authority figure (Bruce Willis). There's sex. Violence. Plenty of cursing. In other words, everything that made high school so memorable.

And in a weird bit of synchronicity, Senseless, the debut of director Simon Hynd, was released on the very same day. Hynd is the director who is adapting my novel The Wheelman, along with Allan "Sunshine" Guthrie. I watched a top-secret screener of Senseless... well, also about a year and a half ago (hey, what can I say, a year and a half ago I was privvy to all kinds of cool shit) and it made me squirm like you wouldn't believe. This is a good thing. Movies almost never make me squirm.

Mr. Hynd is a lovely man. I've dined with him. I've gotten drunk with him. I've met his lovely wife. And yet, I can say, without hestiation, that he is a sick, sick fuck. I mean, look at the cover. Look at the eyeball on the spoon. Though, to be fair, some of the blame rests with novelist Stona Fitch, who wrote the original novel, which is just as sick as the movie. Mr. Fitch is also a warm, lovely gentleman, so much so that he loaned my wife his coat on a cold night as we were headed off in search of another bar on a cold night in Manhattan. But still: he is a sick fuck. Just like Mr. Hynd. And that Guthrie guy... well, it goes without saying that he's a sick fuck, too.

Definitely put these two in your Blockbuster queue, or your Netflix thingy, or better yet, buy copies to own, especially if you're curious about the minds who will someday be putting The Wheelman and Severance Package to film.

Sick, sick fucks.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: Hickey & Boggs

A few years ago I became a huge fan of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, thanks to Terrill Lankford and Michael Connelly. Huge to the point of rewatching it two, three times a year, because I see something new each time. And just a few weeks ago, I was turned on to Night Moves, the Gene Hackman/Arthur Penn P.I. classic, thanks to both Ed Pettit and Lee Goldberg. Now I've found the private eye movie that completes the trilogy (in my own head, anyway): Hickey & Boggs, starring (and directed by) Robert Culp, and written by the legendary Walter Hill.

All three films are essentially about the same thing: the death of the private eye as we know it. Altman called his version of Chandler's hero "Rip Van Marlowe," implying that he took a very big sleep somewhere in the 1940s and woke up in the hazy, lazy crazy days of the early 1970s. In Night Moves, Gene Hackman's Harry Moseby is a little more in step with modern times, but not much. He's hopelessly out of his depth, both metaphorically and literally, within the first 15 minutes of the movie, and he sinks deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

The same goes with Frank Boggs (Culp) and Al Hickey (Bill Cosby, in one of his few... maybe only?... non-comedic roles). They're two private eyes so down on their luck, they have to decide between paying the bill for their answering service vs. the bill for their actual phone. And soon, they're embroiled in a case involving a virtual United Nations of bad guys: slick white Organization torpedoes, Latino bank robbers, and a militant black power group. They're hopelessly outnumbered, hopelessly outgunned. But unlike Marlowe and Moseby, Hickey & Boggs are painfully self-aware about their predictament, and more importantly, their obsolescence. "Nobody came, nobody cares," Hickey says at one point. "It's still about nothing."

Culp and Hill also pack a ton of story into small, spare moments. There's a scene where Boggs goes to see his ex-wife, who is hardly ever mentioned, and it still manages to be one of the most devestating moments of the film. There is no backstory given, no voice-over, no expository dialogue... but it's still all there for you, every bitter painful moment of their marriage, in the little details of their exchange. I can think of a dozen films where a subplot like this has been beaten to death, but none packs the emotional punch that Culp gives you here. And Hickey & Boggs is full of moments like this. The film never spoon-feeds you. It forces you to keep your eyes open.

Okay... didn't meant to turn this into a mini essay or anything. But if you love your private eyes pushed to the point of oblivion, if you think the best crime films were made in the 1970s, and love a good neo-noir that plays out in broad daylight, I very much recommend tracking down Hickey & Boggs. I've heard the DVD is a bit of a muddy mess; I bought a digital copy from iTunes and it's crisp and clear.

(For more on Hickey & Boggs, check out Kevin Burton Smith's Thrilling Detective Web Site entry; also, this excellent blog post from Mr. Peel's Sardine Liqueur, a new favorite site of mine.)

My Favorite Read of 2009 (so far)

I know, I'm a day early. But I picked up Josh Bazell's Beat the Reaper yesterday at Barnes & Noble, suckered in by the cover (along with a faint recollection of hearing about this novel at some point) and sucker-punched by these opening lines:

So I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me! Naturally there's a gun.

What follows is a raw, funny, violent thrill ride that blends two great tastes that are rarely tasted together: the medical thriller and the mob novel. (With a little bit of World War II revenge story thrown in for good measure.) You've got the medical- geekspeak of Michael Crichton mixed up with some fine, in-your-face attitude a la Don Winslow or Charlie Huston, sometimes in the same sentence:

I'm thinking too slowly to deal with the Squillante problem, though, so I crush a Moxfane with my fingertips and snort it out of the declivity you can make at the end of your wrist by sticking your thumb out as far from your hand as it will go.

Beat the Reaper is packed with great little weird throwaways like this. It's one of those rare novels where voice is king, and man, what a voice. Bazell also does a neat trick with a split narrative: present day events in the present-tense, and chapter-long flashbacks in past tense... which sounds like a mess, but he pulls it off beautifully. There's no pretentious, ooh-ma-look-at-me writing, but there is plenty of seriously smart writing, the kind that makes writers stop reading for a minute and seethe with jealousy. (At least this writer did.)

If you received any bookstore gift cards over the holidays, I heartily recommend exchanging some of them for this kick-ass novel.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: Once Were Cops

Ken Bruen's novels are the closest thing we have to hardboiled poetry. Once Were Cops, his latest knockout standalone, muscles it even further in that direction, to the point where you're not sure where novel ends and poetry begins.

You can see it the moment you open the book. The pages aren't dense with paragraphs; there are shotgun-pattern blasts of sentences, dialogue, and sometimes, single words. You don't read it so much as let it assault you.

Ken's genius is that he packs so much meaning into each little pellet of birdshot.

He only describes something when he means it, not when he wants to fill out a graph or a page. He breaks out the dialogue so that you can really hear it, not breeze by it. He drags you into some psycho's world, and damn if you're not there, listening to him mumble in your mind.

Ken happens to be blogging this week at Moments in Crime, St. Martin's Minotaur's house blog, and in a post earlier this week, he revealed a bit of his process:

Like my novels, I actually write much lengthier entries and then root out all that sounds off.

I read it aloud and if it doesn't have that jagged tone of real speech, bin it.

Ken bins only the filler, never the killer. Once Were Cops has a beautiful twisting plot that never telegraphs its punches, as well as a collection of unsavory and sadistic fuckers that you somehow compel you to stay with them, no matter what unsavory and sadistic things they do. (And God, what they do in this novel...)

I can't recommend this one enough.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends...

... Kevin Johnson's The Dark Page, which I picked up at B'Con last week. It's an oversized, gorgeous survey of classic mystery and crime novels (and otherwise) that were adapted into 1940s noir films. With each entry comes a full page, full color photo of the first edition of these novels. I've been savoring this book for over a week now. It's like porn for noir/pulpheads. And while the price is a bit dear ($95), especially in these lean times (hey! just like the 1940s!), I ask you: How much blood or plasma do you really need, anyway?

... Tom Piccirilli's brand-spankin' new blog, The Cold Spot. Bookmark it. Savor it. Pic's the man.

... Hulu.com for making David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch available online for free. I saw this fucked-up freakfest back in my college days, and watching it again last week (when I should have been writing) was a blast.

... the Iliad Bookshop in lovely downtown Burbank, California. I've been meaning to mention this shop ever since visiting it a few weeks ago. At the time, I was bookless in Universal City., having whipped through Stephen Hunter's Night of Thunder in record time. I was also carless, so I couldn't drive out to either the Mystery Bookstore or Books to Die For for reinforcements. But a quick Google search brought up the Iliad, and my God was the $7 cab ride to the joint worth it. Rows and rows and rows of crime, horror and sci-fi paperbacks. I ended up buying more than the TSA would allow me for the return flight, so I ended up having an entire box shipped home. If you are anywhere near the Iliad, report to it immediately. But leave the collection of vintage paperbacks alone. I want first dibs next time I'm back in L.A.

... Stephen Hunter's recent Washington Post piece about this weekend's Noir City D.C. film festival is worth reading just for his definition of film noir alone ("the sensation of the fly, the wonder at the spider"). And to bring things full circle: Hunter name-checks Johnson's The Dark Page.

Secret Dead Blog also recommends Milky Way Midnight, scotch on the rocks, Kitty Foyle, peanut butter, Quaker Grits with extra sugar, V8 and the musical stylings of Rocky Burnette, though not necessarily in that order.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: Sleeping Dogs

Lee Goldberg thinks that Sleeping Dogs has one of the worst book covers in years. I don't think it's that bad—yeah, the gray drapes in the background kind of suck, but I dig the Ralph Steadman-esque type treatment. Anyway, I think the cover is wrong for another reason. If it really reflected the muscle and melancholy of Ed Gorman's work, it would have one of those cool Dell First Edition covers from the 1950s... specifically, the kind of covers they used to give Robert Dietrich's (nee E. Howard Hunt) Steve Bentley novels. That's because Dogs' narrator, Dev Conrad, reminds me of a modern-day Bentley: slightly sardonic, whip-smart, and equipped with a well-worn bullshit detector. Which is good, because when we meet Conrad, he's in the middle of a down-and-dirty race for a Senate seat where no back goes unstabbed. And it's great fun to have a character like Conrad take us on a guided tour.

Sleeping Dogs would be a fantastic read any time, any year; the fact that it appears in the middle of a Presidential election year makes it all the more riveting. The novel is packed with all of that cool hardboiled political insider stuff—how to play the media, leak damaging secrets, deflect tough questions—that's entertaining right up until the moment you realize that this crap goes on all the time. I'd feel a little better knowing there were a few Dev Conrads out there in the mix. Not exactly holding my breath here.

Your Monday Moment of Noir

"I pop two Nurofen and wash them down with a bottle of warm water. As I pull into the carpark, I see a fat child screaming her way down a slide shaped like an elephant. Her dad, a Pringle sweater with the look of a fortnight father about him, sups a pint of real ale and watches her out the corner of his eye. Sunday drinking. Warm and relaxed, even though the skies are streaked grey and back. Outward respectability when a storm is brewing."

Saturday's Child
by Ray Banks
(Polygon, 2006)

This one comes with Secret Dead Blog's highest recommendation. And while it's been available in the UK for a while now, Saturday's Child makes its American hardcover debut today. Yes, today. Get your arse to a bookseller, stat.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: The Joe Pitt Casebooks

It's become a ritual for me. Christmas Day, open up a Barnes & Noble or Borders Gift Card. December 26, get my ass to a Barnes & Noble or Borders to pick up the latest Joe Pitt Casebook.

Joe Pitt, of course, is Charlie Huston's vampire PI. I know, I know. Sounds like a thousand other books that take a supernatural character (say, a witch, or a wizard, or Anderson Cooper), dress him/her up in a fedora, strap a gun to his/her sides, and nudge 'em out into a Gritty Yet Fantastical Urban Environment. And somehow, this mystical PI manages to save the world from an invasion of orcs, or something.

That ain't Joe Pitt.

Because Joe Pitt lives in New York. Yes, the real New York. He's got real New York problems. He's got people constantly trying to fuck with him. And forget trying to save the planet from mystical creatures; most of the time, he's trying like hell to avoid his ass getting beat to death. In the latest installment, Half the Blood of Brooklyn, Pitt shares his fondest wish:

Rogue.

Alone.

God, I want it.

God, I want to be alone. Please let me be alone. Leave me alone. Don't ask me for anything. I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to think about anyone else anymore. I'm no good at it.

It's a sentiment I totally get. And see, that's the appeal of Joe Pitt, and the world he inhabits. It's our world, with the same bullshit problems of money and political in-fighting and turf wars and ideological battles... only, with the extra layer of vampirism—here, caused by a blood-bourne "vyrus"—to raise the stakes. (Like I could resist that?)

If you're a Charlie Huston fan, but haven't dipped into the Pitts because of the supernatural stuff... just get over it. They're as brutal and brilliant as his straight crime novels. And that means they're as brutal and brilliant as it gets.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

"Big as a telephone book" is a cliche, but you don't understand. This is as big as a telephone book. It is not a book to be carried; it is a book to be transported. When you open it somewhere in the middle, the weight falls on your hands and makes you think you're holding two separate books. Fact is, The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps was originally published as three separate books, each of them big and fat and glorious on their own. But Otto Penzler and Black Lizard have done something crazy. They've defied the laws of book binding and time and space and glued these three books--over 1150 pages of classic pulp stories--into one physical object. It is too big for your briefcase. You're going to have to bring a backpack, or just haul it around in your arms. Which might be useful in certain parts of town, because this slab of hardboiled noir pulp goodness is thick enough to stop a bullet. (In fact, a bullet may only make it two-thirds of the way through before stopping at Laura Lippman's introduction to the "Dames" portion of the book.) That is, if you can lift this sucker fast enough to catch that bullet. I'm telling you, it's heavy. Heavy as a telephone book.

And I haven't even told you about the treasures inside: a new, never-before-published Hammett. Three Chandler stories. Three Woolriches. Two complete novels. (Two!) Both Cains (James M. and Paul). Horace McCoy. Steve Fisher. And dozens of unfamiliar names that will thrill you, because even if you've been a serious student of pulps and pulp anthologies and pulp studies, chances are you're going to discover someone/something new.

And there are illustration all the hell over the place. Classic Black Mask-style pulp art, plucked right from the pages. You could flip through the book, just savoring the art, and it'd be worth the cover price alone.

So yeah, The Big Book of Pulps. I was lucky enough to receive an early copy of this book, I've been gnawing on it like a starving dog with a 76-ounce steak. Hands down, it's my favorite book of the year. It makes me happy just knowing this book exists.

It's out November 6. Yes, you definitely need a copy.

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

It's October, and man, have I got a book for you. Scan the back cover copy of Dark Harvest (Tor, $12.95) and you'll see phrases like "Halloween, 1963" and "small Midwestern town" and "he rises from the cornfields." You might think: Okay, I'm in Ray Bradbury country, and that's a nice place to be this time of year. But no. It's not nice at all. Because Dark Harvest isn't about some quiet horrors playing out in the shadows of the American heartland; it's a full-tilt, mash-the-accelerator-into-the floorboards horror novel that you'll either read in one gulp... or clearly, you don't have a pulse. I don't want to go too much into the plot, because the joy of this short, moody shocker is enjoying the twists and turns as Partridge throws 'em at you. He grabs you from the first paragraph:

"A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there."

And from there, you'll be strapped in for 169 pages of the best horror movie you've never seen, trapped in a town with the strangest rite of passage you'll ever encounter.

I've been a Norman Partridge fan since reading his stories in Cemetery Dance and the various Best New Horror anthologies over the years. (Not to mention his two Jack Baddalach hardboiled crime novels, which are not to be missed.) But this one really made my jaw drop. Like any great novel, it'll ruin you for many others for a while.