Allan Guthrien Viimeinen suudelma ei ole kivaa kamaa

Allan Guthrien Viimeinen suudelma (Kiss Her Goodbye, 2005; suom. Mika Tiirinen) on toinen kirja Arktisen Banaanin uutta kovaksikeitettyä dekkaria esittelevässä pokkarisarjassa. Se on ankara kertomus Joe Hopesta, jonka työnantaja on koronkiskuri ja työväline baseball-maila.

Guthrie on skottilaisen dekkarin, ns. tartan noirin, mestari, jota on verrattu sekä Irvine Welshiin että Denise Minaan. Hänen muita romaanejaan ovat mm. rankka mustasukkaisuus- ja ristiinnaulitsemisdraama Hard Man ja silvotun ruumiin eri osien löytymisestä kertova Savage Night. Guthrien uusin romaani on tänä vuonna ilmestynyt Slammer.

Tuottelias Guthrie ehti vastata muutamaan kysymykseemme.

K: Viimeinen suudelma ei kerro sympaattisesta päähenkilöstä. Itse asiassa yksikään kirjoista ei kerro sympaattisesta päähenkilöstä. Miksi pidät sosiopaateista ja väkivaltaisesta käytöksestä, vaikka itse olet selvästi niin mukava mies?

V: No kiitosta vain - luulisin. Kirjoitan sellaisista ihmisistä, jotka kiinnostavat minua, ja minua kiehtovat epänormaalit persoonallisuudet. En voi kuvitella mitään niin epäkiinnostavaa kuin jostakusta mukavasta kirjoittaminen. Viimeisen suudelman Joe Hope on totisesti kaikkea muuta kuin mukava. Hän on koronkiskurin kovistelija ja hakkaa ihmisiä työkseen. Kun päätin kirjoittaa hänestä, se oli osittain reaktiota muutamaankin kirjaan, jotka olin lukenut - niissä gangsterit olivat loppujen lopuksi hyviä tyyppejä. Halusin kirjoittaa jostakusta, joka ei ollut vähäisimmässäkään määrin hyvis, koska se tuntui minusta realistisemmalta. Toivoin kuitenkin, että pystyisin luomaan henkilön, jota kohtaan lukija tuntisi empatiaa. Minun mielestäni se on mahdollista, koska huolimatta siitä että Joe Hope ei ole mukava tyyppi hänen tunteensa ovat vereslihaisia ja hän paljastaa lukijalle paljon omia heikkouksiaan.

K: Kirjoissasi on myös paljon mustaa huumoria. Miten onnistut löytämään niin paljon hauskuutta kaikissa kuvaamissasi hakkaamisissa ja tappamisissa?

V: Minusta olisi todella vaikea lukea jotain, mikä on pelkästään synkkää ja mustaa ja huumoritonta ja minusta olisi vielä vaikeampi kirjoittaa sellaista. Joskus yritän, mutta tuloksena on aina se, että henkilö joutuu johonkin absurdiin tilanteeseen ja siitä seuraa aina pelkkää mustaa komediaa. Minusta absurdi ja noir-kirjallisuus ovat lähellä toisiaan, melkein sama asia käytännössä. Absurdin tunne on tunne elämän merkityksettömyydestä. Noir kertoo siitä, että olemme kaikki tuomittuja. Kun ne yhdistää, tuloksena voi olla aika synkkää hupaa.

K: Kirjasi ovat myös melko lyhyitä (Viimeisessä suudelmassa on 255 sivua). Mikä sinua kiehtoo lyhyessä muodossa aikana jolloin rikos- tai jännitysromaanin vakiopituus on 400-500 sivun paikkeilla?

V: Kirjojeni pituus on yleensä jotain 60 000 ja 75 000 sanan väliltä. Kirjat varmasti tuntuvat lyhyemmiltä kuin ne oikeasti ovat, koska kirjoitan tiiviisti ja yritän pitää juonen niin nopeassa liikkeessä kuin mahdollista. Yleensä jännäreissä sankarille jää paljon aikaa parantua kaikista hakkaamisista, mutta minä en juuri anna sankarireppanoilleni paljonkaan rauhallisia hetkiä. Minusta olisi vaikea kirjoittaa 500-sivuista kirjaa. Olen tehnyt sitä joidenkin varhaisten versioiden kohdalla, mutta niissä on paljon roskaa ja ylimääräistä täytettä ja tarpeettomia kohtauksia, joten kirjat tulevat aina paljon ohuemmiksi jahka rupean käymään tekstiä läpi.

K: Suomeksi saattaa ilmestyä myöhemmin muitakin kirjojasi. Mitä voit kertoa meille uusimmasta romaanistasi, hyviä arvosteluja saaneesta Slammerista?

V: Slammer on tosiaan saanut pari hyvää arviota, mikä on todella mukavaa. Se on vankilakirja kokemattomasta vanginvartijasta, jonka elämä on nopeasti muuttumassa suunnattomaksi sotkuksi. Slammer kertoo vartijan yrityksistä päästä irti tuosta sotkusta ja niistä seurauksista, jotka hänen toimintansa aiheuttaa. Olisi upeaa nähdä kirja myös suomeksi. Arktisen Banaanin kirjoissa on todella upeat kannet ja olisi hieno nähdä, mitä kuvittaja Slammerista keksii.

Q&A with Allan Guthrie

Here's another short interview with an author whose work I've had pleasure getting to print inside the paperback covers of Arktinen Banaani's new crime series. Allan Guthrie is the writer of Viimeinen suudelma (Kiss Her Goodbye, Hard Case Crime 2005; translated in Finnish by Mika Tiirinen), a hard-hitting tale of Joe Hope, bad guy whose main tool is a baseball bat and whose daughter commits a suicide and whose ex-wife gets killed. (I'll be posting the interview also in Finnish, as soon as I get it translated.)

Q: Kiss Her Goodbye doesn't tell about a sympathetic character. None of your novels features a sympathetic character. Why do you like sociopaths and violent behaviour, while you're yourself such a nice man?

A: Why, thank you. I think! I write about the kind of people who interest me, and I'm fascinated by abnormal personalities. I can't think of anything more boring than writing about somebody 'nice'. Joe Hope in Kiss Her Goodbye is certainly not nice. He's an enforcer for a loan shark, and beats people up for a living. When I decided to write about him, it was in part as a reaction against a few novels I'd read around that time where the gangster was a good guy at heart. I wanted to write about someone who wasn't even remotely a good guy, because I felt that was far more realistic. I hoped I'd be able to create the kind of empathy that would enable the reader to feel something for the character nonetheless. I think it's possible, because despite the fact that Joe Hope's not a nice guy, his emotions are fairly raw, and he exposes a lot of weaknesses to the reader.

Q: There's also lots of black humour in your books. How can you find humour in all those beatings and killings?

A: I'd find it hard to read something that was consistently dark and bleak and humourless, and I find it just as hard to write. Sometimes I try, but what usually happens is that a character will get into an absurd situation and there's a bit of comedy as a result. But that's fine with me. I think absurdity and noir are very closely connected. Almost the same thing. Absurdity is about the ultimate meaninglessness of life. Noir is about the fact that we're all doomed. Put them together and you can have some dark fun.

Q: Your books are also very short. What attracts you in the short form now when the crime novels and thriller are almost always 500 pages?

A: My books range from 62,000 to 75,000 words. I think they probably feel shorter than they are. That's possibly because I tend to write quite sparsely and aim to keep the plot moving as quickly as possible. Most thrillers have significant downtime for the character to recover from the ordeal he's facing, but I don't give the poor guy much peace at all. I'd struggle to fill 500 pages, I think. I've done that with early drafts, but there's so much rubbish and padding and unnecessary scenes in those that they soon slim down a more athletic size once I start revising.

Q: We may have more of your books in Finnish in the near future. What can you tell us about your latest novel, Slammer, that has been getting lots of good publicity?

A: Yes, Slammer's had one or two nice reviews, which is most pleasing. It's a prison novel about an inexperienced prison officer whose life is rapidly turning into an almighty mess. It's about his attempts to extricate himself from that mess and the consequences of the choices he makes to do so. It'd be great to see it published in Finland. Arktinen Banaani's book covers are superb, and I'd love to see what the artist comes up with. Here's hoping...

Comment moderation

Those sexy Japanese spams found their way here as well, so I'm putting up comment moderation.

Forgotten Short Story Friday Reprise

I did this already back in March, and I think a link will have to suffice now: it's about two western short stories by Tom Blackburn and George Michener. (I want still to add that it's not about James Michener. George Michener is totally unknown, while Blackburn may be only forgotten.)

Happy Easter to each and everyone!

Okay, my Facebook book

I didn't get seriously sick, as you might've surmised, but I've kept busy. I'm very much behind my schedule in the historical novelist reference book, but I managed to self-publish a small volume of my Facebook status updates.

What? you ask. What's the point? I hasten to add that my use of Facebook is strictly something else than promoting my latest book - which is something American and British authors like to do, to the point their so-called friends don't really know what they are about. (I once noticed an author mentioning his signing or some such event and one of his friends asked: "Hey, great! What kind of books do you write?")

My use of Facebook status updates is more akin to conceptual poetry, even though I'm known to have written also about something topical, comments on Finnish politics, media, literature etc. I've done lots of updates picking up random texts from other sources (I've taken a piece of writing from one reader of this blog, but I won't tell who it is) and using absurdly ephemeral texts the contexts of which no one knows but me. Put together, they are, I think, an interesting mix. (I'd like to compare it to a small book a Finnish poet Karri Kokko did recently: he listed all the people he met during a year and places he met them.)

And years later it will be valuable to see what has been in air, so to speak. I've been thinking I should do a similar volume each year, as long as I will be using Facebook, but actually the process is a bit difficult: the statuses (stati?) don't easily transfer into written text. And I've already lost many while sitting on them.

So, The Book of Updates: 11 Months in Facebook is available. At the moment it's pretty difficult to obtain to foreign countries, but I think it can be solved, just use the comment box or e-mail (or Facebook!). For the Finnish readers, it's 3 euros plus postage. The book is bilingual - some of the comments are in Finnish and some of them are in English. I'd say the percentage is fifty-fifty. (I've been thinking about doing a wholly English version of the book and put it up on Lulu.com or some such, but I don't know whether I'll have the time for that.)

I'll be posting the foreword to one of my other blogs later, but not now (it will be in Finnish). The latest version is only on the other computer we have and I don't have access to it at the moment.

Tiina Torppa's book on female crime writers

My publisher, BTJ, put out a new book by Tiina Torppa. It consists of 25 interviews with female crime writers, ranging from P.D. James to Kate Mosse. Here's the cover - it's taken from a Peter Cheyney cover done by Finnish master of pulp illustration, Poika Vesanto. (Whose western covers I posted here a while back.) The cover is originally from around 1946. The title means "Murder by Woman's Hands" or something along those lines.

The wimpy Matt Helm

Way back when I posted a note about a spy thriller paperback by John S. Glasby (under the alias Manning Robertson) and was wondering about the cover of the book.

Someone called "unk" just posted a comment on the post and mentioned that the Finnish cover of the Glasby book belongs originally to a Swedish Matt Helm translation. (Which means the image is even more unappropriate!) "Unk" also pointed a Donald Hamilton website with lots of information on Hamilton's appearances in print, both in magazines and books, and of course the cover gallery, with lots of foreign covers, including some Finnish ones, with Bertil Hegland's illustrations. Check them out, if you haven't done already. It seems there could be a small volume of previously uncollected Donald Hamilton short stories.

Sick sick sick

And now I'm getting down with flu. First it was Kauto, then Elina, then Ottilia came to visit us from abroad and then she got sick - no wonder I'm now sick.

So, probably no entries (not even on the Facebook book) for some days now.

Busy busy busy

Sorry, no Forgotten Friday entry today, or yesterday, or any other entry. Just this in: Päivitysten kirja: 11 kuukautta Facebookissa / The Book of Updates: 11 Months in Facebook came out from the printers yesterday. Will talk about this later, but I'm pretty sure it's the world's first collection of Facebook status updates. (As I sent this to the printers, I was reading that someone will be paid a five-figure sum for a Twitter book.. and here I go, printing this out in a run of 50, while I could be making some serious money.)

The book is half-Finnish, half-English, am considering of putting up a 100 % English version for sale on Lulu or some such.

Duane Swierczynski iskee lujaa

Vastikään ilmestynyt Keikkakuski aloittaa Arktisen Banaanin uuden pokkarisarjan, joka tuo suomalaisten lukijoiden ulottuville parasta uutta kovaksikeitettyä dekkaria Yhdysvalloista ja Englannista.

Keikkakuski on Duane Swierczynskin toinen romaani. Ensimmäinen oli outo paranoidista scifiä ja kovaksikeitettyä dekkaria sekoittava Secret Dead Men, joka ilmestyi PointBlank-kustantamolta vuonna 2005. Keikkakuski eli The Wheelman otti kuitenkin dekkarimaailman ällikällä ilmestyessään keskisuuren St. Martin’s -kustantamon kovakantisena kirjana vielä samana vuonna. Yhdistelmä rajua väkivaltaa ja sysimustaa huumoria puri erityisesti ylipitkiin ja löysiin trillereihin kyllästyneisiin lukijoihin ja tuntui tuovan kovaksikeitetyn lajityypin suoraan 2000-luvulle.

Kysyimme muutamia kysymyksiä kiireiseltä kirjailijalta.

Miten Keikkakuski syntyi?

Kirjoitin sitä huvikseni lukukausien välillä, kun opetin journalismia. En ollut vielä julkaissut mitään, mutta olin jo kirjoittanut Secret Dead Menin, joka oli jäänyt tietokoneen kovalevylle. Halusin kokeilla, onnistuisiko tiukan ja ilkeän rikoskirjan kirjoittaminen, enkä ajatellut, että se johtaisi mihinkään. Halusin yksinkertaisesti vain viihdyttää itseäni.

Keikkakuski on kunnianosoitus Richard Starkin (eli Donald Westlaken) Parker-kirjoille ja ylipäätään koko keikkalajityypille. Miksi keikkakuvaukset kiinnostavat sinua?

En oikeastaan ole keikkalajityypin suuri fani. Täydellisesti ajoitetun keikan suunnittelu ja toteutus ei innosta minua yhtä paljon kuin pieleen menneen keikan jälkiselvittelyt. Sen takia Keikkakuskikin alkaa muutamia sekunteja sen jälkeen, kun keikka on käytännössä jo hoidettu.

Oletko samaa mieltä, että kovaksikeitetty noir-dekkari elää nyt uutta nousukautta? Mistä se johtuu?

Minulla ei ole käsitystäkään. Sanoisin, että täällä USA:ssa pannaan jotain veteen, mutta vastaavia kirjoja on ilmestynyt viime aikoina paljon myös Englannissa ja Suomessakin, joten... Oikeasti olen sitä mieltä, että aina on lukijoita, jotka kaipaavat tällaisia synkkiä tarinoita. Ainoa asia, mikä muuttuu, on se, että kirjoille laitetaan erilaisia nimilappuja muutaman vuoden välein.

Onko sinulla joitain suosikkeja uusien kirjailijoiden joukossa?

Olin muutama kuukausi sitten aivan täpinöissäni Josh Bazellin kirjasta Beat the Reaper. Hän onnistui yhdistämään kaksi todella erilaista lajityyppiä, gangsterieepoksen ja lääkärijännärin, ja tuloksena oli jotain todella outoa, brutaalia ja väkivaltaisen hauskaa. En vieläkään ymmärrä, miten hän sen teki.

Keikkakuski on todella vauhdikas ja väkivaltainen kirja, mutta väkivalta tuntuu todelliselta, koska se sattuu. Miten määrittelisit eron sellaisen väkivallan välillä, joka on olemassa draaman takia, ja sellaisen, joka on pantu mukaan vain sen itsensä vuoksi?

Aina kun kirjoitan väkivaltaisen kohtauksen yritän saada aikaan jonkinlaisen tunteen lukijassa. Joskus haluan saadan heidät itkemään. Joskus hätkähtämään. Joskus nauramaan ja sitten tuntemaan itsensä syylliseksi.

Seuraavaksi sinulta ilmestyy suomeksi The Blonde (keväällä 2010 nimellä Vaaleaverikkö). Millainen kirja se on?

The Blonde on minun femme fatale -romaanini, sellainen jossa kaveri tapaa vääränlaisen naisen baarissa ja hänen elämänsä menee päin helvettiä. Tässä tapauksessa sankari Jack kohtaa naisen, joka sanoo, että jos hänet jätetään kymmeneksikin sekunniksi yksin, hän kuolee. Kenetköhän nainen pakottaa pitämään itselleen seuraa koko yön..?

Olet myös kirjoittanut Cable-, Iron Fist- ja Punisher-sarjakuvia Marvelille. Onko romaaneissasi vaikutteita sarjakuvista?

Ilman muuta. Minua kiehtoo ennen kaikkea laittaa henkilöt äärirajoilleen ja katsoa, miten he reagoivat niissä tilanteissa. Supersankarit kuten Cable ja Iron Fist eivät ole siinä mielessä erilaisia. Joskus minusta tuntuu, että olen kehitellyt juonet kirjoihini kaavalla: kiduta henkilöitäsi niin kauan että he melkein kuolevat.

Muutamia eriskummaisia faktoja Duane Swiercynskistä:

- kirjailijan sukunimi tarkoittaa kuusipuun lähellä asuvaa
- Duane ja hänen veljensä Gregg saivat nimensä Allman Brothers -bändiltä
- Duanen äidin sukunimi lyheni, kun hän meni naimisiin – hänen tyttönimensä oli Wojciechowski
- Duanen esikoispojan nimi Parker on kunnianosoitus Richard Starkin romaaneille
- Puolassa Swierczynskin nimi lausutaan ”Smith”

Q&A with Duane Swierczynski

In order to promote the recent translation of Duane Swierczynski's Keikkakuski/The Wheelman, I sent him a few questions about The Wheelman and his other work. Here are his answers; I'll post the Finnish translation later. (It's already been published in the Facebook group for the Arktinen Banaani's paperback series. Join now, if you haven't done that already!)

Q: The Wheelman wasn't your first novel. Could you tell us how your writing career led into The Wheelman?

The Wheelman was something I wrote for fun during breaks between semesters when I was teaching journalism. I'd a previous novel, but it had been languishing, unsold, on my hard drive for a few years, and I was just itching to tell a lean-and-mean crime story, with no expectation of publication. I just wanted to entertain myself.

Q: The Wheelman is an homage to the caper books of Richard Stark and Lionel White. Why are you fascinated in the caper genre?

I'm actually not a huge fan of capers -- the intellectual exercise of a perfectly-timed heist doesn't excite me as much as the aftermath of a heist gone wrong. Which is why THE WHEELMAN picks up a few seconds after the big heist has already happened.

Q: Do you see that there's a boom of hardboiled of noir writing nowadays? Where does it come from?

I have no idea. I'd say something in the water here in the USA, but there have been outbreaks in the UK and Finland as well, so... Honestly, I think readers have always had a thirst for these kinds of stories. The only things that change is what we label them every few years.

Q: Who are your favourite new writers in the genre?

A few months ago I was blown away by Josh Bazell's BEAT THE REAPER. Somehow he managed to combine two really different subgenres -- the gangland saga and the medical thriller -- into something weird, brutal and savagely funny. I still don't know how he did it.

Q: There's lots of action and violence in The Wheelman, but it always hurts. How would you draw the line between violence for vilence's sake and violence for drama's sake?

Whenever I write a violent scene I'm trying to reach out of the page and provoke a response from the reader. Sometimes I want them to cry. Sometimes, flinch. And sometimes, laugh, then feel guilty about laughing.

Q: We will have your novel The Blonde in Finnish translation in the Spring 2010. How would you describe the book?

THE BLONDE is my femme fatale novel -- you know, the kind of story where you meet the wrong kind of woman in a bar and your life promptly goes to hell? In this case, our hero Jack meets a woman who says that if she's left alone, even for 10 seconds, she'll die. And guess who's going to be forced to keep her company all night long?

Q: You've also been writing Cable and Iron Fist stories for Marvel. Are there same elements in your comics writing as in The Wheelman and your other novels?

Definitely -- I'm always fascinated by pushing characters to their limits, and watching how they respond. Superheroes like Cable and Iron Fist are no different. Sometimes I think that my version of plotting is nothing more than, "Torture main characters until they almost die."

The first Finnish rewiew of Keikkakuski

The first review of Swierczynski's Keikkakuski in Finnish on Jussi Katajala's blog. Very positive.

Obscure Chandler no more obscure

I posted earlier about a short novelization of Double Indemnity that was published in Finnish in 1945. I asked if anyone knew where the thing came from - is it a translation of an American tie-in or was it perhaps Swedish in origin?

No one came to help, so I started digging around. I took a look at Fennica, the Finnish National Library's database and made a note of what films had been novelized in the same series. There were surprisingly many, 37 in total, and some of the films were European in origin. Many were American, like Robin Hood, Road to Cairo (another wonderful Billy Wilder outing) and The Saratoga Trunk, to mention only a few.

Then I made quite a many Abebooks searches for many of the films the names of which I'd found in the library database. I knew there are lots of European bookselelrs in Abebooks, and before long I noticed there has been something called Illustrierte Film-Bühne (translated approximately as Illustrated Film-Scenes or some such). And then simply Googling with that I noticed a German-located database had listed all of the books published in the series. I then cross-searched with the books that had been published in the Finnish series, and they all matched each other.

So, the series (which was called Paletin filmiromaanit, by the way, and it was published by Lehtiyhtymä, one of the foremost Finnish published specialized in cheap entertainment) that had the Double Indemnity novelization was first published in Germany and the writers of the texts were probably German, too, so to count the novelization of Double Indemnity as a work of Raymond Chandler is a bit of a stretch.

I haven't been able to find who was the German publisher of these booklets, but they lasted surprisingly long, to the late fifties. Depicted is the cover of John Ford's Gideon of Scotland Yard and Jack Hawkins as the titular hero.

Edit: my friend, Sauli Pesonen, found this quote from the German Wikipedia. It says that the series was published by the Paul Franke publishers in 1946 and that the series lasted till 1969! This seems, though, that there have been quite a many series that have been called Illustrierte Film-Bühne, since the books I found (again, check the link above) were published already in the thirties and early fourties.

And here's the quote: "Die Illustrierte Film-Bühne (IFB) wurde 1946 in München von dem Verleger Paul Franke gegründet. Die Programmhefte wurden häufig in Blau, Grün, Braun oder Rot gedruckt. Mit der Nr. 8069 wurde 1969 die letzte Ausgabe produziert."

Edit 2: Thanks to Tapani Bagge for the explanation of the word "Bühne".

Obscure Chandler

Almost forgot that it's the 50th anniversary of Raymond Chandler's death. The Rap Sheet gives you a plethora of links (and here's the rundown of Marlowes on film on the very same blog). By the way, my choice for the best Marlowe novel is Farewell My Lovely.

Pulpetti, being busy as usual, gives only a mystery to all the bibliographers round the world: what is the origin of this booklet, published in Finland in the 1940's? It's a short novelization of Double Indemnity, the film scripted by Chandler and Billy Wilder from James M. Cain's novel. Was it published first in English and if it was, when and in what country, in the US or the UK? Or was it perhaps published in Sweden first? No author credits are given in the book. I don't think it's Finnish in origin, even though no translator is mentioned.

I talk about the book more here.

More Poika Vesanto

Instead of trying to write a Forgotten Friday entry, I'll post instead some more western book covers by the Finnish artist extraordinaire, Poika Vesanto.

I believe all the books depicted herein, with the exception of the Buxom Bill, are Swedish in origin.

Poika Vesanto's western covers

Poika Vesanto (1908-1950) was one of the best Finnish cover illustrators and comic artists of the bygone days. He's always been known and admired by the cognoscenti, but his name has been hidden from wider audiences. My friends, Timo Kokkila and Ville Hänninen, compiled an exhibition of Poika Vesanto's works (it's at display at the Rupriikki media museum in Tampere) and Ville has been writing a short book on Vesanto.

Here are some of Vesanto's western covers from the 1930's and 1940's. Most of them are for juveniles, but the C.K. Shaw book is for adult audiences (no no, it's not porn). C.K. Shaw was one of the forgotten pulp authors of her day - this may be the only instance where she's got a book publication. The book contains also a short story by Walt Coburn, one of the best known pulp western writers. Gil Dennic was a Finnish author called Olavi Linnus (yeah, I know, Buxom is a pretty weird choice for a name), and Arvily was really Arvid Lydecken, one of the first practitioners of the western genre in Finland. Bertil Cleve, I believe, was a Swedish writer, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit: Only just now I took a look at the Fictionmags Index and noticed that C.K. Shaw was a woman. I took the bibliography of her short stories and posted it to Pulpetti's Bibliographic Section. Follow the link.

Edit No. 2: Timo Kokkila reminded me that the exhibition is at the Rupriikki museum, not Vapriikki. Sorry 'bout that! He also informed me that the Poika Vesanto booklet is 40 pages and in full colour.

Strawberry Fields: Finnish short film

Here's a short film made by Finnish students, starring a 8-year old daughter of a friend of mine. The film has a nice twist which turns the genre expectations upside down, but I can't even reveal the genre. It's short, so you can easily sit through it, and it has captions in English. (The aspect ratio is wrong in this clip, but I hear there's a DVD with the right one.)

Finnish writer Taavi Tuokkola

I posted a working bibliography for a Finnish writer called Taavi Tuokkola in Pulpetti's bibliographic section here. He wrote some pieces for the Finnish pulp, Seikkailujen Maailma, and then thirty years later he penned three adventure novels for a religious publisher. Life of a writer can be weird. (This is part of my on-going research on Finnish pulp fiction, but stemmed from the book I'm compiling from Finnish war stories.)

Great rock song and video by Magyar Posse

I was just listening to the whole album, Random Avenger, by Finland's Magyar Posse, when I realized that some years back I posted a link to their video on one of the songs, called "Whirlpool of Terror and Tension". It's so good I'll post it again - or actually embed it from YouTube. If you like Ennio Morricone's soundtracks or have affinity for Krautrock bands of the seventies, check this out.

Allan Guthrie's book out

The second book in the Arktinen Banaani paperback series I edit is now out: Allan Guthrie's Viimeinen suudelma (orig. Kiss Her Goodbye). Here's the menacing cover by Ossi Hiekkala. The book is available (almost) everywhere books are sold.

We are hoping to bring Allan to Finland to the next Helsinki Book Fair.

James Hadley Chase: collected mini-reviews

Over at James Reasoner's blog, there's been some discussion on the British crime writer James Hadley Chase. I've reviewed several of his novels here and I thought I could gather them in one posting, edited, of course.

James Hadley Chase's Shock Treatment from 1959. It was more sane than some other Chases I've read, but still nothing memorable - just another James M. Cain imitation with a surprisingly flat ending.

The Dead Stay Dumb by James Hadley Chase. It's an early Chase, from 1939, and while it's pretty wild, it's also somewhat moronic. There's no real plot, no real characters - all the killings and counterfeits just happen almost out of nowhere. Maybe it's surrealism. (I know that the French are enthusiastic for Chase.)

The Flesh of the Orchid, James Hadley Chase's sequel to his debut, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, is absurd and implausible, but you never know if it's because Chase was a poor writer or because he wanted it to be so. There's a ridiculous thing about having a law according to which if you escape from the mental institute and manage to not get caught in fourteen days, you get to go free. What the fuck? If you manage to forget all this, I guess the book could be enjoyable. There are some genuinely chilling moments and Chase has a knack for outrageous violence, but in the end it's a rather empty book. The French director Patrice Chereau made a film from this in the early eighties (or late seventies?). It emphasized the dream-like quality that I think is involuntary in the book and is a much better work of art.

James Hadley Chase: Eve (1945; no American publication that I know of) - basis for a famous film by Joseph Losey (1962), but of little interest as a thriller, Chase doesn't really know how to make American settings plausible, this has characters Clive, Carol, Rex etc., which doesn't ring true; a Cainish story, but not enough plot.

What's Better Than Money? (1960) is one of the best Chases I've read, even though there were many implausibilities and some of the scenes were just plain stupid, but in this Chase was able to build suspension. The ending was flat, though.

In Knock, Knock, Who's There (1973) Chase has switched to Mafia stories that were a fad in the early seventies due to the Godfather movies. It's a story about Johnny Bianda, the bagman for a small-time mafioso. Bianda decides to get off the boat and robs the money he's gathered on his daily racket round. The book focuses on him trying to stay one step ahead of the Mafia guys. It's a bit weak in the middle, but all in all one of the better Chases. The ending is very cynical and not so flat as in the some other Chase novels I've read so far.

I Hold the Four Aces (1979) is strictly mediocre. It has a nice scam plot, but Chase is not very good at describing a female lead and there's a stupid butler character involved. The climax is also not violent enough.

This must be one of the best James Hadley Chase novels - at least of those I've read. In The Sucker Punch (1954) he spins the story of the man caught in the web of fake love, greed and seven million dollars quite well. There's just that it never feels like it takes place in the US. If someone gave it to me without covers or any other identifications and took out the half dozen references, mainly to California, from the text, I'd say it takes place in England. This makes the novel seem pretty empty, without any real content. I haven't really checked, but I believe the book was first published as by Raymond Marshall, one of Chase's pseudonyms.

Film book out

I started doing this book, what, four years ago? Or was it only three? I got a smallish grant for a non-fiction book aimed at young readers and I was going to write a book that would tell everything on films - the narration, how they are made, all that. I got bored pretty quickly, and everything went on hiatus for at least a year. Then I decided the book would be only about the history of cinema. Even after that it was quite a long time before the book saw daylight (there was even some fighting between two publishers, which was absurd and took quite a while). The book's not anymore targeted at young readers, but if you're a cinephile with a long background, you don't have to read this.

Today I got my hands on my author copies. It's a hardcover book - haven't done many of those. And it looks pretty neat, too. I would at least browse through this in a bookstore.

Available everywhere books are sold.

Forgotten Short Story Friday: Tom Blackburn and George Michener

As Patti Abbott suggested, this Friday's Forgotten prose entries should be about short stories. I thought immediately about two western short stories that stuck to my mind when I was researching the Finnish pulp and other fictionmags some years back writing my books Six Guns and Five Guns (the latter is exclusively about short stories in magazines). The other story is by Tom Blackburn, the other one is by George Michener.

Tom Blackburn is better known of the two. He lived from 1926 to 1997 and wrote pulp stories from the thirties on. Later he did lots of novels, both in paperback and hardback. He was never a bestseller, but he's a firm part of the fifties' western renaissance that was heavily featured in paperback originals.

The one short story I've read from Blackburn is called "Then There Were None". It appeared in Dime Western, July 1950 (and the Finnish translation came in Seikkailujen Maailma 7/1956). It's a gripping noir story, with full of violence and unexpected twists, all in a very short form, handled convincingly. The story starts with the boss of the criminal gang waking up and killing one of his mates and trying to convince the others that the dead man attempted to shoot him. Involved is a stupid young boy who idolizes these gangsters. As noir as a western can be.

Now, George Michener we know nothing about. He wrote primarily westerns for the short story market, starting from the mid-thirties and magazines like West and Ace-High Magazine, and giving up in the early fifties. His one story was called in the Finnish translation "The Scarface's Revenge" (Seikkailujen Maailma 10/1951), which doesn't match those found in the Fictionmags Index. It's a great story nevertheless: Scarface, mentally and fysically disturbed criminal, returns to his old haunts and gathers up his old gang, but they have a new boss. He decides to kidnap the sheriff's kid - and it turns out the sheriff is Scarface's half-brother. Very violent and disturbing - a noir western in the mold of Blackburn's story above.

PS. Just thought to Google and found this. I didn't know that Blackburn wrote lyrics for Disney films!

Finnish war short stories

I'll start a series of posts on Finnish war-themed short stories found in various sources, mainly old fictionmags, on one of my other blogs. The first post is here. In Finnish.

Jack Webb's only western novel

I was writing obits for the Ruudinsavu/Gunsmoke magazine of the Finnish Western Society and decided to include Jack Webb. Why? Didn't he write mystery novels with that priest Shanley in them? Yes, but he also wrote one western novel, under the pseudonym of Tex Grady. High Mesa came out as a hardback in 1952 from Dutton and then in 1953 as a paperback from Popular Library.

Here are the both covers and also the introduction (probably the back cover copy) from an Abebooks seller:

Disguised as an itinerant cowhand, U.S. Army Captain Jeff Macon is working at the Lazy A. Detailed by his Colonel to discover the source of unrest which is causing border warfare in the vicinity of the Lazy A and the Hacienda Moreno, Jeff has his work cut out for him. Playing a lone hand against the perpetrators of such treachery as Jeff unearths is a dangerous game. Jeff is smart, and he is no coward, invaluable qualities in view of his being called on to out-think and out-fight as villainous a gang of cutthroats as ever roamed the border.

(And no, he's not the same Jack Webb who was in Dragnet.)

The Best of Isku out

The collection of short stories published originally in Finland's only crime fiction fanzine, Isku, is out. We had a launch party earlier today - okay, it was actually for the sea story book by Veikko Hannuniemi I mentioned earlier, and I got to talk about Isku only briefly.

The book sure feels and looks nice: it's classic paperback size and has only 99 pages. How's that for vintage cheap paperback feel? The cover by Jukka Murtosaari is a delight - you can spot some vintage Finnish pulp and other magazines in the racks, including the real Isku magazine, with the same masthead used in the book and (in black&white) in my fanzine.

The book consists of ten short stories, of which only one, Tarja Sipiläinen's chilling "The Collector", is over 3,000 words. Others are somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500. The best-known writer in the bunch is my friend, Tapani Bagge, with a nice short-short about a loser down on his luck, but aficionados (at least real ones) can recognize names like Petri Hirvonen, Helena Numminen, Petri Salin and Timo Surkka. Others include Teemu Paarlahti, Heikki-Antero Laurila and Sami Myllymäki.

I'm also there, with the first Joe Novak story published in Isku. I read the story earlier today and wasn't entirely satisfied with it (and I found a glaring error in there!), but I guess that's how it always turns out.

Mind you, there's also this, which is the actual first Joe Novak story. I wrote it in the late eighties, while still in school, and published it in a small pamphlet (eight pages, I think, covers included) with the same title (Joe Novak pinteessä in Finnish). It came out retrospectively in 1997. The other stories in the pamphlet had other private eye heroes for which I had developed cool names, like Sam Odessa. In one of the stories Sam Odessa meets the Finnish rocker Mike Monroe who's gone to Amsterdam... [This is a bit of inside joke amongst the Finnish people.]

[Edit: at Todd Mason's proposition I removed the word "pulpish" and replaced it with "cheap paperback". The small number of pages in the book makes one think of a sleazy sex paperback of the sixties. I also added the publishing year of the Joe Novak pamphlet. Now, that's a collector's item. I think the print run was 20 or 25. I seem to remember that I did a reprint two or three years back, but I'm not so sure about that.]

And hey, anyone wants the book, I sell it! Feel free to comment or e-mail me!

A mysterious three-line poem

I made myself a note on Word about some matters that had crossed my mind. It looked like a short poem. Can anyone recognize just what I was trying to remember? (The members on the PulpMags e-mail list are not allowed to answer.)

love
sensations
they shoot horses

Two new books out next Tuesday

Here's the cover by Jukka Murtosaari to a book I've compiled and written the foreword. The book is a collection of Finnish writer Veikko Hannuniemi's sea-faring short stories, starting from 1939 and ending up in the early seventies. Hannuniemi's stories are full of humour and action, but they are not usual adventure stories. As a sea-farer himself, there's also lots of authentic feel to the stories. The book's title translates as "The Great Hunger" which is title of one of the first stories Hannuniemi wrote. The launch party is next Tuesday at the Raisio municipal library - Hannuniemi lived in Raisio from the 1950's on. He died in 1990.

The book is also an entry in my on-going research into the annals of fiction magazine publishing in Finland: all the stories in the book were first published in various magazines, ranging from Kuluttajain Lehti to Seura and Koti-Posti. Suuri jano is also the newest installation in Turbator's series called m.

I've posted my foreword here. It's in Finnish - understandably.

The next Tuesday will also see another book of mine - the collection of my crime fanzine, Isku's best pieces. The book has stories by Tapani Bagge, Helena Numminen, Petri Salin, Petri Hirvonen, Timo Surkka and other writers - including me. (One of my Joe Novak private eye stories.) I don't have the book's cover at hand as yet, but here's the tentative cover I posted a while back.

Friday's Not Very Forgotten Book: Alex Haley's Roots

I finished Alex Haley's Roots last night and I must say that it's not a very good novel. It's not forgotten, either, so I don't know why I'm writing this, but there are some things I was wondering about reading the book, so here goes.

I was thinking about Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code for a couple of times when I was going through Roots. Why? Because they share something: both have spawned several imitations in different media and Haley's book may have given a boost to the subgenre of historical novels which describes a history of one family through centuries (I don't know when James Michener started doing these, but Roots is still an early example).

Both books are also very bad considering how much they have been discussed and talked about. You know, writing courses and teachers of creative writing always: Show, don't tell. That's the way to come up with good literature, otherwise you'll be just a bore. Then how come do these books which tell, don't show, have been so popular and so influential? Haley's book could've been at least 200 pages leaner if he had taken some creative writing courses and taken a hint: show, don't tell. He's always telling what his characters are thinking and why and how and when that happened and what was going on in the big world. It was boring in the beginning and irritating in the end. And I'm sure the book's depiction of the slave system could've been more shocking if Haley hadn't been so careful to point out what his characters are feeling at any given moment.

The Da Vinci Code is fast-moving and it has a plot full of intrigues and mysteries. I can understand its popularity. Roots, however, doesn't have a plot - the whole book is just a series of scenes, put together with no tension between them. Especially the first 150 pages are very boring - the description of everyday African life seems meaningless (at least now, it must've been a culture shock in the 1960's America). There are some scenes which have more tension and suspense in them - for example the scenes in the slave ship are quite good, as are the scenes which show Kunta Kinte trying to escape his slavedom.

I'm not sure how much Roots is being read today. Its popularity may be due to the TV series the last episode of which has been one of the most popular TV shows ever in the US history. But the book has been highly influential and its impact on the American culture cannot be ignored. Still, it's not a very good novel.

One thing on Haley interests me though. He says in the end of his novel (he's also a character in the book, in case you don't know, as he is a descendant of Kunta Kinte) that he published some sea-faring stories in some magazines, presumably in the fifties. He doesn't name any publications, story titles or possible pseudonyms. The Fictionmags Index has only one article by Haley, in Saturday Evening Post. Does anyone know what magazines Haley is talking about?

(Written on Thursday, since I'll be away for some days.)

My contribution to Patti Abbott's series.

A Chap O'Keefe story I almost published

The webzine Beat to a Pulp features "The Unreal Jesse James" by Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman [I don't think he's the same Chapman who created Bob the Builder]). It's an interesting story and I almost published it in Finnish translation some years back. I was editing an all-story issue of Ruudinsavu/Gunsmoke, the magazine of the Finnish Western Society. Keith sent me this story, which had been left unpublished for some years, even though he had submitted it to several magazines, including, I think, Fantasy & Science Fiction. (I hope I'll be corrected if I'm wrong about this!) So, the Finnish translation would've been its first publication world-wide.

I'm sorry to say, though, that I ran out of time and space, so I dropped Keith's story out. I'm happy to see it has found a venue and thrilled readers!

It's finally official

Here's the final cover of the Finnish translation of Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman, called Keikkakuski, published by Arktinen Banaani. The book is now out and on sale everywhere where books are sold, also at the newstands. The cover illustration is by Ossi Hiekkala - it's very cool, isn't it? Both modern and retro at the same time and what's most important, it's full of action, as is the novel. Check out the bumper.

The Finnish title, "Keikkakuski", is taken from the Walter Hill flick The Driver, or actually its Finnish title, since we thought the association is a good one. I asked Duane about this and he said he hadn't seen the film. But I'm sure that when he'll see it, he'll know we were right about the title.

This also marks my first book-length translation in print. Up to this book, I've done only short stories for my fanzines. Not in print are two novels by Jason Starr (I'll see to them getting published) and 50 first pages of Russell Banks's fabulous Rule of the Bone (which I hope to finish some day).

I urge everyone who's reading this to join the Facebook group for the Arktinen Banaani's crime paperbacks. The group is in Finnish, but you can join for the purpose of support, too.

I'll be having a short Q&A with Duane here and on the FB group shortly (just as soon as he answers my questions!), so stay tuned.

The next novel in the paperback series, Allan Guthrie's Kiss Her Goodbye, under the Finnish title Viimeinen suudelma (The Last Kiss), is just going to printers and will be out in some weeks.

A short Ed Gorman film

Here's a short amateur film from a short story by Ed Gorman. It's quite good and the story is touching, almost not a crime story at all. Directed by John Shane. (By the way, does anyone notice how Gorman salutes one of his favourite writers? It's quite obvious, when you know what you're looking for.)

Two interviews of two western writers

Two great interviews of two great western writers at the Western Fiction Review: James Reasoner and Jory Sherman. Both are not very well known in Finland - were it not for me and my fanzines, there would be no Reasoner translations, and Jory Sherman has had only a handful of his western series translated under a pseudonym. (And two of his horror novels.) Well, it's of course possible that one or two of Reasoner's thrillers he does secretly for big names is translated without anyone else knowing. It's also possible that one or two Sherman's sex paperbacks, from his early days, was translated in the early seventies.

By the way, do check out the Jory Sherman bibliography I posted here a while back.

And, oh, I forgot to mention that Sherman is mentioned in Neeli Cherkovski's biography of Charles Bukowski. (Sherman started out as a beat poet and he's still writing poetry. He once sent me a handful for translation, but I haven't had much time to do anything to them.)

The Mary Poppins Massacre

Jess Nevins thinks Mary Poppins is essentially a horror movie. Couldn't agree more.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Norah Lofts's Hester Roon

Norah Lofts is one of those historical writers on whom one easily stamps a romantic image: mansions, young, slightly devilish counts, shy virgins, angry mother-in-laws... When I started Hester Roon, one of Lofts's later novels (it's from 1982), I got fast rid of my presuppositions: the book begins with a woman giving birth at an attic of a roadhouse, thinking that if it's a boy, she'll give it away, if it's a girl, she kills it. It's a girl and the mother doesn't have the nerve to kill it. She promises the inn-keeper that the child won't get in the way of her work and keeps the baby tied up in her bed for the first two years of her life.

The tone is set and everything that follows is very grim and reeks of misery. Which would've been very nice, but the book really doesn't go anywhere, and at the end I was left wondering what Lofts wanted to say with her novel. If it's only "keep your chin up, everything will turn out okay", I don't think it's a good enough reason to write a novel. The ending has more romantic clichés than the previous 400 pages, which was a pity, since the preceding grimness was much more interesting. There's no kiss between the love couple, though - and actually the love aspect is only hinted at.

I have a stack of other Norah Lofts novels waiting for me, but I'll have to read Alex Haley's Roots first. Reason: I'm editing a reference book on historical writers with two friends of mine and I'll have to write about Lofts and Haley, two writers I hadn't previously read.

(My contribution to this week's Friday's Forgotten Books series, hosted by Patti Abbott.)

Vince Keenan's Noir City reports

I've really liked Vince Keenan Noir City festival raports. Check 'em out here.

And check out also a new(ish) blog Spyvibe.

The marketing hysteria

JD Rhoades poses some interesting questions about marketing your own books on Murderati here. Finland has not yet seen the hysteria the USA wallows in about these "new" marketing tools, like blogs and Facebook (note the ""-marks, this is irony), and publishing houses still do most of the marketing here. For example, I've seen only one Finnish book trailer in the web.

Based on my own experiences as a non-fiction writer, though, we are only some steps behind. I've had to put a Facebook group for one of my books and arrange contests (well, I've had one and one member dropped out immediately), and at the launch party one of the editors took a video clip with me and the other writers of the book and we had to say nice things about it for the publisher's website. Based on what comments JD Rhoades got on Murderati, I don't think that clip sells even one book. Let's hope it does.

Arktisen Banaanin pokkarisarja lataa kovaksikeitettyä dekkaria

Aiemmin sarjakuvakustantajana tunnettu Arktinen Banaani laajentaa tänä keväänä pokkareiden ja myös dekkareiden puolelle. Sarjan dekkarit keskittyvät uuteen kovaksikeitettyyn ja noir-dekkariin, jotka ovat tällä hetkellä vahvassa nousussa sekä Yhdysvalloissa että Englannissa, sekä isoissa kustantamoissa että erikoistuneissa pienkustantamoissa. Arktisen Banaanin dekkaripokkareissa kunnioitetaan lajityypin perinteitä tyylikkäillä kuvitetuilla kansilla.

Sarjan ensimmäiset kirjat ovat Duane Swierczynskin Keikkakuski (The Wheelman, 2005) ja Allan Guthrien Viimeinen suudelma (Kiss Her Goodbye, 2006). Kirjat ilmestyvät lokakuussa.

Keikkakuski kertoo Patrick Lennonista, pankkirosvojen käyttämästä keikkakuskista, jonka paras etu työssään on, että hän on mykkä. Philadelphialaisen Wachovia-pankin ryöstö näyttää aluksi sujuvan ihan kohtuullisesti - mitä nyt pitää ajaa autolla pankin ovi rikki ja pamauttaa lastenvaunuja työntävä nainen pois tieltä -, mutta sitten joku puuttuu peliin ja täräyttää isolla pakulla keikka-auton kylkeen. Patrick Lennonin elämän painajaismaisin viikonloppu alkaa: hän herää, kun häntä ollaan työntämässä mustassa ruumissäkissä rakennustyömaan putkeen...

Viimeinen suudelma kertoo Joe Hopesta, karusta ja hiukan yksinkertaisesta koronkiskurin apurista, jonka tärkein työväline on pesäpallomaila. Joe Hope tulee aamuyöllä keikalta kotiin vain saadakseen kuulla, että joku on tappanut hänen teini-ikäisen tyttärensä. Masennuksesta ja juopotteluputkesta toivuttuaan Joe päättää kostaa.

Duane Swierczynski (s. 1972) iski itsensä läpi amerikkalaisten dekkarinlukijoiten tietoisuuteen toisella romaanillaan Keikkakuski, joka kertoo mykästä luottoajajasta. Tämä joutuu vaikeuksiin, kun huolella valmisteltua pankkikeikkaa onkin seurannut myös venäläisten mafia. Keikkakuski on 24-tv-sarjan ja 1950-luvun kovaksikeitettyjen rikospokkareiden risteytys: reaaliajassa kulkeva trilleri, jossa ei ole tyhjiä hetkiä.

Duane Swierczynski on nuoren polven amerikkalaisdekkaristien ehdotonta kärkeä, joka on kirjoittanut myös Marvel-yhtiön sarjakuvia, kuten X-Meniä ja Cablea. Hänen muihin romaaneihinsa kuuluvat The Blonde (2006) ja Severance Package (2008).

Allan Guthrien (s. 1965) debyyttiromaani Viimeinen suudelma löi dekkaripiirit ällikällä: kertomus pesäpallomailaa aseenaan käyttävästä koronkiskurin apupojasta, jonka tytär kuolee epämääräisissä olosuhteissa, on samaan aikaan inhimillisen lämmin että pirullisen väkivaltainen. Kirjallaan Guthrie oli myös ehdokkaana tunnetussa Edgar-palkintokisassa, joka myönnetään vuosittain parhaalle ilmestyneelle rikosromaanille.

Allan Guthrie on skottilaisen hardboiledin uusi mestari, jota on verrattu Irvine Welshiin ja Denise Minaan, mutta hänen kirjansa ovat rujompia ja rajumpia. Guthrien muuta tuotantoa ovat romaanit Two-Way Split (2006), Hard Man (2007), Kill Clock (2007) ja Savage Night (2008).

New Jakubowski

Maxim Jakubowski's forth-coming book The Mammoth Book of Best International Crime will include a short story by my friend, Tapani Bagge.

The paperback line finally coming!

The paperback line I'm editing for the Arktinen Banaani publishers is just about to start. Here's a poster that's being printed at the moment and to be delivered to book shops all over the country. The first book, Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman (as Keikkakuski), is coming out in March.

All the covers are drawn by Ossi Hiekkala. The poster is designed by Tommi Hänninen who has also designed the layouts for the covers.

[I do know one of the words is missing the Ä dots...]

Sarah Weinman's take on Spade & Archer

Sarah Weinman has a more positive view of Joe Gores's Maltese Falcon prequel.

Creme de la crap

A Kansas City city paper Pitch has an exhilarating blog: Studies in Crap. It gives you a lowdown of utterly odd ephemera - religious pamphlets, books with titles like How To Pick Up Girls or Enjoy Your Pigeon, even an occasional action paperback - and does it in a very funny way. Check it out.

Richard Layman's comment to the review of Spade & Archer

Richard Layman (who knows what he's talking about) posted this response he'd sent to The New York Times, when I a bit lazily posted the link to the negative review of Joe Gores's Spade & Archer.

To the Editor:

Regarding David Gates’s review of Joe Gore’s Spade and Archer I am reminded of Louis Armstrong’s observation—There’s some folks, that if they don’t know, you can’t tell ‘em.
Spade and Archer, has at its center the ethos and the professional habits of the private detective, like the masterpiece that precedes it (which is not, to many worthy of an opinion, inferior to The Thin Man—where did Mr. Gates get that idea?). Spade acts according to a strict set of rules necessarily of his own devising—an existential quality that does not obviate a past. He is a careful observer: people’s physical characteristics, their clothes, and the places they frequent are vitally important to him in his work. He inhabits a real world of San Francisco in the 1920s, reliably described.
Mr. Gates misses the point. To question Gores’s common sense because he suggests Sam Spade has a history is simply absurd. To criticize Gores for being overly precise in his descriptions is strangely illogical. To take him to task for using period language in a period story suggests a most unusual critical standard—even in the 21st century. To suggest that Spade lacked the time to read or listen to music defies comment. To express those criticisms in language dripping with vitriol is altogether repugnant.
Richard Layman

Kohteliasta? Totta Mooses!

Kun yrittää parhaansa vältellä työntekoa ja selailee nettiä ja painelee sähköpostiohjelman Lähetä/Vastaanota viestejä -nappia, saattaa saada tällaisia kohteliaita posteja:

FM, tietokirjailija Juri Nummelin
Misantropian historian kirjoittaminen.

Ilmoitamme kohteliaimmin, että Teille ei ole myönnetty apurahaa Suomen Kulttuurirahastoon lokakuussa 2008 jättämänne hakemuksen perusteella. Kulttuurirahasto ei perustele päätöksiä.

Hakijoita oli tänä vuonna noin 7.100, joista noin 1.100 sai myönteisen päätöksen. Seuraava keskusrahaston hakuaika on syksyllä 2009.

Kunnioittaen

SUOMEN KULTTUURIRAHASTO

Tämä on automaattisesti lähetetty viesti, johon ei voi vastata.

No kiitti vaan kohteliaasta viestistä, joka yllätti minut täysin. En todellakaan odottanut saavani ilmoitusta tuosta noin vain. Luulin, että se tulisi kirjeitse ja että avatessani kuorta voisin valmistautua mikä ilmoitus kirjeessä sitten olisikin. Nyt meni varmaan työhalut loppupäiväksi. Että kiitosta vain.

Tuosta, ettei päätöksiä perustella - älkää edes kysykö. Minulla olisi siitä aika paljonkin sanottavaa. Kiitos vain, kulttuurirahasto!

James Reasoner's Graveyard Shift

Over at Bookgasm Bruce Grossman reviewed some Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine issues of old and mentioned James Reasoner's story "Graveyard Shift". I just want to remind people that it was filmed two or three years back. Check it out:

Harry S. Truman and Adventure

I seem to be taking more posts from other venues than write them myself, but when interesting things come up, I can't resist.

Here's Walker Martin on the pulp magazine, Adventure, and the US president Harry S. Truman. It's part of a discussion that started when someone had read that president Roosevelt had organized a writing contest for one of the detective pulps (turned out it was published as a serial in Liberty, which definitely wasn't a pulp, and later published as a book under the title of The President's Mystery Story; it was a so-called round robin novel, in which several known writers took turns writing the book).

I've also heard that Roosevelt read pulps, also Ike. But Harry Truman definitely read pulps. I have DEAR BESS, which is a collection of letters from Truman to his wife, 1910-1959. ADVENTURE MAGAZINE is listed in the index ten times. The magazine was evidently a favorite and Truman mentions it for the first time in 1911 and it is still mentioned 30 years later in 1941. In one 1911 letter he says "Adventure is the only magazine printed on cheap paper that I can read." In 1912 he mentions how his mother got scared reading a story in the magazine. In another letter he complains about serials in ADVENTURE and how he hates waiting 30 days for the next installment.

In 1913 he relates "I bought an Adventure last night and entertained myself with bloodcurdling stories on the train so I'd feel nice and comfortable..." More than once he mentions how a story in another magazine was good enough to appear in ADVENTURE.

Truman's love for the magazine only backs up the editors often mentioned fact that ADVENTURE was read by a wide spectrum of professional people including doctors, businessmen, lawyers, and government workers. Not to mention military men and typical tropical tramps (or as Adventure termed them TTT).

Spade & Archer

Here's a review of a new novel, Spade & Archer, by Joe Gores: it's a prequel to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. The review is not positive in all accounts, even though Gores is a very good writer. He's not very well known in Finland - perhaps because his translation history here is random at best: his first, A Time of Predators, came out in Finnish, then Hammett in 1977, then, after over ten years' silence, one of his later books. The Hammett book made him seem like a pastiche guy, even though it's his only pastiche work. Before Spade & Archer, that is.

(Hat tip to David Gustafson on the PulpMags group!)

Friday's Forgotten Book: Thomas B. Costain: The Black Rose

Okay, I'll do one while I'm still here.

Thomas B. Costain was one of the most popular of the American mid-20th century historical writers, the others including Kenneth Roberts, Edison Marshall, Frank Yerby, F. Van Wyck Mason... The Black Rose from 1945 has been one of his best-known novels and it was made into film with Tyrone Power and Orson Welles and directed by Henry Hathaway. It's a vast epic tale of two young Britons who travel all the way Cathay (aka China) just after the big Crusades to Jerusalem. They notice Europeans are regarded barbarians, but they also encounter cruelty amongst the Mongols and other nations of the Far East. The novel is not free from racism of its time, but it's also a great tale of adventure. I recommend this highly, if you're into this sort of thing.

(Sorry, a bit too short, but I've been sitting here all day and I'm hungry now.)

In the year 2525

Everybody's been doing these memes in which you mention 25 random things about yourself. I did this in Facebook and thought I'd post it here, too. (I should be doing a Forgotten Book post, but...)

1. While I'm doing this, I'm editing an article that's supposed to appear in the next issue of Ruudinsavu (Gunsmoke), the official magazine of the Finnish Western Society. The article is about Alan Ladd's little-known western movies. [Of course I'm not doing this anymore.]

2. I would've loved to be a pulp fictioneer. I believe I would've been a mediocre, but occasionally amusing adventure writer targeting at low and middle markets, maybe for the Spicy magazines or even shudders.

3. At the same time I would've tried to write some serious poetry and failed at that.

4. I also would've loved to write an Ace Double. Or even a Beacon or a Nightstand. Or hundreds of them.

5. I think I've written enough bad pulp imitation to fill an Ace Double. [I think I've actually written at least three Ace Doubles.]

6. I've also written a 20,000-word novel in a week. That's the best I could do. But I also wrote some other things at the same time. [This will probably end up self-published.]

7. I love the sound of a typewriter in the morning. Or in the night. Or during the day.

8. I once wrote with a typewriter in a train.

9. I've said once or twice that cooking is one of my hobbies. Nowadays it comes down to putting cinnamon in tomato sauce. Asked "what shall we have for dinner, dear?", I say: "Sausage and pasta."

10. Sometimes I replace tomato sauce with cream.

11. I've tried to diminish my eating of meat. I feel for the animals, but the main reason is that I try to avoid increasing the climate change.

12. My breakfast is usually oats, raisins and almonds in pineapple juice, with lots of pineapple chunks, and yoghurt. Lately I've gone for soy yoghurt.

13. I don't drive a car. I don't know how.

14. My son, who's four years old, always asks me to carry him around. He sure can walk, but I've thought that with this I can help him understand that men also can be helping and caring persons.

15. I also carried my daughter when she was four. Maybe even when she was five.

16. I've been known to carry both of them at the same time. It was one of my rare macho moments.

17. I didn't carry them very far.

18. I didn't go to the army. I think I would've gone crazy in midst of the other men.

19. People think I'm a good organizer and a good worker, but basically I'm lazy and anything but organized. My economy is a mess and I think I've done tax frauds.

20. Even though I learned from Quentin Crisp that one should stick to his or her own style, I think I've developed three or four that I change from time to time. I have different styles for Summer and Winter. Then again, who doesn't?

21. That I don't stick into one style is visible also in my writings: I've written about cinema, western writers, pulp fiction, traditional Finnish food, Mika Waltari, forgotten Finnish authors, fostering children, children's literature, Mickey Mouse handkerchiefs, the ideology of collecting, boardgames, novelizations, comics and graphic novels...

22. I always wanted to be a writer. I told my teacher in the first grade that I'm writing a book. It was about two cats having an adventure.

23. I had two cuddly cat dolls when I was a little boy. Their names were Miisu and Maasu.

24. Lately I've been collecting vintage cuddly toys with my wife, Elina. My favourite is a Pink Panther who looks like he's been in a series of foster homes and is now retired at our place.

25. I've also collected Scandinavian plastic ware, vintage swimming trunks, men's suit jackets, ties, seventies collar shirts and T-shirts, old handkerchiefs, dandy overcoats, and lately lycra biker shorts from the eighties. My favourite garment at the moment is a terrycloth overall which makes everyone else laugh but my wife. She thinks it's cute. My wife has a similar garment and I think it's hot.

A Leone tie-in

I just remembered reading that the Sergio Leone film Once Upon a Time in America had also a real tie-in, even though it was originally based on a book. (How often does this happen?) It was written by a paperback writer Lee Hays, who's done other tie-ins, i.e. Columbo and Partridge Family (!), and also other paperbacks as by Chad Calhoun (spy thrillers) and Hilary Desmond (romance). He did the Leone tie-in under his own name.

The book was published by Signet in 1984, the premier year of the film. Here's the cover.

Animal stories in pulps

There has been a lively discussion at the PulpMags e-mail liston animal stories in the pulp magazines, with which the members of the list meant stories in which the animal is the protagonist, a point-of-view character or even a narrator. Gerald W. Page mentioned many authors who specialized in them: Jim Kjelgaard, Paul Annixter, Anthony Rud, Harold Cruikshank. Rud especially wrote lots of animal stories - Page mentions having read one in which the hero was an Octopus!

Page sums up the genre saying:

Animal stories were almost always short, and generally easy to plot. But I enjoy reading them; and in the western pulps when you come across one they're always much more welcome than another short, hastily written story about a cowboy searching for rustlers or a gunman going up against the old sheriff would be.

Page also mentioned stories with elephants: "There are a surprising number of stories about elephants in the pulps as well. I recall one by Anthony Rud and a few others, more vaguely", he said and continued:

One of the Singapore Sammy Shay stories collected in "South of Sulu," is about elephants. "The Pink Elephant" from the October 25, 1930 Short Stories. There's also a fine circus story about Elephants in the August 1948 issue of Blue Book. It's "Elephant Boss" by Robert Barbour Johnson and concerns the efforts of one of an assistant elephant handler trying to protect elephants from the cruelty of a new boss.

I weighed in saying that I've found a western short story by Bertrand Shurtleff in which the main animal is a seal (called Velveena; I don't know where the seal got her name, since she lives wild in nature) and one story by George Cory Franklin with a horse called Rustler. I think it narrates its own stories - I'm not sure, I should check the original story.

But what especially caught my eye was Morgan Holmes's idea for a dinosaur anthology. When asked, he specified the possible contents:

Let's see, as to dinosaur stories. There are the two by Paul L. Anderson in ADVENTURE. One is T. rex vs. Triceratops. Another is Mammoth vs. Sabertooth at tar pit. There are at least two dinosaur stories in Wonder Stories, ("One Prehistoric Night, and I think another called "When Reptiles Ruled"). There is a Paul Annixter story from ADVENTURE around 1931. You could mine some dinosaur stories from THRILLING WONDER STORIES in the late 30s. There are probably some in the Tremaine era ASTOUNDING. I know there is one from WEIRD TALES in 1930 plus another by Edmond Hamilton (can't think of the title right now). Could always throw in "Before the Dawn" by Temple.

Holmes also continued developing new anthologies:

There are probably enough cave man stories to fill a companion volume. Howard Devore told me at pulp con once about his idea for a cave man anthology. It had the usual suspects as de Camp's "The Gnarly Man" and del Rey's "The Day is Done." I would not be in favor of those two because they are over-known. Go for the more obscure stuff. There is enough cave man fiction in Ray Palmer era AMAZING STORIES to fill a book alone. You could use Paul L. Anderson's Cro-Magnon stories, Robert E. Howard's "Spear and Fang," P. Schuyler Miller's "People of the Arrow." There are some cave man stories by Clifford M. Eddy, Jr., a buddy of Lovecraft's in WEIRD TALES from around 1924. I think there is at least one by Charles Willard Diffin in TOP-NOTCH in the mid-30s. Might be a fun book.

The conclusion:

So we have in theory: PULP DOG STORIES, PULP HORSE STORIES, PULP ELEPHANT STORIES, PULP ANIMAL STORIES, PULP DINOSAUR STORIES, PULP CAVE MAN STORIES, and for the hell of it do PULP TARZAN IMITATION STORIES, PULP BARBARIAN STORIES, PULP LOST RACE STORIES.

Fred Grove dead

Western and mystery writer Fred Grove is dead. I haven't seen this in public, even though he died last September. I heard this news from Jim Doherty at the Rara-Avis e-mail list. I asked him whether I could use his post as an obit, but he didn't respond, so I'll be using it only in part.

Grove was born as Frederick Herridge in 1913 (he must've been one of the oldest pulp-related writers alive!) and his mother was part Osage, part Sioux. His father had been a cowboy and a rancher and his grand-grand-father from his mother's side had been Francis Parkman's guide when Parkman was travelling across the Nothern America (and later on wrote The Oregon Trail, 1849).

Grove was the winner of five Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, three for novels and two for short stories. He started out in the pulps in the early fifties - his first short story (that I know of) was titled "The Hangrope Ghost" and it came out in .44 Western Magazine. His other publishing venues included Dime Western and Max Brand's Western.

Best-known as a western writer, Grove wrote at least four crime novels, all set in the 1920's, that grew out of a traumatic experience he had in childhood, says Doherty, and continues at length:

"On 9 March 1923, at the age of 9, while visiting relatives in Fairfax, OK, he was awakened by an explosion a few blocks away. It turned out to be a bomb planted in the home of William Smith and his Osage wife, Rita. The explosion killed both of the Smiths along with their live-in maid, Nettie Brookshire. This was the latest in a string of confirmed murders, along with a suspiciously high number of unexplained deaths, that were plaguing the Osage Tribe, whose oil wealth had made them the single wealthiest population group on the planet. Due to a group of unscrupulous men intent on obtaining their oil rights, they had, in a few short years, also become the population group suffering the highest murder rate on the planet. The case was ultimately solved by a team of FBI agents. It was the first really high-profile case ever investigated by the Bureau.

"Mr. Grove never forgot the experience. Years later, while working as a reporter, he met the former FBI agent who had been the lead investigator on the case, and collaborated with him on a non-fiction book about the Osage investigation. The book never sold, but Grove would put the material to use in his fiction."

Doherty describes some of Grove's novels:

"Grove's first novel, Flame of the Osage (1957; paperback original from Pyramid), was also his first fictionalization of the Osage Indian Murder Case. Nearly two decades later, he returned to the case for two more novels, Warrior Road (1974), about a an Osage Indian who takes it on himself to catch the murderers as a matter of family honor, and Drums Without Warriors (1976), about an FBI agent masquerading a a race horse trainer (horse racing was another big interest of Grove's) in order to investigate the murders under cover. His last novel, The Years of Fear (2002), essentially a rewrite of the unsold non-fiction book so that it read more like a novel, was his final fictional treatment of the Osage case, this time with the actual names of the characters used. When the book was published, Grove said it was his favorite and most personal novel."

I've read only one book by Grove, namely Buffalo Spring (Doubleday 1967), which is a pity, since I liked it a great deal. It was published as a cheap and poorly produced (and abridged) paperback in Finland, even though it's a serious novel, not some slapdash shoot-em-up. Grove pictured American Indians very sympathetically. (The Finnish paperback's title is Buffalolaakso and it came out in 1976, as Montana No. 107.)

Edit: Should've paid more attention. James Reasoner mentioned Grove's death in his blog - and I even commented on it! And here's yet another obit from an Arizona newspaper.

Harry Grey: The Hoods

Over at James Reasoner's blog where he was reviewing Sergio Leone's mob film Once Upon a Time in America, I mentioned the film being based on a paperback original. I didn't remember the book's title, but I looked it up just now (while doing something completely different). It's Harry Grey's The Hoods. The book was published by Signet in 1955, and it seems to be in print from BlackMask.com (as a POD book, and I've heard these are riddled with typos and printing errors).

Here's what an Abebooks seller has to say:

"Generally described as a novel in secondary sources, yet (in this edition at least) definitely given a non-fictional sheen by the cover matter: "one of the most amazingly frank exposures of gangster life ever written" is the front cover tagline, and the author is described as "an ex-Hood himself" by Mickey Spillane in his back-cover blurb. The book is narrated by "Noodles," the character played by Robert De Niro in the 1984 Sergio Leone film version ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, and tells the story of a group of Jewish gangsters from their boyhood-chum days through their rise to prominence in the organized crime milieu of New York's Lower East Side."

There's an earlier film based on another book of Grey's, called Portrait of a Mobster (1958). The film was directed by Joseph Pevney and scripted by Howard Browne.

Edit: Thanks to Tapani Bagge, who noticed my error on the Pevney film. It's now corrected.