True Men's Ads?

The well-known British ad agency Ogilvy and the Finnish ad agency Taivas got an award for this advertisement used in Finland. A friend of mine thought first that this was just a rip-off from some old men's adventure magazine, but it seems that the ads are original. See this link.

An obscure René Goscinny cartoon

This is more of interest to the Finnish readers, but I'm sure some othesr will find it interesting as well. I bought some old children's magazines from a thrift store dealer yesterday, one mainly because there was an old cartoon written by the French René Goscinny in it. The strip, drawn by Berck (known for his humorous Sammy Day gangster graphic novels), was called T.A.X. Suhari and Gorilla (the "TAX Suhari" is a bad pun meaning a taxi driver). It's called Strapontin in French, and I'm sure it was never published anywhere else in Finnish. The magazine I found this in was called Nasta - it was a magazine for the young, published from 1957 to 1965.

Here's a sample of the cartoon. It's about a gorilla that's been captured and given some treatment to become more human-like. The bad guy (in the right frame) tries to set up a trap for the gorilla, who's now too intelligent to be captured again. (Here's another link to Goscinny. I seriously everyone knows Goscinny's masterworks, Lucky Luke, Asterix and especially Iznogoud.)

The last issue of Pulp

I mentioned before that the last issue of my crime fiction fanzine, Isku, just came out. Now the last issue of my other fanzine, Pulp, has come out and is ready to be sent to the subscribers (of which there are not many). Pulp is not a fictionmag, it's about the different aspects of pulp and other popular fiction.

I started publishing Pulp shortly after the Finnish Western Society's magazine, Ruudinsavu (Gunsmoke), was started. The first issue of Pulp came out in 2003. It had articles on Paul Auster's first novel, Squeeze Play, William Johnston's Maxwell Smart novelizations and the Finnish translations of Peggy Gaddis's romantic paperbacks. The magazine was published four times a year. The circulation never rose above 80, and for the last issues the print run was only 40. It covered also the few libraries that have been subscribers.

There have been issues that I've been very fond of: the two issues consisting fully of Edgar Rice Burroughs-related material (the works of ERB's relatives, ERB pastiches, ERB copies and so forth), the issue that was solely about sex and sleaze in pulps and paperbacks, the issue that was solely about the Finnish pulp fiction... At times I was even able to use some of the material in Pulp in my other, more commercial work, such as my book on the forgotten works of Mika Waltari, the famous Finnish novelist and fictioneer. I also liked the logo very much. It was done with an old typewriter of my friend - thanks, Lotta!

Jukka Murtosaari was a great supporter of Pulp from early on and he provided the magazine with many interesting and meticulously (sometimes too meticulously...) researched pieces on obscure paperbacks and pulp and paperback illustrators. One could do a book solely on Jukka's articles for the magazine. It was just too bad Pulp was always a black-and-white magazine - the photos of the pulp and other covers just don't look right in b&w.

But the process really wore me out: editing the mag, writing the articles, asking others to do articles, getting the mag into print, sending out copies... I was losing money with this, so I decided to pull the plug. So it's bye-bye, Pulp, we'll miss ya. There's lots of stuff that was meant to be done (such as the theme issue on TV and movie novelizations, the kiddies' pulp, the religious pulp, the article on the Flash Gordon novels, etc.) and I really wanted to get deeper into the Finnish pulpy fiction, so this is a missed opportunity. We'll have to see if I get something published in a blog format. We'll definitely have to see...

There's also a possibility that I'll publish a collection of my own articles that came out in Pulp. That should have an interest for 50-100 buyers. At least.

On top of the post is the cover of the last issue. The issue features two articles by Jukka Murtosaari, the other one being about the Finnish reprint series of the Fawcett Gold Medal books, called Kultamitalikirjat, and the other one about the illustrator R. G. Harris. (Sorry for the bad photo: it was taken with my cell phone.)

PS. Don't bother to ask me for a copy, since they are all gone already.

Margaret Millar

I've been writing an entry for a forth-coming book 100 American Crime Writers on Margaret Millar. I promised to do a 2,500-word article on her, but it's proven quite difficult, for some reason or another. (One of the reasons is that I'm writing in another language other than Finnish.) It started getting better when I decided I'll have to reread some of Millar's books. And it seems I read Beast in View (1955) for the first time in my life, since I didn't remember anything about it! And I'm sure glad I did, since it's an excellent psychological thriller, with lots of noirish overtones and a very convincing twist in the end. It didn't win the Edgar for nothing. The only bad thing about the book is the way Millar depicts homosexuals, as weak perverts with cold hands. But hey, it's 1955!

I also read The Listening Walls from 1959, and while not equally good as Beast in View, still a very worthwhile book about two young women in Mexico and the other one getting killed in what seems like a suicide. There's also a private eye called Elmer Dodd, short and somewhat overweight. Beast in View stars a similar character, a family friend and solicitor, who's asked to care of some awkward things, but he ends up acting like a private eye, even solving the case - this shows that Millar was interested in private eyes, but just didn't want to use one hero regularly. (Or then it was her husband's idea: "Why don't you use one of these private eyes, they can be quite handy?")

I started thinking about Mexico in Millar's work. It shows quite often, many times almost as the unconscious of the depressed and lonely Americans she writes about. It's a place where everyone wants to go, to forget, to start anew - it's also a place wherein you can set lies easily, as happens in Beast in View (which otherwise takes place only in Los Angeles). Mexico is important in Ask For Me Tomorrow, one of Millar's later Tom Aragon novels. Private eye Steve Piñata in Stranger In My Grave is half-Mexican. And then there's of course The Listening Walls. I'm not sure, but I've got a feeling Mexico plays an important part also in The Air That Kills - I've read that years ago (twice, I think), but I'm not sure anymore and I can't find my copy of the book. Anyone can confirm my suspicion?

Frank Miller's and Zack Snyder's 300

Last Friday night we were out having fun with my friends from our victorious movie pub quiz team. Between hopping from one bar to another, we were at one of my team mate's place and watched the Blu-Ray edition of the movie 300. Someone might think that I'd go for a movie about sword-yielding Spartans, but I thought - and all of my friends - the movie sucked big time. There were several points in the movie that I really disliked.

First. There's no plot. The movie is basically one long battle scene. There is some intrigue behind the lines, but not enough to merit a mention. I think the same marred Ridley Scott's Gladiator for me: the plot wasn't just interesting enough.

Second. The movie is full of empty posturing. The dialogue is silly and full of meaningless one-liners. The movie is directed with a bent toward empty posturing. Some of the battle scenes are not very exciting, since Snyder likes to stop the action by showing blood flow in slow motion or some such nonsense. Everything looks nice on a photo, but the drama just doesn't move along.

Third. The movie is politically so appalling that you feel like John Milius is a Commie pinko. It's not very hard to understand that Sparta is the USA, the ugly, hideous and back-stabbing witches are the UN and the Persians are - well, Persians (or Iraqis). Miller and Snyder like to show everyone else but Spartans are ugly or weak (the other Greeks that come to help the Spartans; they are presumably the British). Or a homosexual and a pervert - when Xerxes, the King of the Persians, came on the scene I burst out laughing and started to sing Sylvester's disco classic "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real". The movie also shows that the conflict between Persia and Sparta is one-sided, that the Persians just move in on Sparta - oh poor, poor Sparta!

Aside from the political overtones (they really not undertones) of 300, it's possible to see the plotlessness and the slow-motion being good examples of the new Hollywood cinema that's more based on videogames and their aesthetique, and not on old-fashioned drama, like Spartacus or Ben-Hur. It's more about the cinema of attraction rather than drama. It's also possible to see that these new historical films take the genre back to the its older roots, the ancient myths, Greek myths, Beowulf, etc., where the plot is not the crucial matter. However, I can't stop thinking that both Gladiator and 300 are just utter bores.

A pair of Morgan Kane jeans

I spotted this pair of vintage Morgan Kane jeans at the UFF thrift store earlier today. I believe they are from the seventies. The size was a kiddies' (or a small lady's) size, so no point for me to buy them. Unless as a trophy. Must think about this further.

Happy 1st of May

Haven't been posting lately and won't do it now, but let me just say: Have a happy 1st of May everyone!

And do check out Patti Abbott's blog for the Friday's Forgotten Book entry. (I hope there's one this week.)

Q&A with Christa Faust

I finally got around to ask some questions from Christa Faust, the writer of the admirable Money Shot, out now in Finnish as Koston enkeli ("Avenging Angel") from Arktinen Banaani, with the cover illustration by Jukka Murtosaari.

Money Shot/Koston enkeli is about a former porn actress Angel Dare, who's now running an agency. She finds herself mixed up in an attempt to get back a bag of money belonging to the East European Mafia - she's beaten up, choked and thrown in the trunk of a car. She decides she'll get her revenge. It's a magnificently written piece of hardboiled pulp.

Christa Faust is a versatile writer whose career has ranged from hardcore horror written with Poppy Z. Brite to movie novelizations, like Snakes on a Plane. She blogs here and occasionally posts gorgeous examples of her collection of vintage shoes. She's been posting very interesting and enthusiastic comments on the Los Angeles Film Noir Festival screenings, so be sure to check out her blog!

You are one of the few female practitioners of the new hardboiled or neo-noir writers. Why do you think this genre doesn't gather more female writers - there were more in the past, like Leigh Brackett and Margaret Millar.

Maybe there aren't a lot, but there are strong, talented women writing hardboiled and noir fiction today. Women like Megan Abbott and Cathi Unsworth. What I really like about today's female noir authors is that they don't hide their gender with masculine cliche and try to write just like the boys. They bring a new, distinctly female perspective to the genre.

You've created an amazing character in Angel Dare. Someone might think that this kind of book - violent thriller about porn industry - would be about an ultracool vixen whacking men, like in the film Bitch Slap. Was this something you deliberately set out to do?

I never had any interest in telling a story like Bitch Slap, because that's already been done a thousand times. I wanted to create something a little more complicated. More grown-up. And more realistically female. I'm also very tired of superhero chicks that weigh 12 pounds, but can still magically kick a 200 pound man's ass. In high heels, no less. That's a porn scenario, not a real story.

You don't really criticize the porn industry in your book, and I've already received some negative comments on that. What would you say to that?

I portray both the positive and negative sides of the industry in a very realistic and even handed way, just like I would for any other setting. People are free to form their own opinions. As a pulp author, it's not my job to "criticize" anything, just to tell a good story.

The other characters in Money Shot also seem very real. How much did you use people you know personally?

I always use bits and pieces of people I know personally in my fiction, though never an exact copy.

You've already written a sequel to Money Shot. What is Choke Hold about?

Choke Hold, which may or may not be the final title of the new book, involves Angel getting mixed up with unsanctioned cage fighting and drug smuggling. It will be coming out from Hard Case Crime in February of 2011.

Who or what are your influences? You've dedicated your book to Richard S. Prather - can you tell us more about that?

I always had a thing for Prather's Shell Scott novels. They're addictive, like potato chips, and I love his outrageous sense of humor. When Hard Case Crime announced they were planning to reprint Prather's more serious novel The Peddler, I was very excited and posted about it on my blog. Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai read my post and asked me to submit a novel of my own. The rest, as they say, is history. I'd been a Prather fan for years, but it wasn't until I got accepted by Hard Case Crime that I got up the nerve to write to him and tell him how much I loved his books. He wrote me back, a single warm and encouraging letter that I have framed on my office wall. Sadly, we never had a chance to develop an ongoing correspondence. He died before Money Shot hit the stands.

Koston enkeli available in bookstores and through net shops, for example here.

Joe Gores's Spade & Archer

I finished reading Gores's prequel to The Maltese Falcon yesterday. I was at it for quite a while, mainly because there was too much commotion around here with my daughter being with us and what not, but also because the book proved out to be a bit of a disappointment.

Gores emulates Hammett's style pretty well, with the emphasis being on the surface of people and things, but the story just won't get started. It's only halfway in the middle when I really got interested in what was going on, and even then I couldnt' follow the plot all the way through. There were probably one or two too many subplots. And the main baddie came almost out of nowhere and seemed just a bit too improbable. The ethos of capitalism's rotting greediness that is so prevalent in The Maltese Falcon is largely missing, even though Gores throws in a subplot about the Leftist movement in the San Fransisco yards in the 1920's.

Spade & Archer should've been shorter and tighter to really work, but there's much to like, too. The ending lines are great. On the left there's the cover for the Finnish edition that is just out.

Some great films seen lately and other ephemera

I've been really busy during the last two weeks, hence no posts. I'll try to get some done in the near future.

But, em, you know, I get a feeling that everyone thinks I see only bad movies, like the recent Silent Trigger. I've seen quite a many great films lately, but for some reason or another I haven't written about them here. They include John Huston's James Joyce film The Dead, which is simply marvellous, Georges Franju's great, but slightly obscure Les yeux sans visage (AKA The Horror Chamber of Doctor Faustus), and, just late last night, Terrence Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line.

There was also the Festival of Finnish Cinema, during which I managed to see only some movies, but they included Seppo Huunonen's Karvat, about which I've written before (see here; I'll add the link later, there's some trouble with this computer), and Visa Mäkinen's exploitation flick Yön saalistajat/Hunters of the Night from 1984. Visa Mäkinen is an independent movie maker from Pori, where I used to live, and this is his only action film, from a script by Kari Levola, a writer who's now living in Raisio near Turku, where I now live. I know him, and he's a very nice guy, and I can see what he tried to do with the script for this film, but for some reason the delivery fails at all accounts: the direction, the actors, the editing. But the film is more fun for it. I'd like to see this remade. Maybe I'll have to start producing films on my own...

Have I been reading anything? Yeah, I've read two novels by Tracy Chevalier, The Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels, which I recommend heartily; I read them, because we are doing a sequel to the reference book on historical novelists with Jukka Halme and Sari Polvinen. I'll start one of Robert Harris's novels on Rome any day now.

I've also been reading Spade & Archer by Joe Gores (the Finnish translation just came out as Sam Spaden etsivätoimisto), but I'm not really getting into it. Spade seems a bit too stale. Was he this boring in Hammett's books? I don't think so. But I'll write more about the book once I finish it.

As for the family matters... Sigh. I just heard my daughter and her mother will be spending three more years in the Central Europe. These will be hard years. And I don't know what Kauto will think of this - he hasn't been told yet.

Russell Mulcahy and Dolph Lundgren: Silent Trigger

I spotted an interesting film on VHs in a thrift store for 50 cents: Silent Trigger (1996), directed by Russell Mulcahy, starring Dolph Lundgren. Sure it wasn't anything to wet your pants (I mean: Dolph Lundgren?!), but I was intrigued by the concept: an action figure like Lundgren under the hypercinematic direction of Russell Mulcahy, known for Highlander, Ricochet and Razorback. I remember liking Ricochet, though I haven't seen it since the premiere, and there are certain qualities about Razorback. For some reason or another, I'm not sure if I've ever seen any of the Highlander movies. I liked Mulcahy's made-for-television film on World War I, called The Lost Batallion. While Mulcahy tended to show off his techniques a bit too much, it didn't really diminish the film's value. But yeah, I know, Mulcahy also did The Shadow...

Some commentators on IMDB call Silent Trigger an art-house action film. I wouldn't really call it an art-house film, but there are certain interesting moments throughout the movie. The screenplay uses a flashback structure, with scenes mingling freely within each other, and some of the plot points are never wholly explained, which brings certain New Wave movies to mind. Then again, the motivation behind the characters is badly developed, the dialogue is stilted and full of clichés, and the main tension in the plot is being developed all too long. The whole notion of two professional assassins being held back by a heroin-addicted guard is stupid. Mulcahy directs with his usual tricks and often shows flair for great shots.

And then there's Dolph Lundgren. I don't really know what to say of him. To say he can't act is pretty banal, but there's not much charisma to him either. He's not even very good-looking, even though his physique is impressive. He's not very well suited to play this assassin, who's suddenly getting tired of his job and its political implications. It's a theme that someone like Kevin Wignall handles superbly, but Russell Mulcahy and Dolph Lundgren are not Kevin Wignall. (Yeah, different media, but still.)

Kauto can read

My son Kauto has just learnt to read! He read at least two quotes from a cartoon all by himself - and he'd never seen the cartoons before. We are totally amazed with Elina - we knew this was coming, but still it strikes us by surprise.

And before you ask: Kauto is five. Okay, five and a half.

Tapani Bagge's The Jack finally finished!

Some of you may remember that I've been translating Tapani Bagge's first crime novel, Puhaltaja (2002), into English for the past few years. Now the first version is finally complete. I might even say "finally fucking complete", since I've been at this at least for the last five years. The book was supposed to come out as "The Jack" from JT Lindroos's Point Blank Press, but Point Blank Press is no more. I'm sure we'll come up with something.

In the meantime, here and here are two stories by Tapani for your reading pleasure.

Once I manage to get some editing done, I'll post some excerpts of Tapani's novel.

Another blog post on another blog

A slightly pulpish item on another blog of mine here. In Finnish, that is.

The latest issue of my fanzine, Isku

Here's the cover by Timo Ronkainen for the latest issue of my print crime fiction zine, Isku. The cover illo goes for my story, "Joe Novak and the Case of the Science Fiction Writer", and it's purported to be a Vega Books paperback with that title. I'm pretty sure that Vega never published science fiction, but it serves a sort of poetic justice in the story. (If they did, I'd be interested to hear.)

Here are the contents (in Finnish):

Harri Erkki: Kellari (alun perin Vappu-Vippu -lehdessä vuodelta 1980 [!])
Gerald Page: Murhaaja (Planetary Stories -nettilehdestä parin vuoden takaa, veteraanin perinteinen aikamatkustustarina, jossa yllätysloppu)
Eino Liekki: Professori Tähtiniemen hermoklinikka (salaperäisen salanimen tarina Seikkailujen Maailmasta vuodelta 1940)
Kieran Shea: Koko lähtee lomalle (Plots With Guns -nettilehdestä parin vuoden takaa, Shea uusi novellisti; suom. Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo)
Juri Nummelin: Joe Novak ja scifi-kirjailijan tapaus (ei varsinaisesti scifi-tarina)

The Killer trailer

Dave Zeltserman's Killer (out now) is simply one of the best crime novels I've read. Not in a long time, not in ages, not this year, but ever. And here's the trailer for it. Check it out.

The history of French animation

I was at the Tampere Short Film Festival last weekend, the festival I've attended to for the last 20 years, with some (one or two) one-year pauses. This year I was particularly interested in the three-show series consisting of old French animated films, ranging from Émile Reynaud's cartoons from the 1870's to films made just after WWII. There were many films I hadn't previously seen, even though some of the films were familiar to me.

The earliest examples were pretty crude, as you can imagine, but there's also a sense of invention and real magic, especially in the two films by Émile Cohl, his first, Phantasmagorie, from 1908, and a later one, called Les Locataires d´à côté from 1909. The latter one is a good example of early Surrealism that still flourished in commercial cinema during that time.

The second screening of the series was the best. There were the best-known examples of French art animation, like Berthold Bartosch's Expressionistic L'Idée (1932) and Alexandre Alexeïeff's Night on a Bald Mountain (1933). The most striking example - and one I had never seen - was La Joie de vivre (1937) by two British artists, Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin. It's timeless, could've been made in the sixties or seventies - or even now, with some alterations. It's made in a free-flowing, fluent and fast style, with only outline drawings. I can find only one link with an extract from the film, and the quality is poor, but it's here nevertheless.

The third screening consisted of films made in the fourties, during the war and just after it. The most interesting of these was Jean Painlevé's clay animation, Bluebeard. It was a wild experience, utterly unrealistic, in weird colours, with crude and grotesque humour reminiscent of Rabelais and his Gargantua and Pantagruel, with heads being chopped and all. Painlevé has seen a renaissance in later years, with a DVD collection of his short films having been released; he was a Surrealist, but also a scientist, who used his fellow Surrealists' ideas in his scientific films, the best-known of which is probably Le Vampire from 1945, a horror documentary about a blood-sucking bat.

Also Paul Grimault's two films in the screening were very good, reminding one of the best American cartoons of the era, with only more artistic ideas thrown in - for example L'épouvantail/The Scarecrow from 1943 in which the devoid landscape is an echo from Surrealist paintings.

One of the most interesting and most boring films in the screening was André-Édouard Marty's Callisto from 1943. The ancient tale of Greek antiquity was told in art deco style, with a very slow pace, in artistically high standard, but also with boring rigidity. It was said that Marty made this in order to show how the French should be making animations in the new Europe (we have to remember that the Nazis were on the winning side in 1942 and 1943 when this was made). I made a quick association to Finland and thought that this is how Finnish animators could've worked had there been any animation industry in the country in the 1940's. (I had especially sculpturer Wäinö Aaltonen in mind - he never made any cartoons, that's for sure, but I think the Founding Fathers of Finland might've called for him, if there had been a need.)

Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie:



Grimault's L'épouvantail:

Larry Cohen's Perfect Strangers/Blind Alley

I bought an old VHS cassette of a film that seems not to have been released on DVD: Larry Cohen's Perfect Strangers AKA Blind Alley, Umpikuja in Finnish. It's from 1984 and shot on very low budget, with only a small cast. I thought this was a very interesting film, even though not very good on all accounts. I read somewhere that this was shot already in 1981, but released only three years later.

Perfect Strangers is a mob thriller of a hit man who commits murder on a back alley and is witnessed by a seemingly mute three-year old kid, Matthew. The hit man is forced to make contact with the kid's mother and eventually kill the kid. The hit man, a charming sociopath, makes the woman fall in love with him in order to get to Matthew. Seems like the guy falls in love, too. We never actually find out.

There's much of interest here. There are some pretty good suspense scenes, especially the one with the kid playing around in the hit man's apartment with the mob bosses threatening the hit man. The local scenery is good. The three-year old kid seems totally plausible - I thought it was a small wonder Cohen gets so good a performance out of him! There are some interesting connections to the cult classic Liquid Sky: the female lead, Anne Carlisle, had a double role in that, and there's also a weird private eye played by Otto Von Wernherr who also featured in Liquid Sky.

What's more interesting is the film's connection to the women's lib movement: Anne Carlisle's character is a single mother who takes part in the feminist demonstrations. We also see some pretty convincing scenes of the feminists' meetings and the support they provide for Carlisle's character. This is connected with Carlisle's ex-husband who's violent and aggressive, even at one point snatching the three-year old Matthew. Cohen doesn't take sides, but this is a far cry from any Hollywood movie depicting feminists and their cause. An easy way out in the film would've been the ex-husband turning good and fighting the hit man. Cohen doesn't take the easy way, which is always for good.

However, there are some negative things to be said about Perfect Strangers. The actors are not very good, and some of the characters are not very well written - especially the lieutenant assigned to the case of the back alley murder. The hit man's and Anne Carlisle's relationship seems a bit implausible or at least far-fetched. You'd think a woman like Carlisle wouldn't fall in love with a guy like the hit man. He's played by Brad Rijn who's actually pretty good-looking, but is also totally in a different league than Carlisle.

But all in all, a very interesting little movie, which should be available on DVD. (A small note: the Finnish VHS publication has the same image on the cover as the one I found on the web, displayed above.)

Christa Faust's Money Shot out in Finnish

Christa Faust's Money Shot is out in Finnish, as Koston enkeli. Here's the cover by Jukka Murtosaari; more details in the next posting - which is in Finnish.

The Finnish title means "the avenging angel". Koston enkeli was also the Finnish title of Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45. I hope someone likes the connection.

PS. It was also the designated Finnish title of Meir Zarchi's Day of the Woman AKA I Spit On Your Grave, but that one was banned in Finland. Craig R. Baxley also has a movie called The Avenging Angel, and oh, the third Die Hard film was called Koston enkeli in Finnish.

Christa Faustin Koston enkeli ulkona!

Amerikkalaisen hardboiledin kovin naisnimi, Christa Faust, on saanut ensimmäisen suomennoksensa, kun hänen sensaatiomainen romaaninsa Koston enkeli (Money Shot, 2007) on juuri ilmestynyt Arktisen Banaanin julkaisemana.

Koston enkeli kertoo Angel Daresta, keski-ikää lähestyvästä pornoalan ammattilaisesta, joka joutuu keskelle väkivaltaista huijauksien peliä. Kirja alkaa, kun Angel havahtuu lähes kuoliaaksi hakattuna paskaisen auton takaluukusta Los Angelesin syrjäisellä parkkipaikalla. Kirja yhdistää B-filmimäistä toimintaa pornoelokuvan suoruuteen, mutta ei ole mikään Bitch Slap -tyyppinen itsetietoinen pastissi, vaan rehellinen kertomus haavoittuvan naisen matkasta kostoon. Faust kulkee pornoteollisuuden maailmassa kuin kotonaan - hän onkin entinen domina.

Tässä amerikkalaisen kirjailijan ja bloggaajan James Reasonerin arvio Koston enkelistä.

Koston enkelin kannen on tehnyt veteraani ja pitkän linjan pulp-harrastaja Jukka Murtosaari.

Kirjaa myytävänä kaikkialla missä kirjoja myydään, mutta valitettavasti on mahdollista, että joihinkin kauppoihin sitä joutuu tilaamaan. Paras paikka tilata lienee jokin verkkokauppa, kuten Booky. Hinta vain 8,90!

Italian disco at its very best

I dare you to watch this. Just how can that.. that.. that thing stay on her, even when she's shaking that.. that.. that thing of hers?

A bit more about the Harlequin vintage collection

I noticed that someone had posted this link to my earlier post on Harlequin's collection of vintage crime. This follows closely, with quotes, what Harlequin had done to the books they reprinted.

Three reasons I love noir

1. Noir tells about ordinary people you can sympathize with.

2. Noir is uncompromising about why people do the things they do.

3. Noir offers a surprise in the end.

Dave Zeltserman's Killer is about all of these. It's about an old man who gets out of prison after ratting out about his boss, a mob boss who hired him to do 28 killings during some 30 years. We follow him trying to get his life together. He's not going to do another gig, he's not going to do a reform, he just tries to stay alive for some time and possibly meet his children. We see him almost fall in love. We feel for the guy.

We also see glimpses of his past life. He's a ruthless bastard, but he's also reasoning that killing was just his work and that he really loved his family. I love the way how Zeltserman lets the killer's paranoia sink in. It's also worthy to point out how the scenes in the past are told in the present tense and the scenes in the recent are told in the past tense - it's not just a gimmick, it's very important thematically.

And the surprise ending... I was trembling after reading the final pages. It's a surprise not only plot-wise, but Zeltserman also turns the theme of his novel totally upside down.

I'm ready to rank Dave Zeltserman alongside Jason Starr as my favourite new noir author.

Here's Ed Gorman on the book, and here's another blog on the book.

The Finnish translation of Don Tracy's Criss-Cross

I reviewed Don Tracy's Criss-Cross recently and mentioned not having been able to check if the Finnish translation from the fifties is an abridged one. I had finally an opportunity to check and I can tell you it's not abridged. The translation is somewhat toned down and, for example, all the ethnic slurs, like "wop" and "dago", have been taken out and replaced with "guy" and similar neutral epithets. Some of Tracy's short, clipped sentences have been connected to make longer sentences.

But all in all, it seems an above average translation, which is unusual for the Finnish paperback publishers of the fifties. More often than not, they used to cut huge chunks of the original books, sometimes censoring, but also to make the books shorter and cheaper to print.

The Finnish translation came from Nide that operated from Hämeenlinna, and the publishing year is 1957. The Finnish title means "She-Wolf", which is not bad, but I'm not sure if it really depicts Tracy's novel. If someone knows from what book the cover illo is, please let me know. (It could be from the reprint of Criss-Cross, called The Cheat.)

Thundercrack!

With the same people I saw the stupendous Hard Ticket to Hawaii I recently watched another cult classic, Thundercrack! It's - umm, what can I say? - stupendous. It's a hilarious spoof of old silent film melodramas and the liberated porn of the seventies. It's shot in black & white and the action takes place in a house that looks like it's haunted, but the people inside the house seem to be only interested in getting each other to bed. Some problems arise from a love-sick gorilla seeking someone to hold hands with. And a locked door behind which there's a man with huge testicles... (The DVD we watched seemed to slightly cut from these scenes, so I can't really say what was behind this subplot.)

Thundercrack! is surely not for everyone, as there's lots and lots of rough sex of many kinds (this must be the only film in the annals of cinema in which a gorilla jerks off another man), and it surely is not necessarily for those who take their films seriously, as it is not very well made or acted. There are occasional moments of genius at work, bits here and there in dialogue (which is absurdly hilarious at times) and in cinematography and editing. At times Thundercrack! looks like a Soviet silent film, something made by Lev Kuleshov or Vsevolod Pudovkin. I'm not sure if this is intentional.

Thundercrack! was directed by one Curt McDowell and written by George Kuchar, better known as one of the Kuchar brothers, the famous underground movie makers of the sixties. This was Kuchar's attempt at mainstream cinema - looks like he couldn't have made a proper mainstream film even if he had tried very, very hard. (Kuchar also plays one of the leads.)

Thundercrack! is pretty hard to describe. It is a bit too long (well, not only a bit - it's almost 30 minutes too long) and it's best to see with some beer and good friends with whom you can laugh your ass off. Yet it's worth tracking down - if you're into this kind of thing, that is.

It's interesting to note, though, that while Thundercrack! is strictly an underground movie, it's totally free of any political content. I wrote recently about John Carpenter's They Live, a so-so horror-cum-action movie from the late eighties. It is much more political than Thundercrack!, and for some reason or another I find this, well, interesting. Is it often that there's more politics in the marginals of popular culture than there is in subversive underground culture?

One extra point: I'm sure David Lynch picked something up from this movie, especially the way Isabella Rossellini looks like in Wild at Heart. The woman living in the haunted-looking house looks exactly like her - and even the way she acts, mumbling to herself, throwing up over her wig that falls down the toilet, could be from a Lynch movie.

Marton Taiga's SF stories

Posted a little bibliographic piece on a Finnish pulp writer, Marton Taiga, and his science fiction stories on another blog of mine here.

My daughter

I haven't been blogging much - that's mainly because my daughter (now 10 years old, 11 later this year) is spending her Winter holiday in Finland and has been mainly staying with us for this week. She's going to her mother in a couple of hours and they are leaving back abroad early tomorrow morning. These are always difficult moments. My daughter is shy and doesn't really seem interested in getting melodramatic, so it's just normal life before we part again - she's playing with Kauto, I'm sitting at the computer, Elina is tidying up places, we're talking casually about lunch. And then it's all over again for five weeks.

John Carpenter's They Live

Okay, back to normal after The Great Jimi Ellroy Experience. Haven't really felt like working (even though I've done some editing*) and I've been watching movies. On an old VHS tape I watched John Carpenter's They Live. I've never really felt easy with Carpenter - he's at the same time skillful and pedestrian. His direction is sometimes good, but his scripts are blah. They Live is more interesting, though, than many of his films.

I was wondering why a writer in a video guide (from 1993, I use this frequently while I'm on sofa watching telly, but can't tell who's behind the book) says that the two thirds of the film are "harebrained fun", while the same two thirds are also very serious and almost subversive! How many films have you seen from the late eighties in which the US police attacks a slum village populated with homeless and unemployed people? And how many in which there's a large conspiracy to get people to obey and just consume happily? I just gotta give Carpenter credit for being so bold in his satire. He also has some nice male-bonding touches that are reminiscent of classic Western films.

But then everything changes. The film becomes a mediocre action-fest, with lots of shotguns and not much tension. The satire is almost lost. But then again, the idea of the yuppies of the late eighties as aliens... there's something in there.

The actors are not very good, especially wrestler Roddy Piper in the lead hasn't got much of a charisma. (And he has a very stupid hair.) And his character does so many mind-boggling things it's a wonder he stays alive.

* I did the final edits for my translation of Duane Swierczynski's The Blonde. It will be out in June as Vaaleaverikkö. I also edited a Finnish crime novel manuscript that will be published next Fall. More on that later.

A Google translation

Okay, here's a Google translation of my Ellroy interview if you want to take a look. It's pretty bad and awkward and there are some Finnish words in there, but take a look anyway. I've never done this before and don't know how long the link will work.

Ellroy and me: The Final Countdown

Some things you need to know about James Ellroy:

1. he doesn't like journalists or interviewers
2. he likes women more than men
3. he doesn't like fans
4. he wants to control the interviewing process (I believe he controls those made by women reporters by flirting)

Okay, I know I'm not necessarily the world's best interviewer, even when I conduct them in Finnish, but you'd think the interviewee would want to take some of the responsibility. Apparently not, when we talk about James Ellroy. Just before me he talked with a young female reporter who asked what Ellroy's first impression of Finland was and such pretty light-fare stuff. Ellroy seemed relaxed and talked with his feet up on the coffee table. Okay, I can handle this, I told myself - being of course very, very nervous about the whole thing.

But when I walked up to Ellroy and told him I'm a fan and have been reading his novels for over 15 years, I noticed instantly he stiffened up and went into a defensive mood. What gives here? You don't want to hear someone likes your novels? That shouldn't be my problem, should it? I can understand there are fans who are pains in the ass, but I wouldn't call myself that.

We started off pretty well, though, with me speaking in rather clumsy English - I don't know why this sometimes happens, but it just did. Then I made a mistake in my questions: I asked Ellroy about Haiti. "Haiti?! What have I got to say about Haiti?!" Well, I tried to reason, you write about Haiti in Blood's a Rover, CIA and the mob are taking it over... "Wait, wait, it's not Haiti, it's the Dominican Republic, they are two different things." Oops! I had got fixated on Haiti for some reason and honestly thought it's Haiti they are invading with casinos and all and hadn't bothered to check my copy of Blood's a Rover. My bad, totally. Apparently after that I was nobody in Ellroy's books: total moron who hasn't even read the books. I said I was sorry about my mistake, but it was all downhill from there.

Especially when I wanted to talk about politics. I think Ellroy's books are hugely political - they are mostly about how politics and the negative feelings (anger, jealousy, lust, aggression) intertwine in national and global level -, but clearly he doesn't want to talk about that. I know he's said that he doesn't want to write about later times, i.e. Nixon, Carter, the Bushes, Reagan etc., but I still wanted to ask about that, especially the Reagan era. "Don't you think there would be many fascinating characters, like Oliver North..." At this point, Ellroy gets mad, waves a finger at me and yells: "Don't! Stop right there! Reagan is one of my heroes. I'm sure history will prove him right. He defeated Communism." This, of course, made its way into my article and has, perhaps deservedly, become somewhat of a cult item, alongside with Ellroy's rant that he hates Communism, since he doesn't want to pay more taxes. "Look at Sweden! They pay fucking huge taxes and they are still all drunks." I seriously don't know what Ellroy meant with this.

But as I said, I got a great article about this. I had to write it on spot, in two hours and send it along right away, the article of 5000 characters. I knew instantly that I had to write it from the viewpoint of the author getting angry at the interviewer. It worked miraculously well. This is one of the best pieces I'll ever write, period. Someone said to me that it was better than the interview published in Helsingin Sanomat, the largest newspaper in Finland. Don't know about that, but at least it was different from any other interview Ellroy made during his three-day visit in Finland.

Any new info from Ellroy himself? Well, he'll have a new book out next Fall: The Hilliker Curse is about the women in his life. And he'll be writing another quartet set longer back in time. He'll abandon the stylistic excess (he didn't want to elaborate). He's not going to write the Warren Harding novel.

I'll post the interview here. Use Google to try to make sense out of it. Hope it works. And here's, with a Google translation, a short news item about how Ellroy got mad at a Swedish reporter, mainly for similar reasons.

Ellroy and me

How did it go? HOW DID IT GO? Oh boy, how it went. Ellroy pretty much went to his defensive mood and started attacking me and I got too clumsy and made some stupid mistakes and it didn't really go very well. He got sore, very sore, and got mad at me at one point. (Not sure, of course, whether he was just fucking with me.)

But: I got a great story. James Ellroy pissed off in Finland? You can't have better stuff than that!

More details later! But not the recording of the interview! I'll destroy it the first minute I can.

James Ellroy and me: on Sunday

I'll be interviewing none other than James Ellroy on coming Sunday - he's on PR tour and will be in Finland for two days, with at least two public performances. I'm wildly excited and very, very, VERY nervous about this and I'm pretty much afraid I'll screw up something.

Any hints, folks? Is there someone who's interviewed Ellroy? How can one stop his panty-sniffin' act and get to the point? I've got only half an hour for this and I'm afraid we'll spend it listening to him howling.

Seppo Huunonen's exploitation flick from the seventies

Finland has nearly never produced a good share of trashy exploitation flicks. Teuvo Tulio's noir films from the fourties and fifties had some of that quality, as did some of Veikko Itkonen's films, but the only real entrepreneur in that category has been Visa Mäkinen whose indie-produced films have been very poor indeed, almost up to the so-bad-it's-good point.

There's a serious contender, however, lurking in the early seventies. Seppo Huunonen's Karvat (Hair - don't get this mixed up with, well, Hair) from 1974 is just that: trashy exploitation flick. I think it purports to be something else, since there's a good dose of parody, irony and metafictional narrative in the film. There are many things in the film that make it a forgotten classic (it was released in video in the early eighties, but otherwise it has disappeared completely, it has never been shown on television, for example): Paroni Paakkunainen's great funky music (which I'll steal when I make my feature film debut), some very bloody violence (this was X-rated, which is very rare for a Finnish film), lots of sex and nudity plus all-encompassing sleaziness. The most exciting fact is that this was based on Lionel White's Obsession (1962), American paperback original classic that was earlier filmed as Pierrot le fou by Jean-Luc Godard! I don't know whether Seppo Huunonen knew about Godard's film, but it's still amazing. And this must be the only film made in Finland that's based on an American crime novel. (White's first name is written as "Lionell" in the credits.)

The film is a mixed bag. As I said, there are some self-parodic moments, and several leave with a strong WTF sensation, especially the scene in which a couple making love is photographed with animated handkerchiefs! There's also a weird allusion to an European Disney character, Super-Goofy (Superhessu) and one friggin' weird resurrection. This makes the film pretty awkward to watch at times, but it also makes it wild and unpredictable. What also makes the film pretty awkward is that the actors are all pretty bad, without charisma or even good looks. You'd think that with this kind of noir story the femme fatale should be a knock-out, but not in this one, no sir! The film isn't a total turkey, though, as this review says it is.

The film is coming - on my suggestion, even though I watched it only now - to the festival of Finnish film in Turku in the beginning of April, but I'll be posting details later. Strongly recommended, if you're anywhere near Turku. Determined to be a cult classic!

Ah, by the way: there's a scene in the film in which the protagonist reads Shakespeare's condensed plays. There's another book on the sofa. It's upside down, but the cover up. I recognized it immediately, but had to go to the shelf to verify: it was the Finnish translation of Margaret Millar's noir classic A Stranger in My Grave/Muukalainen haudassani.

Sorry, no pictures!

Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep

I've written about Megan Abbott's earlier novels here and here. I found some extra time to read her latest, Bury Me Deep, that's been praised quite a lot in different media. It's worthy of the praise, but it's more literary and slow-paced than many of the new noir novels that have been getting attention lately. I think it's the most literary novel of Megan Abbott's works, even though Queenpin came very close to being a good example of postmodern historical novel.

Bury Me Deep is a story about a young woman who gets mixed up in foul play, usually conducted by men, just like in other novels by Megan Abbott. There are also other women, who are not what they first seem to be. Bury Me Deep takes place in 1931 and it is full of historical details, but they are quite nicely worked into the narrative flow. Especially tuberculosis plays a pretty big part in the novel.

I had some trouble getting into the rhythm of the narrative and the seemingly very accurate early thirties' vocabulary and slang, but after the things get rough, I noticed I was able to read faster. There's lots of irony and ambiguity in the ending. Abbott also has a good afterword in which she tells about the true story behind the book - which is interesting in its own right.

The cover illustration by Richie Fahey is very nice, but I don't think I'm the only one wishing there wouldn't be so much text: it hides the gun in the girl's hand totally! Someone might mistake this for a romantic novel. Couldn't be farther from that.

John Hillcoat's The Road

For once I had a chance to go to movies last Sunday. I picked John Hillcoat's The Road, thinking it was by the Coen brothers - perhaps they'd've made another Cormac McCarthy film? But no, I remembered the real director when I got to the movie theatre.

I didn't mind, since the film was excellent. The postapocalyptic scenes were so overwhelmingly desolate and grey, almost without colours, I was on the verge of bursting into tears almost throughout the movie. I also thought the usual problem with road movies - there's not enough tension in what happens with everything just taking place one scene after another - was largely gone. This was a very exciting movie.

There were some scenes that were a bit too sentimental, and I didn't find the ending totally satisfying, but there was also a twist that set everything seen before it in a new light and gave it another level of meaning. I was worried for a minute, though, that this might become a cult classic for some extremists who think a new nation can be built upon total destruction (à la The Turner Diaries), but then again they would be idiots. (Has never stopped anyone before, has it, though?)

This got worse reviews than it really deserved. I'm sure it will be recognized as an American classic in ten or twenty years.

And would someone please publish a Finnish translation of McCarthy's Blood Meridian?

A book Tapani Bagge was supposed to be in

Here's a review from Bookgasm for a book my friend Tapani Bagge was supposed to be in. Maxim Jakubowski had picked up Tapani's story "The Face in the Concrete" for the book, but it was dropped out at last minute - the book was getting too thick! But you can still read the story from Thrilling Detective. And you should, too.

Tapani wrote to me just a minute ago that his story should be in part two, if such a book gets made. Here's hoping it will!

Robert B. Parker

Can I go on living my life without saying anything about Robert B. Parker and his sudden death? The guy who's said to have kept the private eye genre alive during the seventies and eighties? (What about James Crumley, Stephen Greenleaf, Marcia Muller, Arthur Lyons, Jonathan Valin, Loren Estleman, Pete Hamill..? They did nothing of the sort?)

I'm one of those who never got into Parker and his Spenser books. Admittedly, I've read only two (Looking for Rachel Wallace and some other, the name of which I can't recall) and both were translations. There just might be something in Parker's style that doesn't come out well in translation. In Finnish it's pretty flat. But what's certain is that Spenser feels like a bore even when translated. It tells something that the two of his books I read are the only Spensers translated in Finnish (his Chandler books got into Finnish, though, but I don't think I've read them). There's just something that doesn't resonate with Finnish readers, me included (and believe you me, there's lots of stuff that resonates with me and leaves many of Finns cold).

Okay, the books are easily read, they run along smoothly, but you never - well, I didn't - get a real sense of anything important happening. Well, okay, some of the classic private eye heroes got too mixed up in their cases, the cases changed them (Lew Archer, Mike Hammer, many of the later ones), but Spenser might be more realistic in that he just does his job, and that's that. Yet his macho attitude feels forced and artificial. I hate when someone makes gourmet meals in books and yaps about it (or pretends not to yap about it, but yaps about it inside, like machos do). It's boring. Parker was one of the reasons I have said that private eyes are no longer interesting - even though it's a genre I very dearly love.

The lack of Finnish translations may be due to the fact the Robert Urich TV series got here under a very bad title: Tough Game in Boston / Kovaa peliä Bostonissa. Even the first novel was translated under that title, with Urich in the cover. No wonder not many took him seriously. I'm sure the sales of the book were poor. I didn't much watch the show and can't remember anything about it. (I watched one of the Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck and I thought it was very poor indeed. It was the one with the happy couple suddenly deciding they'll kill some people.)

I do have quite a bunch of Spensers waiting for me in English, so I'll let you really know what I think of him. And oh, I checked: the other Spenser I read is called Ceremony. It was much more annoying than Looking for Rachel Wallace. (Checking the name of the other book I noticed that the other, older Robert Parker, the one reprinted by Hard Case Crime, has had one book published in Finland: Passport to Peril came out in Swedish from a Finnish-Swedish publisher Schildts as På död mans pass in 1952. Man ska göra nånting att hitta det.)

Eino Liekki

I posted some ponderings about a Finnish pulp writer Eino Liekki in another blog of mine here. Eino Liekki wrote for the Isku and Seikkailujen Maailma magazines in the late thirties and early fourties and vanished without a trace. The name is most surely a pseudonym. I'm publishing one of Liekki's stories in the science fiction issue of my crime fiction fanzine, Isku.

The Hell-Bent Kid: Reprise

Sorry, haven't been blogging much lately, but here's a comment that just came to an old post here. It's about Charles Locke's Western novel, The Hell-Bent Kid, which I reviewed over a year ago.

I've just finished this book. Found it in a garage sale and almost didn't read it! So glad I did. Your review is excellent. Locke wrote brilliantly really. I note, from several reviews I've managed to track down, the film altered the ending making to something less tragic. However, in so doing they obviously failed the author by turning what could well have been something quite remarkable into a film some reviewers saw as forgettable. That was also tragic. Though I gather there were some memorable scenes. I would very much like to see the movie, but the chances seem slim as it is very rare. The book, however, I will keep as it is, in my mind, a stand-out Western.

I didn't know the film is rare - maybe it's not available as DVD -, but I think I know at least one person who has it on VHS. I'm not sure if I've seen it myself, probably not.

Hurrah for the Fleischers!

We've been watching quite a lot of old Superman cartoons by Max and Dave Fleischer with Kauto. I bought an old VHS cassette some time ago and Kauto was enthusiastic from the word go. He said to me today he's gonna be a film maker when he grows up, and later he said he'll make a movie in which he shows how Superman is born and how the planet Krypton blows up. Didn't know we have Richard Donner living with us.

(Kauto also said that he'll make the world's longest movie that shows someone sleeping for 24 hours... We've been talking about the longest movies and I told him there's a film called Sleep. Kauto also said that it may be even 100 hours long. "No one sleeps that long", I said. "He's not a real man, he's fabricated!")

Those Fleischer Supermans (Supermen?) are fascinating. They are pretty well-made in their own right, but it's interesting to note how noirish they are in their design, with steep camera angles and very shadowy lighting, the use of silhouettes and such. It's at times like watching Citizen Kane.

Here's one that's not on the VHS I bought. I seem to remember my kid brother used to watch these, too, and this was one of his favourites.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Don Tracy's Criss-Cross

Don Tracy is a little-known writer these days, but he had a long and, at times, distinguished career. In his later career he wrote largely movie and TV tie-ins, which isn't always a good sign. His second novel, Criss-Cross, is probably his best-known book and it has served as a basis for two films: Robert Siodmak's film of the same name and Steven Soderbergh's The Underneath (1994; in Finland only on video as Isku vasten kasvoja). Later Tracy wrote many shocking novels, like How Sleeps the Beast? (1938), which was published first only in the UK and Lion could publish it in the fifties as "a paperback original" which it wasn't, and The Big Blackout (1959). Both deal with racism of the South. There's not much on Tracy on-line, but Bill Crider and his commentators don't let us down.

I had recently a chance to read Tracy's novel in English - it's been translated in Finnish, but I've never read the translation, which, I believe, is abridged. (I was going to confirm it for this post, but never got around to it. The same thing happened, by the way, to watching Siodmak's film. I'm not sure if I've ever seen it.) Criss-Cross was first published by Vanguard Press in 1934 as a hardback, and it was later reprinted several times in softcover. The copy I read is a Triangle Book reprint from 1948, in hardcover. (There's a copy of the book in the Finnish Film Archive's library.)

Criss-Cross is quite a good novel. It's told in a very terse, very hardboiled style (that reminded me of Jason Starr's first novels, for some reason or another). Tracy uses ellipsis to a very good effect and he writes good dialogue. Some dated slang words, like "potatoes" for money, don't get much in the way. The story is about a guy who's done some boxing and who now guards money trucks. He's in love with Anna Krebak, a flimsy good-looking babe who goes out also with a guy called Slim, handsome creep. Tracy lets the action develop slowly, but you know how the story goes: this has been rewritten at least hundred times since. Tracy paved way for the Gold Medal and Lion writers, alongside with James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice was published the same year as Criss-Cross, so it's not sure Tracy was influenced by Cain).

There are some problems with the novel, though. There are some twists you don't see coming in the end of the novel, but the drive also slows down a bit. You feel there's no need to read the rest of the novel after, say, page 200, even though Tracy gives hints of the protagonist's descent into madness. The irony in the last, very short chapter is very gripping, though. Truly noir, this one.

This copy of the book belonged to Finnish film scholar Matti Salo who's known for his studies in film noir and the Hollywood black list. He has made some notes and quotes in the behind of the book. "Tracy belongs to the hardboiled Hemingway school of writers, related also to Burnett." (I think this quote comes from The Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties, an old anthology of articles.) Salo also makes the note of the reversal of the handsomeness of the leading men: in the book, the protagonist, Johnny is ugly with a broken nose, and Slim is the pretty boy, but in Siodmak's film Slim is played by Dan Duryea and Johnny is played by Burt Lancaster. There's also this quote: "Tracy's novel is rather predictable and thin, not a thriller, really, but related to a gangster novel." My opinion is higher, and I don't much see relation to gangster novels. There's no organized crime in Tracy's novel.

Lee Server offers some other quotes in his The Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers. The critic Cyril Connolly reviewed the book for the New Statesman: "A fascinating crime story - aesthetically worse than The Postman Always Rings Twice, if that were possible [sic!] - but begin it at any page, nevertheless, and you can't stop till you've read all the other others. It is a mass of fake simplicity, fake intensity, fake slang. Only the sentimentality and bad grammar are genuine. But one has to read it." I should say this is not sentimental in the least! Bad grammar is genuine, because Tracy writes about characters who don't know grammar!

(Lee Server's book has received lots of bad reviews, but his entry on Tracy is very good - check it out! He offers a good rundown of Tracy's career, not forgetting his sequels to Metalious's Peyton Place.)

Steven Soderbergh's The Good German

The Good German is a film about Americans in Berlin just after the Second World War. George Clooney is a reporter who gets mixed up in international intrigue that has to do with concentration camps and the Nazis' attempt to build rocket missiles. The film is based on Joseph Kanon's novel, but I haven't read that one; Kanon is well-respected, though.

I saw a comment somewhere that this just isn't Casablanca. I don't think that's an apt comparison, since this is far more brutal and cynical than Casablanca. True, Soderbergh uses a very stylish technique that brings back images of film noir and the Expressionistic films of the thirties, with their back-projections and dark shadows. But this is still something else than Casablanca, a look into a dark world that almost entirely abandons the romanticism of Casablanca. This is more noir than Casablanca ever was.

That said I must admit that The Good German didn't win me over totally. It's still far more about style than content. Especially the end left me pretty cold, even though the big revelation comes at the last minute. It has something to do with the fact that Cate Blanchett's character never comes as alive as one would like her to be. (There are conflicting opinions in the IMDb I provided above.)

Best in 2009

The best books I read last year. Some of them really were last year's books, some of them are from 2008 or 2007, some are older. I put the latter ones in a separate list. I'm sure there are books I haven't remembered. I may do another list of films later.

Dave Zeltserman: Pariah
James Ellroy: Blood's a Rover/Levoton veri
Peter Leonard: Quiver/Ihmismetsällä
Megan Abbott: Die a Little
Gabriel Hunt, as told to Charles Ardai: Hunt through the Cradle of Fear
Allan Guthrie: Savage Night
Jason Starr: The Follower; Panic Attack (I think I liked Panic Attack more, even though The Follower really has its moments)
Jonathan Maberry: Patient Zero (with some reservations)
Anthony Neil Smith: Yellow Medicine; Psychosomatic
Petri Salin: Toinen nainen/The Other Woman

Books that have come out earlier, but I just read them last year or there was a Finnish translation:

Elmore Leonard: Valdez Is Coming (Finnish translation in 2009 as Valdez)
Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man (Finnish translation in 2009 as Katso ihmistä)
Ross Macdonald: Meet Me at the Morgue, under the UK title Experience With Evil
Ken Bruen: London Boulevard
Jonathan Valin: Day of Wrath
Thomas B. Costain: The Black Rose/Musta ruusu
John Fowles: The Maggot/Ilmestys
Marguerite Yourcenar: The Memoirs of Hadrian/Hadrianuksen muistelmat
Norah Lofts: Madselin/Kohtalokas valloittaja; The Concubine/Kuninkaan jalkavaimo (maybe a bit of an exaggeration to call these one of the best books I read last year, but for some reason they get stuck to my mind, especially Madselin, romantic, but serious historical novel about the Norman conquest)

Finnish vintage sleaze Westlake

Here's a Finnish cover for a sleaze paperback by Donald Westlake, writing as "Alan Marshall", which was one of the pseudonyms he alone used. If I remember correctly. The sleaze pseudonyms are a tricky thing.

The book in question was called originally Virgin's Summer (Midwood 1960), which is also the Finnish title. I haven't read this one, but a friend of mine - who knows his Westlake - has and he said that it's clearly Westlake. The cover copy says: "He [or she?] felt his/her first love experience as a waking dream. [Huh?] And then it wasn't a dream anymore... Roaring tale about what goes on behind the closed doors of American motels!"

The Finnish edition was published by Finnbooks in their Domino series in 1967.

Oops, I forgot something!

I forgot one item from my earlier post about what books I published or wrote last year: I completed the first draft to a short novel. It's a sleaze or sex - or even pornographic - novel about some policemen in present-day Turku struggling with their everyday life and their needs. It's under 20,000 words and I'll self-publish it some time later this year.

My 2009

The last year turned out to be very prolific for me, if not very productive in the sense of actual money. I published at least books, although some of these were small or what you might call pamphlety self-publications, and some of them didn't have the ISBN code on them. However, several major books came out during the last year, including my first novel (sic). Here's a rundown:

Elokuvan lyhyt historia / The Short History of Cinema. BTJ.

Retrovauvat / Retro Babies. With Elina Teerijoki and Ville Hänninen. Ajatus Kirjat. (Actually this was a 2008 book, but it wasn't announced until 2009.)

Historiallisen romaanin taitajia 1 / Historical Novelists 1. With Jukka Halme and Sari Polvinen. BTJ. (Seems like I didn't do anything to promote this... but here's something. In Finnish.)

Päivitysten kirja: 11 kuukautta Facebookissa / The Book of Updates: 11 Months in Facebook. Abraxas (= self-publication).

Outoa huminaa, Joe Novak / It's a Weird Buzz, Joe Novak. Verikoirakirjat (= self-publication).

Bodice Ripper Apart: A Book of Spam Poems. ntamo.

Parhaita Isku-jännityskertomuksia. Edited. Turbator. (Collection of original Finnish crime stories published in my crime fiction fanzine, Isku.)

Reino Helismaa: Henkipattojen kylä / Village of the Outlaws. Edited by me. Suomen Länkkäriseura / The Finnish Western Society.

Veikko Hannuniemi: Suuri jano / The Great Hunger. Edited. Turbator.

Tankki palaa! / Tank Is Burning! Edited. Turbator.

Tuhansien zombien maa / The Land of the Thousand Zombies. Edited. Turbator.

Kaarlo Uskela: Vainovuosilta. Edited. (A collection of stories from during the Finnish Civil War.) Turbator.

The translation of Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman as Keikkakuski. Arktinen Banaani.

I think there was at least one small leaflet of spam poetry... um, yes, it was called Will Load Patterns. Then there were issues of my fanzines, Isku, Pulp and Ässä, plus two issues of Ruudinsavu, the official magazine of the Finnish Western Society.

Am I forgetting something? Oh, I finished writing a crime/horror novel and did the first round of edits. I edited the YA novel Elina and I wrote already three or four years ago and sent it to a publisher that had showed interest in it. I edited a crime novel that I've written ten years ago and sent it to a publisher who were reading my earlier crime novel manuscript - comments have been promising, only wishing they'd make up their minds. (And by the way, a publisher I'd thought had already vanished from face of the Earth came out saying that they might still be interested in publishing a horror/fantasy novel that I sent them in 2003! There are just some problems with this, more on them later.)

I also edited the Arktinen Banaani's crime paperback series that had five books come out last year: Duane's Keikkakuski, Allan Guthrie's Kiss Her Goodbye as Viimeinen suudelma, Kevin Wignall's Who Is Conrad Hirst? as Kuka on Conrad Hirst?, James Sallis's Drive as Kylmä kyyti and Scott Phillips's The Ice Harvest as Jäätävää satoa. The series hasn't been as successful as we all hoped, but we have some tricks in our sleeves. More on them soon. (If someone's thinking I don't have a life: I didn't do much actual copy-editing with these books.)

I also had my hand in editing Petri Salin's first novel, Toinen nainen/The Other Woman, and it was partly due to me that Elmore Leonard's Valdez Is Coming was published in Finnish for the first time. (I didn't have anything to do with the actual process, except that the translator used my copy of the book!)

There are several book projects on their way, but I'm not sure when they'll come out. I think 2010 won't be as productive as 2009 was. Sad, but there's also the fact that it's a bit of shameful to put out so many books. I can't explain it very well, but it is awkward if someone asks a question: "What are you working on now?" "Umm... there are seven books on their way and I've just proposed a couple of new ones." (Usually I just say that I'm working on a book.)

Monday's Forgotten Book: Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead

Should I save this for the coming Friday or write about it now? I've noticed that if I don't write about books or movies I've read or seen at once, I just don't write about them. So here's a new series: Monday's Forgotten Books. It's possible that this will be the only entry.

Now, is anything by Michael Crichton really forgotten - now that Hard Case Crime brought out two early outings by him as "John Lange"? And Eaters of the Dead was made into a film, The Thirteenth Warrior, with Antonio Banderas in the lead. Forgotten?

At least in Finland. For some reason or another, the book has never been translated in Finnish. Eaters of the Dead was originally published in 1976. My battered paperback copy I purchased for 50 cents recently is from the nineties, when the movie was coming out. You can see from the film's credits in the back cover that the movie was supposed to be called Eaters of the Dead, but then it was changed, for some reason, into The Thirteenth Warrior. Maybe "Eaters of the Dead" was thought to be too garish. The reprint has a 1992 afterword by Crichton, in which he tells anecdotes about making of the book. It's interesting in its own right and gives some background to what Crichton did with his novel. [Editing the entry and Googling for links I notice that the Wikipedia article on the film has many anecdotes about making the film.]

Eaters of the Dead is essentially a postmodern novel, since many - if not all - of the sources Crichton mentions are fictional. The book consists of the diary of one Ibn Fadlan, an Arab diplomat travelling to the city of Bulgar and meeting a bunch of Vikings in the way. He's assigned to be the thirteenth warrior when the Vikings are told to come back to help their king fighting an anonymous enemy. (This assignment must be the weakest element in the book. I couldn't decide whether it was logical or not. It might've been better if Ibn Fadlan had followed them by his own choice.) In the North, they fight against hairy beasts that may or may not turn out to be Neanderthals. There's also some fighting amongst the Vikings, and some anthropological notions about the Vikings and their habits. Seems like Crichton has done his homework - but of course I'm not sure, since I don't know much about Vikings.

This is not a straight-forward adventure novel, mainly due to the ancient diary style Crichton mimicks. But it's still a gripping yarn. There are some good horror scenes with the Neanderthals attacking in the night. The book has some connections to Beowulf - even though Crichton admits in his afterword the chronology is way off -, which are not necessary to decipher if one simply wants to enjoy the adventure. Crichton also gives a possible and plausible explanation to the dragon-like monster described in Beowulf.

All in all, I enjoyed the novel. It was actually my first Crichton, but I'm not very interested in his other work - beside the John Langes which I may read in the future (and possibly Congo, another of his early novels, but I found much to dislike in the film). I'd very much like to see this translated in Finnish, but I don't think I'd be up to it. I'm not sure though who'd make a good publisher for this: the SF/fantasy folks don't necessarily want to read Crichton and the usual Crichton readers might be put off by the postmodern narrative techniques.

Minireviews of my books

Here are two short comments on my recent books received in e-mail.

Boris Hurtta Tuhansien zombien maasta: "Zombi-kirjan sain luetuksi. Oli odottamattoman hyvä tai sanotaan, että pidin odottamattoman monesta kertomuksesta."

Tapani Bagge esikoisromaanistani: ""Novak-romsku oli oikein mukavaa luettavaa, sympaattinen pastissi. Tyyli piti hyvin, juoni ei ehkä ihan loppuun asti, mutta se tuskin oli tarkoituskaan."