Hard Case Crime dress - and a beauty in high heels!

Fashion designer Hally McGehean will be premiering her first wearable art collection during New York Fashion Week in a two-part fashion event in the Meatpacking District and SoHo. Among her ten featured designs of the show, McGehean will debut her Hard Case Crime dress. The Hard Case Crime dress is made out of nearly 1,000 miniature reproductions of covers from the award-winning Hard Case Crime line of retro-styled paperback crime novels. The skirt features every cover ever published in the series, including works by writers like Stephen King and Mickey Spillane, while the daring backless top is composed of interleaved copies of the cover of BABY MOLL by John Farris, whose cover was painted for Hard Case Crime by the legendary illustrator Robert McGinnis (whose other work includes the movie posters for “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” and the original Sean Connery James Bond movies in the 1960s). The outfit’s oversized belt features another McGinnis original, his rare horizontal cover painting for LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood.

EVENT DETAILS:
Hally McGehean - Pop Up Pop Art Fashion Event
Monday, September 12, 2011
Part One: The Highline Runway Walk, Gansevoort Plaza, Gansevoort & Washington Sts., 5pm
Part Two: Boutique Showing of Collection, SoHo Loft Gallery, 180 Lafayette St, 6th Fl 7-9pm

Kevin Wignall's vampire trilogy

Huh, Kevin Wignall and vampires? Sounds quite an unlikely combination, you say? The writer of noir masterpieces Who Is Conrad Hirst? and Among the Dead? Well, it's happened: Blood is just out, under Kevin's nom de blume, KJ Wignall, and it's quite excellent, in a way the more recent vampire doorstoppers aren't.

There's a funny anecdote in this: Kevin said to me when he came to Finland that he wrote the trilogy several years ago, but at the time he was told that no one's interested in vampires anymore. But then we all know what happened and Kevin sold the trilogy. And Blood's pretty damn good! It's aimed at teenage readers, but I've read lots less mature horror novels. This is full of magic and action (and even some downright scary moments), and the sadness and melancholy that everyone who's read anything by Kevin is bound to recognize. I was ready to read the next volumes at one sitting...

The book is slightly marred by the fact it's written before the recent vampire boom and hence there's not much surprise in what makes Wignall's protagonist run.

I don't like to give away plot points and direct you straight to KJ Wignall's website here. You'll find all the scoop there. And one, not so minor point: this will be published also in Finnish next year.

Oh, I have a new book out

I just put up a lengthy post about my new book in one of my other blogs. It's my first book for children: a collection of fairytales by Finnish writers not usually known as fairytale writers. Take a look here.

The new issue of Pulp out

My webzine Pulp has a new issue out. Check it out here. It's in Finnish, mind you, but take a look nevertheless. You might find some nice illos or some such.

Tuesday's (or actually Wednesday's) Overlooked Film: The Humpbacked Horse (1975)

As you're probably aware by now, I'm interested in old animated cartoons and animations in general. I've always been interested in them, but I'm now trying to start a new book project: a book on the history of the animated films. There's only one book on the subject in Finnish and it's been sold out for ages now, as it was published in 1978 (IIRC). As for its contents, it's pretty lightweight, though entertaining.

Developing the project in my mind, I've been watching lots of obscure cartoons, some with my kids. Some of the older Japanese anime films have been largely forgettable, but the Russian cartoons seem to be very good, especially the longer ones. Mihail Tshehanevsky's The Wild Swans (1966) from the H. C. Andersen tale was very stylish and beautiful, alwas retaining its almost art deco artfulness. Ivan Ivanov-Vano's The Humpbacked Horse from a Russian poem that I watched more recently was however more in the vein of a traditional fairytale, though very well drawn.

Ivanov-Vano was one of the foremost Soviet animators, starting out with short subjects in the thirties, and filming The Humpbacked Horse already in 1947 (this previous film was shown in Finnish cinema at the time!) and remaking it in 1977. My dad had the later film on VHS and I loaned it. The quality was already pretty poor, but the film, minus the dreadful dubbing (just one person doing all the lines, with the original Russian lines audible in the back!), was very good, exotic and very well drawn (especially the backgrounds). The storyline featured interesting locals, magic and adventure.

Kauto also got a glimpse from the film and much to my surprise stayed with it until the end. And then yesterday he asked if he could see it again! But alas, the VHS had deteriorated, just in two or three days after my first viewing, and you could see practically nothing. I'll have to haunt this down either on DVD or on a better-quality VHS.

Here's some info on the film, and here's Wikipedia on Ivanov-Vano. More Overlooked Films here.

And here's an interesting item, a satire movie by Ivanov-Vano from the story by poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, made already in the 1930's.

New Finnish crime literature: Bagge, Rönkä, Kilpi

I was down with flu for almost two weeks. I'm still a bit ill, but I'm so behind my work I'll have to start doing something. The architecture book I've been writing for about two years (or at least seems like that already!) is seriously late from all the deadlines and I'm hating it big time.

Okay, I wasn't going to talk about that. I was going to mention three new Finnish crime novels I read while I was sick. One of the books was work-related as I wrote a review of it for a newspaper. 

The best of the three was my friend Tapani Bagge's Kasvot katuojassa (Face in the Gutter, out from CrimeTime), a novel of linked short stories and novellas. Fast-moving, touching at best, always on the side of the losers, at times pretty violent and often funny. Very fast read even though I wasn't quite sure why it had to be done as a novel and not as a collection of short stories. The story goes back and forth in time unnecessarily. (The cover for Tapani's book is done by Lasse Rantanen.)

Matti Rönkä's Väärän maan vainaja (Dead in a Wrong Country, Gummerus) is the new entry in Rönkä's series about Viktor Kärppä, the Russian ex-soldier working as a building contractor in Finland and helping out other Russians, dealing even a bit for the Russian mob. Mediumboiled, always on the side of the losers, usually well written, good descriptions and snapshots of the Russian way of life, but still a bit lukewarm. 

Marko Kilpi is one of the most revered crime writers working now in Finland. He was even nominated for the  prestigious Finlandia literature prize. I can't begin to understand why: his first novel Jäätyneitä ruusuja (Frozen Roses, 2007, reprinted now by his new publisher) is a clumsy and over-written piece of pretentious stuff trying to act as high literature. People say Kilpi has improved as a writer, I seriously hope this is the case. 

Tuesday's (or actually Wednesday's) Overlooked Film: Trance (1998)

It's odd how cheap VHS cassettes are now: I found this in a trash bin at our yard, with some other TV-recorded cult items like Plan 9 from Outer Space and weirdish new movies, like Henry Selick's Monkey Bone. The only copies of the three first Star Wars movies (I mean the first actual three: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, The Return of the Jedi) in our household came from the same batch.

Okay, to the movie: Trance (Muumion kosketus/The Touch of the Mummy in Finnish) is a strange horror film, shot with low budget, but with a decidedly artsy feel all the way through. The film deals with double identities (and it's fitting that Jorge Luis Borges gets mentioned in the thanks credits) and with how history repeats itself through generations. The film is very much like David Lynch's more impenetrable films like Lost Highway in its dream-like logic. There's not much backstory to the events in the film and the viewer is pretty much lost in the mist of the story.

This produces at times a nice, dark feeling, but the film suffers greatly from uninteresting characters, indifferent acting (there's Christopher Walken, but he doesn't have much time on screen) and implausible behaviour of the characters (plus the pretty inept special effects). The story doesn't have much depth to it, even though there's some supposedly deep stuff going on all the time. The film leaves the spectator baffled.

The director of Trance is one Michael Almereyda, whose best-known film seems to be a vampire film called Nadja (1994). Haven't seen that one, so can't comment. There's also Hamlet from 2000 with Ethan Hawke, set in the present day. Trance, called The Eternal on its DVD release, has only been released as direct-to-video in the USA, though it was shown at the Toronto Film Festival. The Finnish VHS release from 1999 veers towards blatant commercialism with a close-up of a (badly-done) mummy and shocking lines about the revenge of an ancient witch (with Walken's name and "Pulp Fiction" big in the cover). This film is commercially doomed from the start and the filmmakers knew it from the word go. It remains a fascinating failure.

More Tuesday's Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here.

Where is this picture taken from?

I've seen it a dozen times, I know it's from a pulp mag from the late thirties, but I can't place it. Black Mask?

Miina Supinen's mini-review of my sleaze novel

Writer friend Miina Supinen had nice things to say about Mynämäen motellin munamällit/The Spunk Gang of the Mynämäki Motel:

Se oli kyllä hyvä, vielä parempi kuin edellinen! Kävi kauheasti sääli kaikkia, varsinkin sitä Supista. Niillä äijillä oli kyllä kauhea tuska munansa kanssa koko ajan, raukoilla. Hyvä kohta oli se jossa se Virtanen on tuskainen ja kauhea stondis ja vitutus ja sitten "Virtanen katsoi mäntyjä. Ainakin Suomen luonto oli kaunis."

In translation:

It was good, all right, even better than the previous one! I felt awfully sorry for everyone, especially the Supinen character. [The book is full of Tuckerizations.] Those dudes sure had awful pain with their dicks, poor ones. It was very good when Virtanen was painful and had a huge boner and then: "Virtanen looked at the pines. At least the Finnish nature was beautiful."

Brian Lindenmuth's list on Top Ten Noirs of the last ten years

Here, check it out. Seems like I'm way behind my reading. Note also that many of these books are from the small presses, so it's no wonder there's not been much talk about these books. But many sure look interesting!

The Treasure of Sierra Madre

It was over 20 years since I'd seen this film and when I was suddenly bed-ridden with flu, I decided to watch it. And what a great film it is!

The Treasure of Sierra Madre, as you know by now, is based on a novel by German-born Leftist novelist B. Traven and written and directed by John Huston. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt and Walter "John's dad" Huston, and they work together marvellously. There's not a bad scene in the film. Huston's direction is very cinematic without being overtly so (look how he uses deep focus almost throughout the film, and the set-pieces are very nice, just like they are in The Maltese Falcon, where Huston has a very good eye for a composition), and the pacing is superb.

The greatest thing about the film, though, is its depiction of actual work. Not in many a Hollywood film working men look so dirty, worn out and ragged. The almost anti-Hollywood attitude shows also in how Huston (and Traven) show the men in their raw passion for gold and the pure hatred and paranoia that's spawn from that passion. Bogart especially makes that clear - and his portrayal of Fred C. Dobbs is one of the best I've seen from him, full of insanity and paranoia, all that talking to himself and weaving back and forth.  This is not merely a morality tale: it's a tale of what makes capitalism work, a tale of why gold is so expensive.

The only thing I'm sorry about the film is its casual racism towards Mexicans. They are simple, stupid, naive and superstitious, and if they're not, they're thieves. But then again it'd be pretty hard to avoid those clichés in 1948.

I haven't read Traven's novel in ages, either, but I'm not sure whether I have time for it right now. As I'm in flu, I'm getting seriously behind my deadlines...

Kauto soon seven and..

..going to school! Tomorrow actually. I'm soon beginning to put him into sleep. Wish me luck! He's not very easy in these matters, let me tell you. But how time flies by! I'm just proud to have kept him alive. He's a very smart kid, reads, calculates with big numbers, runs like a lightning, but these seven years haven't been very easy. The old cliché says "I wouldn't change a day", but I'd really like to change one or two. Yet, I love the kid very, very dearly.

The picture is from 2009, I think. The hipster clothes were picked by him.

Hard Case Crime

Life magazine offers a run-down of the Hard Case Crime covers here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Mikey and Nicky

I've been trying to watch Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky for weeks now. "Trying?" you ask. Yes, trying. The VHS I've bought years ago from a thrift store is a mess and makes your eyes wet with tears: the picture is fuzzy and scratched to begin with, but the main thing is that the picture size is wrong. I can make it just about right by zooming the television screen, but then the captions disappear. And it's pretty important to understand what the guys in lead - Mikey and Nickey - say, because they talk all the time. Talk talk talk, that's what the film is about.

But there's also a plot. John Cassavetes plays Nicky, a small time crook, who's afraid a mobster is trying to kill him. Peter Falk is Mikey, Nicky's friend, whom Nicky calls for help. They wander around the city, hit some bars, visit some women, try to stay away from the mobsters. And talk all the time. Ned Beatty plays a hitman, who's really looking for Nicky.

It's no wonder John Cassavetes is in this, since the film looks a lot like one of his. The conversations between Mikey and Nicky seem improvised, and Elaine May shot the film with three cameras, sometimes letting the cameras roll for minutes after Cassavetes and Falk had disappeared from the focus. May crossed the budget with several million dollars (something she did later on with more disastrous results in Ishtar) and the film got only a limited release. I don't know if it's easily available on DVD.

If it is, I think I'm gonna drop this VHS into a river and get done with it. I can't bear to watch it. The film is a good experimental noir from the seventies, on par with Taxi Driver, Night Moves, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and others, so it's highly recommended if you can stand two hours of rambling conversations. And oh, I think this influenced Sopranos. The picture Elaine May gives about the mob and the small crooks affiliated with them is pretty similar to David Chase's masterpiece. (Same goes for James Toback's Fingers, a very good film I saw a couple years ago, but failed to write about here in Pulpetti.)

More Forgotten Films at Todd Mason's blog.

Lionel White's only Nick Carter

Lionel White, the writer of Clean Break and other classic caper thrillers, wrote only one novel under a pseudonym, and it's a Nick Carter. Here it is, in a great blog by a guy called Scott, in Denver, Colorado. Wonder why White wrote a Nick Carter novel? I guess he needed the money.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Martin Cruz Smith: Nick Carter: The Inca Death Squad

Now, that's a great name for a book, isn't it? This is one of the better Nick Carter paperbacks from the early seventies, published in 1972 in fact, and known to have been written by Martin Cruz Smith early in his career, before he hit it big with Gorky Park and other thrillers. I haven't read any of those, but I've read two of his Nick Carters, but this was the first I read in English. And it's good I read it, since it's a lot better book in its original language. The Finnish translation may be abridged, but I didn't check, since my Nick Carters are somewhere away in a box.

Martin Cruz Smith's Nick Carter narrates his own adventures, which brings the book closer to the hardboiled school of writing (Dennis Lynds's Nick Carter is also a first-person narrator). Smith's style is hardboiled in its own right, and Nick Carter gets to make some pretty good wisecracks. The action scenes are crisp. The setting is a pretty inventive one in the series, Chile just after Salvador Allende was elected president. Carter: "I just wonder if there will ever be another election." Just year after this Pinochet killed Allende with help from CIA - irony of history there, huh?

Smith reveals his fascination towards the Soviet Union that's prevalent in Gorky Park: the bad guy in the book is a Soviet minister who makes a deal with AXE that Nick Carter escorts him during his trip in Chile. Smith is also able to make some sense out of the series stablemate, the beautiful and willing ladies with whom Nick Carter makes love every moment.

What about the Incas? There's a great battle scene with an Inca warrior, but I didn't think Smith made the best possible use with the Inca angle. After the battle the Incas just vanish and no one seems to discuss them anymore. Nick Carter even finds an ancient tomb, but tells no one about it, even though one of the characters is a museum director. Salvador Allende, by the way, makes some brief appearances throughout the book.

I'd like to quote some passages from The Inca Death Squad, but I don't think I have patience for trying to find some. I read this on our trip to my mom's, and I can guarantee it served its purpose very well. And it goes on to show how the old-fashioned pulp literature (yeah, yeah, I know, not real REAL pulp, but you know what I mean) enabled many writers to hone their skill before hitting it big. And what's best, this is only appr. 160 pages.

The picture accompanying this post is the British edition (Tandem, 1973). More Forgotten Books here.

Todd Strasser: The Good Son

I remember Joseph Ruben's film The Good Son (1993) mainly from seeing the Finnish translation of the novelization by Todd Strasser on the supermarket racks. I knew Macaulay Culkin's career had gone downhill and had read somewhere (remember: this was when the internet meant only some awkward e-mail software) that Culkin was playing a baddie in the movie. I'm always interested when actors I don't care for (or even hate) play baddies. (Take Bill Murray for instance. I hate him in comedies, but he's wonderful for example in John McNaughton's Mad Dog and Glory.)

I didn't know at the time, though, that The Good Son was already some years old and that it hadn't come to Finnish theaters in the first place. I still don't know why this was. Maybe it was because the Jamie Bulger case - the British censors even cut some seconds away from this film after the tragic event. The film was released here only on video, and the movie tie-in book by Strasser was published roughly at the same time. To this day, I haven't seen the film.

But I've now read the book. Todd Strasser seems to be a well-regarded YA author, but this, alongside with the movie tie-in of Super Mario Bros (!), is his only book translated in Finnish. He writes smoothly, but somewhat unimaginatively, at times retorting to clichés. The story is interesting, though, and it should be, since the screenplay for the film was written by Ian McEwan. Now, I'm not his biggest fan (I've read only his first, The Cement Garden, 1978, and I haven't liked the films based on his books, like Paul Schrader's The Comfort of Strangers), but given his statue he should be able to come up with something worthwhile. And yes, the story of The Good Son is intriguing and even thrilling, even a bit implausible at times (the 12-year old boy should get caught for his actions many times, as he leaves lots of clues behind him). I just don't get what the story is about. Is it about mothers who care their kids to the borders of insanity? Is it about dads missing out on their sons' lives? Is it about the fear of death or is it about the love that conquers all fears? Maybe McEwan's original script is more complex than Strasser's pretty simple narration (or Ruben's film which I haven't seen) and his points are just missing in this.

It's interesting, though, that Ruben has an auteuristic touch of doing stories about dysfunctional families: The Stepfather (from the Donald Westlake script!), Sleeping with the Enemy and this. There might be more in his filmography. But then again, he's also done Money Train...

There's a minor, but interesting anecdote in this: when I talked about the Finnish publisher of the book, Kari Lindgren (he of the Book Studio), he said that The Good Son (Serkkupoika in Finnish) was his best-selling movie tie-in ever, based only on the video release. What gives here?

Edit: I was mistaken about Bill Murray playing in a David Mamet film. I got him mixed up with Steve Martin, who's very good in Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner. I fixed that now. 

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Adventures of the American Rabbit

I'm sure this means huge nostalgia to many Americans, but I hadn't even heard of the film when I ran into it at a thriftstore on an old VHS cassette. The Adventures of the American Rabbit is an indie-produced, but mainly Japanese-made American animated film. I'm sure there's a financial analysis somewhere in this, but I can't make it. (The film's title in Finnish is Jenkkijänis, by the way, which is an almost literal translation. It was never shown in theaters here.)

I've been carrying obscure animated films home on VHS for some years now, many of them remain unwatched, some I take a glimpse at by myself, but I managed to make my kids to watch this with me. Maybe they thought it was cute to have a rabbit as a superhero, but eventually they pretty much wore out. The film is dated, the animation is not very imaginative and the story lacks pace and coherence (just who is the old guy saying that the rabbit in the lead must become a superhero?). I was also a bit suspicious of the film's concept: a rabbit changing into an American superhero and fighting the baddies... but luckily the idea of being American in the film is having fun and hanging out with your friends in a bar listening to the music. One might want to take a closer look at the film's politics, though, but I wasn't in the mood and didn't really pay attention to the film all the time myself. One point, though: the name of the band in the film is The White Brothers, which seems to say the blacks are not welcome.

I thought this was only a mildly interesting curiosity, but then again I hadn't seen it as a kid. When I posted about this in Facebook, I got many responses from people younger than me that this was a favourite in the eighties in Finland as well. That goes on to show that one doesn't know everything.

Here's IMDb on the film. And here's more Overlooked Films. Edit: after checking out some links and Googling for more, I found that the famous internet person Christian Weston Chandler has talked about this film and has used it as inspiration for his - seemingly notoriously bad - own comics. Hadn't heard of Christian Weston Chandler before!

Here's the opening credit sequence:



PS. I made better with watching Budd Boetticher's 7 Men from Now: taut and very short, expertly paced Western thriller, with Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin. Burt Kennedy's excellent script with an excellent twist or two in the middle. Highly, highly recommended, though I'm sure all the people reading this blog have seen it. You should, if you haven't!

The Norway killer

As you're probably aware, there's been a huge massacre in Norway, with over 80 people killed, all young social democrats in the party camp. Here's Guardian's run-down of the incident. This is a devastating thing, but it shows clearly that not all the terrorists are Muslims, like some people try to claim. You can see the killer was a white guy, from a well-to-do family, and a Christian.

Edit: apparently not a Christian, but someone who believed in Christian culture and its values and ethic, as opposed to the "evil" Muslim world.

Edit pt. 2: Here's another article in Guardian, titled "Norway's tragedy must shake Europe into acting on extremism".

OUTRAGEOUSLY VIOLENT AND PERVERSE COMIC MAGAZINE COVERS FROM MEXICO/OSCAR BAZALDUA

OUTRAGEOUSLY VIOLENT AND PERVERSE COMIC MAGAZINE COVERS FROM MEXICO/OSCAR BAZALDUA

Not safe for work, except in free-wheelin' Finland!

Day Labor, the Official blog of Crimefactory Magazine: Video Interview—Duane Swierczynski

Day Labor, the Official blog of Crimefactory Magazine: Video Interview—Duane Swierczynski: "In the last four years, there’s been a near holy trinity of pulp writers who, in my eye, can do no wrong: Joe R. Lansdale Charlie Hust..."

Some books I've read recently: Bruen, Gischler, Marc Behm, Finnish sleaze

The Annual Summer Reading Report!

I usually try to read something non-work related during the Summer holidays, but with me and my precedence for crime fiction, it's pretty hard to say if it's work or not to read Ken Bruen or Victor Gischler. Bruen's London Boulevard I picked up to be translated in Finnish quite recently and Gischler has been on my possible-to-be-translated list for some time now.

The Pistol Poets was the first of his actual crime books I've read, though. It was actually a bit different than I'd thought it to be - can't really say what I expected, but certainly not a university satire! The Pistol Poets is more than that, since it's also a great crime novel with lots of dark humour and tough violence in it. Gischler spins the multifaceted yarn very well, makes it seem very easy, and many characters are full of life, though not many of them are worthy idols, more like low-life trash! Very heartily recommended, if you're not familiar with his work. (Here's my earlier take on his Vampire A-Go-Go. It was funny as hell, but a bit juvenile at some places.)

Ken Bruen's The Guards was his first Jack Taylor novel for me. I've read earlier London Boulevard, which I liked (with some reservations toward its nature as pastiche), and Rilke on Black, which I thought lacked plot. The same could go for The Guards as well. I'm not sure whether it was just me, but I thought the book should've had more strictly plot-related stuff to it. I couldn't even warm myself up to Bruen's style, though I liked it in London Boulevard. And Bruen's habit of dropping crime authors' and films' names is only a knowing wink that doesn't bring much new to the books themselves.

I'm in the middle of Marc Behm's Eye of the Beholder (1980; in Finnish as Vaanijan silmässä, Book Studio 2002; translated by Mika Tiirinen [the same guy who's done the Finnish Wignalls!]). It's a classic of weird noir, a decidedly non-psychological psychologic crime novel, with a private eye hero, called only Eye, whose existence we soon begin to suspect. Very original, but also, I think, a bit dated. It may be due to the Finnish translation that's not very rich in tone. But then again I think Behm went for monotony. I'd like to hear some comments on this.

I also read a Finnish sleaze paperback from 1979, anonymously published Kova kovaa vasten (The Tough Get Going or something like that). It's a private eye novel, with lots of sex scenes and almost non-existent plot - it's there and it seems to make sense, though one forgets what happened before the last 50-page orgy. Some of the sentences read like it was written by a "real" writer, but I don't know who it is. No one's done any research into these books in Finland, which is a pity.

As usual, I'm sure I'm forgetting something... I haven't read as much as I would've liked to, but there's still Summer left!

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Pendulum

Watched this forgotten thriller from the late sixties a couple weeks ago and my memories are already fading a bit, which seems to be implying there's not much in the film, but it's still quite interesting.

Pendulum is a Hitchcockian suspense film about a police lieutenant, who's captured a seriously ill-minded rapist, but done it in a wrong way and a young Liberal attorney gets the man free. The lieutenant is mad jealous about his wife, who seems to be having an affair. Suddenly the wife and her lover are killed. Who's the killer, the rapist or the lieutenant, who's just using the rapist's threat as an alibi?

Pretty well-made, with some good actors, but also with some not-so-good ones, plus the beautiful and stylishly dressed Jean Seberg (she's not very lively in the film, which I'm sad to admit), this merits a second look. The outcome of the drama isn't as obvious as it might seem at first, and I wouldn't label this as fascist as Roger Ebert has done. Still the film seems to be defending strong law enforcement.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog. Above I posted the old VHS cover, which is exactly how I watched this.

The first review of Mynämäen motellin munamällit

My friend Sami Myllymäki posted this mini-review of my new sleaze novel, Mynämäen motellin munamällit/The Spunk Gang of Mynämäki Motel:

Käsi käy ja lastit lentävät peräänantamattomalla tahdilla! Mikael X. Messi lykkää kakkoskirjassaan isomman vaihteen sisään, ja kovuusaste hipoo jo ebenholtz-luokkaa! Ylilyövän raadollisuuden ja pimeäntylyn huumorin rajoilla taiteileva Mynämäen motellin munamällit on retropornokirjallisuuden tuleva klassikko ja kesän 2011 ehdottomin 'kehtaako tätä lukea julkisella paikalla' -kokemus!

In rough translation:

Mikael X. Messi hits a bigger gear in his second book, and it's almost as tough as an ebenholtz tree! Dark and brutal humour strikes hand with over-the-top wretchedness. The Spunk Gang of Mynämäki Motel is a future classic of retro sleaze and the absolute "you don't want to read this in public" experience of the Summer 2011!

Robert Silverberg joins Hard Case Crime

This just out from Charles Ardai:

Five-time winner of the Nebula Award, five-time winner of the Hugo Award, author of acclaimed, mind-bending fantasy novels that have won praise from people like Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon, Bob began his career writing under fake names for the last surviving pulp magazines. For the very last issue ever of TRAPPED DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, the editor asked if he could supply a complete novel, and Bob did, an action-packed suspense thriller about a government agent going undercover in the Philadelphia Mob to root out a master currency forger from within. The issue of TRAPPED appeared on newsstands in 1962 -- and after it went off sale a few weeks later, this work by Silverberg vanished. It never appeared under the author's real name, never appeared in book form -- never appeared in any form for the past half-century.

And it's a great read.

So... in April 2012, Hard Case Crime will be giving BLOOD ON THE MINK its first-ever proper publication, including a new afterword by Silverberg discussing the novel's genesis and his work for the pulps, as well as two short stories he wrote for the pulps that have a connection to the novel, and that also haven't seen the light of day for more than 50 years.

And here's the link. Great cover! 

My new sleaze book out

My new sex/sleaze/adult paperback novel is out. It's called Mynämäen motellin munamällit (which you don't want to try to say out loud, unless you're a Finn). It takes place in a roadside motel and boasts of cast of wild and unpredictably horny and violent characters. I dare say it's a pretty wild ride. It's a sequel of sorts to my earlier sex novel, Lausteen himokämppä (The Lust Cabin of Lauste), as it shares one character (the beastly police officer called Virtanen).

Here's an intentionally silly picture of me and the book. Note also the young and fresh mustache I decided to grow.

The new issue of Isku out

The new issue of Isku, my crime fiction webzine, is out. Check it out! The fourteenth (!) issue contains short stories by Pearce Hansen, Patti Abbott (in translation, that is), Seppo Tuisku (a vintage story from the late fifties), Jussi Katajala and Tarja Sipiläinen. Pretty good lineup, that.

Jason Starr: The Pack

As everyone who's been reading this blog for long, I'm a stout admiref of Jason Starr. He writes tough and bleak noir with warmth towards his sociopathic protagonists and antiheroes. He doesn't much revert to mere pastiche of noir clichés and I think he's one of the best examples of how noir can be meaningful literature, both as art and entertainment. It's a small wonder Starr isn't better known.

His later books have gotten more a thriller-like aura, with more pages and bigger issues. There have been talks about big movie adaptations (I seem to have heard about David Fincher buying the option to Panic Attack) and I certainly hope there will be a HUGE movie from his newest novel, The Pack, which I just finished late last night. It's a crime novel like all his earlier novels, but it's also a horror novel. It's also a social satire, in which Starr gets to depict his usual pathetic sociopaths and everyday psychopaths. The middle-class life that Starr writes about is full of anxieties, uncertanties and loneliness. When something bad happens, there's no one out there for you. You're always on your own. Except for a few lunatics, who pray on your bare soul.

In The Pack this theme gets very real, as the protagonist, Simon Burns, ends up in a pack of werewolves. They are very cool guys, seemingly getting along well with their masculinities, taking crap from no one, especially their exes and employees, and Simon, recently fired from his job and spending frustrating life as a stay-home-dad, feels suddenly a burst of new energy. The feeling is misleading, but I'm not telling you more. Starr puts some new twist to the werewolf angle and there's some nice irony in how the werewolf leader combines the utter masculinity and an urge to kill. Jason Starr talks about the theme more in Spinetingler's interview here.

But then again, there's some padding. I can't get away from that. There's too much telling about how someone feels or behaves and about the reasons for that behaviour. Fake ID and Nothing Personal and all the other early novels by Starr have no padding. Is this the price we have to pay to get bigger recognition for a great writer like Jason Starr?

Tuesday's Overlooked Films: Hell's Hinges, The Terror of Tiny Town, The Phantom Empire, Les Petroleuses

We had our annual Summer meeting of the Finnish Western Society last Saturday. We (seven guys) were at a log cabin in Karkkila, a small town somewhere near Helsinki, and watched at least three western films in the whole. One we watched in part, and one we took a look at.

The best of films was no doubt William S. Hart's silent western, Hell's Hinges (1916). It's a solemn religious drama, in which Hart is a heartless killer who falls in love with a young woman and says goodbye to his past. Hart is very believable as a ruthless assassin. Despite being in black and white and silent, this was the only film that held our interest throughout its whole run. (Well, not everyone's. Someone said: "Next one will have to be a colour film!") I'd really love to see more of Hart's films.

The cult favourites, The Terror of Tiny Town and The Phantom Empire, however wore us out. The first one, famous for its all-midget cast, was way too traditional. Replace the midgets with grown-ups, and I'm sure not many would remember the film, let alone watch it. The Phantom Empire we couldn't make ourselves to watch through. It's just not suited to watch in entirety. I'm sure it would work better with a 20-minute episode every week, just as it was meant to be screened. Both films are better as ideas than as finished products.

The French film, Les Petroleuses/Frenchie King from the early seventies, has the advantage of sporting two very beautiful women in the lead, namely Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale. We couldn't come to an agreement which one is more beautiful. But the film is sadly a spectacle of disjointed events, some very colourful and mildly funny. There's just no coherence to it, which goes on to show that the French prefer spectacle to story-telling. Still, Bardot is very hot in her black outfit, and Cardinale is very, very lovely.

We also took a glimpse at an abysmally bad The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West that was put together from the episodes of Dusty's Trail. That's a TV show I'll never want to see. We lasted about 15 minutes.

I don't know if Todd Mason is making his usual round-up, since there's only one guest post in his blog here. Maybe there's more to come.

Friday's Forgotten Book: James Hadley Chase: Sucker Punch

Here's a link to an old post about James Hadley Chase's Sucker Punch. More forgotten books at Todd Mason's blog here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: At Close Range

I found this small classic from the eighties I'd never seen in a thrift store. It was an old VHS cassette, but it cost only 20 cents, so I thought I'd grab it. I'm glad I did, since it's a pretty decent film, although not a masterpiece.

At Close Range is a piece or rural noir, with young Sean Penn as the son and Christopher Walken as the father and also as the leader of a ruthless gang of criminals who operate in a small Pennsylvania town. Penn and Walken don't really know each other in the beginning of the film, as Penn lives with his mother (played by wonderfully understated Millie Perkins) and the family tries to reject the father. Penn leads an unhappy life with his mother and gets attracted to his father's exuberant way of life. Complications ensue, and the ending is a tragedy. There are other familiar faces in the crowd: Mary Stuart Masterson as Penn's girlfriend, Christopher Penn as the brother of Sean (as in real life), Crispin Glover as one of Penn's friends lured by the criminal life, David Straithairn and Tracey Walter as members of the gang. There's also Kiefer Sutherland, but I recognized him only in the last scenes.

There are lots of nice touches here and there and some of the scenes are very well done. Some of the small-town scenery and atmosphere reminded me of Twin Peaks. The climax is gripping, with lots of stylishly done shootings. The story about a father and a son allying and then fighting fiercely each other has overtones of a classical tragedy. There's still a feel of distance that might leave you cold. I'm sure this doesn't work well on the small screen. My main grudge, though, is that while Walken is an excellent actor, I just don't buy him as the leader of a Hicksville gang of criminals. Yet the film goes on to show that not all the Hollywood films of the eighties supported the Reagan-era ideology of keeping families under the Father's Rule, as critic Robin Wood has claimed.

The director of At Close Range, James Foley, has an interesting filmography, with lots of noirish films, but seems like he's never done a really good film, though Glengarry Glen Ross comes very close. Some say After Dark, My Sweet is one of the best Jim Thompson films, but I'm not sure if I've seen it.

More overlooked films here.

New books out: Duane Swierczynski, Ken Bruen, JP Koskinen

I just won't stop putting out new titles! I received my translator's copies of Duane Swierczynski's The Blonde last Friday, alongside with Ken Bruen's London Boulevard and the Finnish writer, JP Koskinen's Eilispäivän sankarit (The Heroes of Yesterday), which I both had a hand in.

Here's Ossi Hiekkala's great cover for Swierczynski's book. The book is Vaaleaverikkö in Finnish, which is a literal translation. We would've gone for Blondi, but we didn't want the book to get mixed up with Joyce Carol Oates's Marilyn book. The cover wasn't an easy one. We wanted to avoid the easy Sin City banality of this cover, but doing a dramatic cover without any weapons or some such proved very difficult. I think Ossi did a fine job.

As for the Bruen, I only picked the book, located the agent and started the negotiations (and found the translator for it). Koskinen's book I commissioned, but I never edited it (someone else did. It's about an old criminal who's been inside for the last 30 years, and when he's finally getting out, he doesn't understand shit about the new world. It's a very touching book, with some heavy-duty violence and black humor.

This is a nice job, but the titles have been selling too poorly, so it looks like I won't be doing it anymore. There's still Jason Starr's Fake ID coming out, hopefully next year. (Hopefully especially, since it's my translation.)

More on the titles here, alongside with some other books.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The First Charge of the Machete

Since Todd Mason asked, I thought I'd post at least a link to an earlier film post. So this old post about a Cuban avantgarde action film will have to do as a Tuesday's Overlooked Film post.

A new mag out

As you all know, I've been doing lots of different fictionmaggish zines for years now, Isku being the main venue. One of the others has been the decidedly haphazard Jännityslukemisto (Suspense Magazine or some such in English). In it I've published only stories that haven't been good enough to be published anywhere else. I decided to pull the plug on this one, but I had enough stories to do a fourth issue - and it's out now, with the print run of 20! Here's the cover. I think the photo in the cover is from an ad from an outdoor magazine (and it's taken with a cellphone camera!). The blurb below shouts: "Hellishly good killing action!" or some such nonsense. The logo of the magazine is taken from an old Finnish pulp mag of the same name (something I've done before, with Isku and Seikkailukertomuksia and Ässä).

The writers in the issue are me (with two stories!), Heikki Nevala (who just debuted with his horror collection Arvet/Scars from Turbator), Petri Hirvonen (who's done lots of stories for my mags) and Harri Erkki with a vintage porn story from a magazine called Cocktail. There are also two anonymous humorous horror stories - I found them on my old computer, without any note who'd written or sent them. But since they were meant for publication, I couldn't see any harm printing them. My stories are both hardboiled crime, the other one being a humorous parody originally written in the eighties and the other one being an experiment, told in imperative: "Look at the papers again. Shoot. Turn around when the corpse falls to the floor", et cetera. I tried to write this story already some years ago, but nothing came of it. When I started putting the Jännityslukemisto issue together, I decided I'd finish this, regardless of the coherent story and what I'd already written. I think it came out alright.

Here's in Finnish what I wrote about the stories in Facebook:

Heikki Nevala: Auki vain öisin (Heikin vanha novelli, jonka hän heitti ekaksi tarjokkaaksi Verenhimoon, mutta olimme sitten kumpikin sitä mieltä, että hän kirjoittaa uuden, ja se iilimatojuttu onkin tosi hyvä)
Petri Hirvonen: Kuolettava keikka (jos oikein muistan, Petri kirjoitti tämä kasarityylistä actionia edustavan novellin suomi-pulpin jättikirjaan, jota kokosin Book Studiolle viitisen vuotta sitten; kirjaa ei koskaan tehty ja novelli unohtui vuosiksi)
anonyymi: Metsästäjän hetki (jonkun kauan sitten minulle lähettämä kauhunovelli; tiedostossa ei ollut mitään kirjoittajan nimeä ja tiedostomuotokin oli txt)
Lena Erichs eli Harri Erkki: Kuinka mies vietellään (Harri Erkin seksinovelli Cocktailista vuodelta 1972, jonka piti alun perin nähdä päivänvalo uudestaan Mälli-lehdessä, jonka piti olla vanhojen miestenlehtien parodia; sitä ei kuitenkaan tehty, mutta kun tämä oli jo puhtaaksikirjoitettu, niin pitihän se johonkin laittaa)
Juri Nummelin: Paperi (kokeilu, jota yritin jo vuosia sitten, mutta jonka kirjoitin vasta nyt vähän väkisin loppuun, kauheasti juonta tai johdonmukaisuutta ajattelematta: miten kirjoitetaan kovaksikeitetty rikosnovelli imperatiivissa, siis käskymuodossa: "Ammu. Käänny kun ruumis kaatuu maahan" jne.)
nimetön: Tuopillinen tummaa (sama juttu kuin edellä, saman kirjoittajan tekemä, ei itse asiassa mikään huono juttu, mutta tarpeettoman vitsikäs kauhutarina)
Juri Nummelin: 25 donaa (puolen sivun absurdi pläjäys, jonka alkumuoto on teinivuosina kirjoitettu yksityisetsiväparodia; kirjoitin nyt uudestaan blogiini tekemän englanninkielisen version perusteella)

Wild fantasy from yesteryear, but by whom?

"Thousands of flaming torches, reflected from countless carbuncles, filled the king’s palace with marvellous iridescent light. Along the white marble walls, on benches covered in purple, the warriors languished, beautiful young boys kneeling before them to offer them succulent fruits, foaming wines. Boisterous and merry, the men greeted with a roar of laughter anybody who ventured to amuse the company with ribaldry and antics.
In the centre of the hall, dark-eyed handmaidens swayed in lustful dance, like fl owers floating in the spring breeze.
Other maidens stood around the dancers, accompanying their graceful movements with clashing cymbals and wailing flutes. More fiery than the torches were the handmaidens’ eyes - more than wines they stirred the men."

Any guesses where this citation is from?

Joseph Millard's graphic novel

Joe Millard's rare and early paperback-sized graphic novel is available now on Kindle. Jeff Vorzimmer has uploaded the first chapter to be viewed for free on Scribd here. Millard, who later on wrote lots of Westerns, including the ones with "The Man-With-No-Name", did also the art, at least that's how I figure it. Am I right about this? I don't find any mention on the artist on the site.

Friday's Forgotten Book: James Reasoner: Diamondback

This isn't supposed to be a forgotten book, since it's out available on Kindle and different other formats. You can also buy a trade paperback edition of it, if I understood correctly. James Reasoner's Diamondback was never commercially or traditionally published, so I think it figures here - and taking part in this meme I have a reason to finally write about it.

There's a story behind James's book: he wrote it on spec to a paperback publisher that had published his first novel, Texas Wind (which is great unto itself). The publisher went bankrupt though, before the manuscript was bought (or at least that's how I figured it; I may be a bit skimpy on details), and James's book didn't see the light of day. I think he tried to sell it to different publishers throughout the years, but without success. At one point he sent it to me. We'd talked about over e-mail about his career and writings and I'd already published one of James's early short stories in my zine, Isku (which was a print magazine at the time, now a webzine). I think there was some talk about getting Diamondback out in Finnish. (If I wanted to lose all of my money, this is exactly what I'd do: start publishing a series of translations of trunk novels!)

Then came the fire. James's and Livia's house burned down. I was devastated when I saw James's blog post about the fire. I was very, very glad to be able to help: I had two or three James's early short stories on my computer, plus Diamondback. James was glad to get them back - all of his files had been destroyed in the fire.

I wanted to do something more to help. But how? I was here on the other side of the planet. Then it came to me: I'll publish Diamondback and give the money to James.

I'd noticed lots of authors and publishers had started using Lulu and other PoD sites. I figured this might be the best solution: I'll do the layouts, put the book on sale and James will get the money. I thought it might be good to spice up the book a bit. I asked Bill Crider if he could do a foreword - sure enough, he did one. I asked Duane Spurlock (whom I knew through the WesternPulps e-mail group), knowing he had done some illustrations, whether he might want to do the cover. And sure enough, he did one. See the result above. I even asked for blurbs. I think I got one from Allan Guthrie, saying "James Reasoner is one of my favourite writers".

Everything was ready. Then I started downloading the thing on Lulu. Nothing came of it. To this day, I don't know what caused it. The file that Lulu would've used to print the book was too small in size - I think my computer is ("was" actually) missing a driver or something like that. Whatever it was, I was so frustrated I didn't know what to do. (My layout software is pirated, which is probably something I shouldn't confess, but that might explain the problems.)

So, basically I had a great book in my hands, but I couldn't do anything with it. I tried to think of other options. One of them was to do a small print run of books and try to sell them, but it would've cost too much, so nothing came of that.

I was very relieved to notice that James has now put Diamondback on sale on Kindle - and if I understood correctly, Bill's foreword to the book is included. And here, for the first time, in public is Duane Spurlock's cover for James Reasoner's Diamondback. (I'm so sorry for the bad quality of the picture. If possible, I'll change it. I think it's on my old computer, this is just taken with my cell phone of a print-out I did. The colours are misleading.)

Oh, what's the book about? It's a great action novel in the mold of classic men's adventure series, but with a dash of social conscience thrown in. James has written some very good short stories about the Mexican immigrants and the same theme is visible here. The opening is great:

It was the heat, Tom Sloane had decided, that brought out the killing violence in people.

He was uncomfortable, sitting on the hard, cracked ground, but at least the sun had gone down several hours earlier, taking with it the broiling hundred-degree-plus temperatures. It looked like the heat wave was never going to break, and in the last two weeks, Sloane had seen more incidents of violence than he usually did in two months. Husbands and wives and children abusing each other, nervous hold-up men gunning down clerks in convenience stores, perfect strangers exchanging gunfire over an imagined insult on the freeway . . . Sloane was no stranger to violence, but it made him tired to think about it. He did what he could, and that was all any man could do.

As you all know, James is very good in action scenes and the same goes here:

Sloane was barely aware of Angela's muffled scream as the tip of the knife came up to meet his punch. He changed the trajectory of it a fraction, and the blade caught his coat sleeve and ripped it savagely. That threw the punch off, making it glance almost harmlessly against Arturo's shoulder.

The nose was the place to go for. In its damaged state, it would be the weakest link in the chain. Sloane feinted, drawing another thrust of the knife, then stepped inside and peppered Arturo's face with quick bursts of his fists. The man let out a howl and took an involuntary step backward, blood starting to show on his bandages. Sloane followed, grabbing his right wrist and hanging on. The left one was bandaged also, where Sloane had kicked it in the Red Bull, and he knew it would be worthless to Arturo. Sloane jerked and twisted again on the other wrist, and the knife fell to the floor, landing without a sound on the thick carpet.
Sloane let go of the wrist and backhanded his opponent. Another blow to the belly doubled him over. Sloane clasped his hands and brought them down on Arturo's neck, driving him to the floor. Dazed, the Mexican's scrabbling fingers found the knife and snatched it up. He put his other hand down for balance and tried to lever himself up.

Sloane kicked the arm out from under him.

So, what else do you need? Check out this link and order Diamondback to your Kindle or whatever reading device you're holding.

Here's the link to other Forgotten Book entries at Patti Abbott's blog.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Meek's Cutoff

This quiet Western movie has been mainly on film festival circuit and I saw it two weeks ago in a Finnish film festival. It's an indie Western that doesn't much resemble any other Western movie I can think of.

Meek's Cutoff is a simple story of some dozen settlers who are going somewhere in middle of the desert. They are escorted by a man called Meek, who seems to be as lost as everyone else in this film, even though he thinks he knows all the time where they are. The settlers meet an Indian and capture him and think he can show them the nearest waterspot.

The film is very quiet and slow. There are lots of scenes where people just work and don't say anything. In the scenes with people that are far away their dialogue is only barely heard, and some of the important plot points take place during those scenes! (Put the subtitles on, if you're watching this on DVD.) The climactic scenes are also pretty slow with long shots. There's all the time some tension on, though - this is not a boring film. (Must admit, thought, that I took a nap during the screening. I can blame only the viewing hour, from 5.00 p.m. on. I'll always fall asleep during those two or three hours.)

The ending is cryptic. It feels like there's something you just can't grasp, some inner meaning that just doesn't want to come out. The director Kelly Reinhardt has said though that the ending came about because they ran out of money! Yet there's something intriguing about the ending.

I recommend Meek's Cutoff, but don't expect any chases on horseback, fighting with Injuns or any other Western stuff. Nothing blows up real good. Some critics have compared this to the French director Robert Bresson, but I can't find any deep religious symbolism in Meek's Cutoff (unless the image of lost settlers is a religious symbol in itself). You might compare this to the Western films of Monte Hellman, but Hellman's films are B-westerns on the surface, this isn't. I kinda wished, though, this would've been more cryptic, more difficult to decipher - yet I find myself in some trouble saying something definite about it. Will have to see this again.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here.

My novel will be out

I'll be a real writer next Fall! Just heard yesterday that a small Finnish publishing house will put my historical science fiction/religious satire/horror/hardboiled crime -novel out some time after the Summer. This is a manuscript I've been working on and off from the early nineties (and, if you want to, already in the late eighties, since this is loosely, very loosely based on the first short story I published in 1988!). I don't know what kept me at it, but now I'm glad there was that something!

The working title for the book is "Gotterdammerung" (has been already from the afore-mentioned short story), but it doesn't fit the contents of the book, so I'll have to come up with something.

Erotic fiction

Kate Laity and the beginner's guide to the erotic fiction here.

Mellors and me

Over at Facebook a friend of mine posted this link about different Lady Chatterley covers. I pointed out that this Argentinian cover was my favourite and said I could even use it as profile picture if someone put eyeglassed in it and made the person bald. Another friend of mine did what was asked, with hilarious results.

New pulp magazine

Moonstone Books launching a new magazine.

Xanadu!

I've never seen Xanadu, but Vince Keenan's blog post about it is very funny and actually thought-provoking.

Winslow's Savages

I just read
Don Winslow's
SAVAGES.

It's fucking good.

You better believe it.

Like a treatment for a Tarantino flick
written by a sharp sociologist.

Out now in Finnish
as RAAKALAISET.

A new book out, once again!

Earlier today I picked up my new book. Sigh, you say, once again? Yes, once again! This is a small pamphlet I edited and wrote a foreword (and published). It's a collection of three short stories (there weren't more) by "Jaska Autero", who was, I believe, a pseudonym. I don't know who he is, and from the stories it seems he was two different writers, since one of the stories differs so much from the others. The stories are horror and science fiction set in the Finnish Continuation War against the Soviet Union. The horror and SF aspects make the stories almost unique and while they certainly are not great literature, they are interesting forays into a pretty uncharted genre.

The stories are called "Kostaja/The Avenger", "Olin kuollut mies/I Was a Dead Man" and "Salainen ase/The Secret Weapon". They were all originally published in the Seikkailujen Maailma magazine in 1944, when the war was already coming to an end (and Finland's defeat). The cover illustration is by an unknown artist and it accompanied the "Salainen ase" story. Here's my foreword to the book (in Finnish).

Jeff VanderMeer on Finnish SF/fantasy

American writer Jeff VanderMeer was on a tour in Finland with his wife some weeks ago (I don't know why the word about this never reached me, they even dropped by in Turku where I live to meet people in the SF fandom, but I think that's totally my own fault) and interviewed lots of people. Here's his final essay on the state of SF and fantasy in Finland: "Right now, many of these writers remain just tantalizing possibilities for English-language readers, but it may not remain that way for long. We can’t be certain which of these Finnish writers you’ll be reading in the future, but we are certain you’ll come to know many of their names much better very soon." Lots of great people I know and have worked with and I can't but say VanderMeer is right.

Edit: here's also an interview with the Tähtivaeltaja editor Toni Jerrman. 

Finnish publisher Kari Lindgren dead

My friend, author Tapani Bagge notified me that one of the last large personalities in Finnish publishing, Kari Lindgren, died recently after suffering from a strange disease for three years. This is a big blow to Finnish publishing, since Kari Lindgren did lots of books the other publishers didn't want to touch or didn't know how to handle them. Without Lindgren it's possible we might've never had translations from Joe R. Lansdale, Gerald Petievich, Lawrence Block, Richard Stark... He also did lots of vintage noir and hardboiled crime: Dorothy B. Hughes, Marc Behm, Margaret Millar (whose Like an Angel, one of the best crime novels ever, was published by Lindgren), Dashiell Hammett, Fredric Brown, Ross Macdonald and others, with some classic cozies thrown in.

One of Macdonald's early novels, Blue City, was also one of the last books Lindgren published. It's sad to see him go, but unfortunately his demise was expected.

Lindgren started out in publishing in the middle eighties, with his company called Viihdeviikarit. He wasn't always very good to come up with good names for his outfits, as Viihdeviikarit means roughly "Entertainment Dudes". Viihdeviikarit was a strict paperback publisher, with lots of titles coming out each month. They did many Westerns, from the USA, the Great Britain and Germany (the Lassiter sex paperbacks). Some of the Westerns were Finnish in origin, i.e. the Hulkkonen series by Kari Nenonen, and some others. They also published war and crime paperbacks and some porn.  In the early nineties Lindgren changed the name to Book Studio and reformatted his line: the books became larger trade paperbacks and the lines got classier, with interesting new authors and well-chosen classics, alongside some more obscure titles. He also published lots of movie tie-ins, which the bigger publishers do very rarely.

In the early 2000s, the large publisher Gummerus bought Book Studio, which eventually caused Lindgren to leave and start a new business. This time it became BookKari, under which Lindgren worked out some interesting books, but it was clear his energy was fading. One of the books was Synnyimme lähtemään ("Born to Leave"), in 2006, by Pate Riikonen, who later turned out to be Tapani Bagge and Harri István Mäki, who later on collaborated on a book I commissioned for the Arktinen Banaani publishers.

We worked together on some books. I did my first short story collection for Lindgren. This was a collection of the Finnish singer-songwriter Reino Helismaa's early stories, called ..ja Reikärauta-Brown ("..and Six-Shooter-Brown" or some such). I also copied some short stories and serials by Mauri Sariola for Lindgren to be published as books, and I proposed my translation of Jason Starr's Fake ID for him. He was interested, but for some reason or another he passed. (The book is now coming out from Arktinen Banaani.) We talked about other books and I compiled another set of Helismaa's adventure and crime stories, but Lindgren didn't live long enough to do the book. I also compiled a huge collection of Finnish pulp fiction stories (with a good grant), but nothing came of it. This was sadder news to Tapani though than me, since Lindgren published Tapani's first adult crime novel, Puhaltaja (The Jack), in 2002, with some other books of his and always offered translation work for him. Tapani said he lost a friend.

My book of outdoor stories out next week

The last book for this Spring (well, not exactly the last, but close) is this collection of Finnish outdoor stories, called Outoja jälkiä/Strange Tracks. The stories in the book range from the late 19th century to 2007 and Juha-Pekka Koskinen's weird horror story. It's a strange bunch, but I'm glad I made it - more obscure writers have been rescued! This differs from your usual outdoor story collection in that I've included some pulp magazine stories in, for example adventure and crime stories by Seppo Tuisku and Antero Aulamo.

Finnish SF scene

My friend Jukka Halme talks with Jeff VanderMeer about the state of Finnish science fiction, especially about Johanna Sinisalo and her Birdbrain, just now out in the US, and Hannu Rajaniemi and his phenomenally successful The Quantum Thief.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Fabulous World of Jules Verne

I lured Kauto, my 6-year old son, to watch an ancient black & white Czech animation from an ancient VHS. To my surprise, Kauto watched the whole movie with me! It was Karel Zeman's Vynález zkázy from 1958, known in Finland as Salaisuuksien saari (The Island of Secrets) and in the English-speaking world as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (or Invention for Destruction). It's the film version of one of Jules Verne's lesser-known novels, Face au drapeau AKA Facing the Flag (in Finland as Isänmaan lippu). Zeman is best known for his animation collage in which he uses live actors mixed with stop-motion animation and the original illustrations for Jules Verne's novels. It's very beautiful, as if the fictional world of Verne comes out alive on screen. As an adventure, The Fabulous World of Jules Verne is slow-moving, but it also contains lots of beauty. It's the beauty of a silent cinema, of something happening for the first time and the thrilling sensation we get out of it. Zeman is one of the great artists of cinema.

Here are the opening credits. Seems like you can watch the whole film on YouTube. (More overlooked films at Todd Mason's blog here.)

Where's Lucky Luke?

The Official Blog of the Western Fictioneers, Professional Authors of Traditional Western Novels and Short Stories lists Top Ten Western comics. See the list here. Seems pretty nostalgic to me, but what's missing almost completely are the European comics. There are Blueberry (on 10) and Ken Parker (tie on 21), but where's Lucky Luke, where's Tex Willer, where's Cocco Bill, where's Yakari, Buddy Longway, Jerry Spring, Oumpah-pah... I know, I know, not many of these have been available in English, but here's hoping they will be!

Edit: a friend of mine pointed out there are more European comics included: Alejandro Jodorowsky's Bouncer on 19, Victor de la Fuente's Amargo on 20, Hermann and Greg's much-praised Comanche (tie on 25) and Giraud's and Charlier's (known for Blueberry) Jim Cutlass (tie on 32). 

Logicomix

The Logicomix graphic novel (which I believe is available in English) has been getting high praise from just about everyone here in Finland. The premise is interesting: it's a metatextual rendering of the history of mathematical, exact logic. It's told from many perspectives: the artists discussing the book under construction and Bertrand Russell telling about his life in a public speech, with the story moving forwards and backwards in time. The examples of logic Russell gives in his speech are also played out in the present time, with the artists discussing them. 

Logicomix is a fluent read, but I got the feeling it's also overhyped. The art is a bit stale (the artists are said to have collaborated earlier on the Babar animated TV show...) and while there's a lot of stuff going on all the time, with many important mathematical thinkers and philosophers popping in and popping out, I didn't realize what the fuss was about. (Plus I didn't understand many of the dilemmas presented, which may explain why I wasn't as fascinated as some others.) The stuff with Ludwig Wittgenstein was probably the most powerful. But I'd say if you're interested at all in the mathematics or the history of philosophical logic, you should try Logicomix. I just wish it would've been more original, more courageous. As a graphic novel, it's way behind Spiegelman's Maus, anything by Will Eisner, Alan Moore's and Eddie Campbell's From Hell etc. 

Controversy over Ace Atkins's forth-coming Spenser books

Ace Atkins and TV writer Michael Brandman will be continuing Robert B. Parker's Spenser books. This has caused a lot of controversy at the Rara-Avis e-mail list, with people shouting "couldn't they at least wait until the body was cool? I mean, shit, Parker hasn't been dead two years". From my perspective, I can't see any harm someone writing more mediocre books that read pretty fast and tell about nothing. I mean, I've never been able to understand what's behind Parker's success and cult status. I don't want to hear stuff like "you just had to be there" or "Spenser's voice is unique" (which it doesn't really seem to me), I want to hear solid analysis.

Interview with Woodrell

Apart from just about everyone else, I'm not a big Daniel Woodrell fan, but do check out this interview with him.

Finns getting a right-wing parliament

It was an election day today. Finland voted for a new parliament and decided that what we need is a bunch of over thirty right-wing nuts to deal with such complicated things as the EU monetary crisis, the global immigration and such. Here's a BBC article. Finland follows the route of many European countries, for which I'm very, very sad. Seems like Barack Obama is the only good guy right now. (I'm sure many of my American readers disagree with me on this.)

Antti Tuomainen strikes a deal

Marvellous news from my writer friend, Antti Tuomainen, the noir man extraordinaire! Beware of the Finnish noir apocalypse!

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Concrete Jungle

The Concrete Jungle is the US title for Joseph Losey's The Criminal (1960). It's a very, very tough crime film, reminiscent of the best, the most hysterical film noirs à la Kiss Me Deadly or Brute Force. Very hardboiled (and not very unlike Sean Connery) Stanley Baker is the head character, a career criminal just getting out from the prison and already developing his next big gig. Everything goes well and they get 40,000 pounds, but afterwards Baker's criss-crossed, in the best tradition of the genre. The ending is very grim, which means it's very good. Some of the scenes are so hysterical you want to jump up and shout: "Stop!"

There are some problems with the film: there's too much music, some of the scenes are a bit stagey and there are some inconsistencies in the script, but all in all, a lovably dark crime film from one of the masters. There are some things here Joseph Losey couldn't have done if he hadn't left the USA after being blacklisted: the homosexuality of the inmates is not hinted at, it's plainly shown (even though there are no kisses here or even a mention of the relationships), and the violence is harsh and brutal. Here's a good review of the DVD. Check it out, if you can.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here.

Fool, enigma, suicide

Here, try this.

Little Red Riding Hood on View-Master

I'm unpacking feverishly and coming up with very weird items in my collection of sorts. Here's one, a folder for the View-Master discs containing the story of Little Red Riding Hood (in Finnish language, if anyone's wondering). Can't find the year this was published. I know I have somewhere a similar folder for Tarzan discs, will have to post a picture of the folder and its photos, provided I'll ever find it.

Brian Garfield on Donald Westlake

Long interview with Brian Garfield about his long-time friend, Donald Westlake.

Cape Cod Noir

This reminds me of the idea I pitched to Akashic two years ago: the Helsinki Noir anthology. Thanks to Kevin Wignall, I got a very good line-up for the thing. I'll have to dig it up and refresh it.

Gil Brewer's bibliography

Just a quick note: here's a pretty complete bibliography for Gil Brewer's short story fiction, with some discoveries (i.e. Gil Brewer wrote some short stories as by Jack Holland).

We just moved

We carried almost all of our possessions to our new apartment - our new home! - today and we are all pretty tired. Kauto threw up after eating almost only candy and snacks all day and this new place is a mess, with all the 6,000 books lying around, in boxes, on tables, on shelves, everywhere. Plus all the clothes, Elina's vintage dresses, 120 shoes... and I'm not someone to blame her, since I've got at least 100 T-shirts and what not. We've talked about opening a bottle of Moët & Chandon when the move is over, but it's not over yet. Wish us luck!