New Stephen King Novel Coming from Hard Case Crime

JOYLAND to be published in June 2013

New York, NY; London, UK (May 30, 2012) – Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of pulp-styled crime novels published by Titan Books, today announced it will publish JOYLAND, a new novel by Stephen King, in June 2013.  Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, JOYLAND tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.  JOYLAND is a brand-new book and has never previously been published.  One of the most beloved storytellers of all time, Stephen King is the world’s best-selling novelist, with more than 300 million books in print.
Called “the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade” by Neal Pollack in The Stranger, Hard Case Crime revives the storytelling and visual style of the pulp paperbacks of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.  The line features an exciting mix of lost pulp masterpieces from some of the most acclaimed crime writers of all time and gripping new novels from the next generation of great hardboiled authors, all with new painted covers in the grand pulp style.  Authors range from modern-day bestsellers such as Pete Hamill, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block and Ed McBain to Golden Age stars like Mickey Spillane (creator of “Mike Hammer”), Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of “Perry Mason”), Wade Miller (author of Touch of Evil), and Cornell Woolrich (author of Rear Window). 
Stephen King commented, “I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.” 
King’s previous Hard Case Crime novel, The Colorado Kid, became a national bestseller and inspired the television series “Haven,” now going into its third season on SyFy.
“Joyland is a breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book,” said Charles Ardai, Edgar- and Shamus Award-winning editor of Hard Case Crime.  “It’s a whodunit, it’s a carny novel, it’s a story about growing up and growing old, and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their time.  Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved. When I finished it, I sent a note saying, ‘Goddamn it, Steve, you made me cry.’ ”
JOYLAND will feature new painted cover art by the legendary Robert McGinnis, the artist behind the posters for the original Sean Connery James Bond movies and “Breakfast At Tiffany’s,” and by Glen Orbik, the painter of more than a dozen of Hard Case Crime’s most popular covers, including the cover for The Colorado Kid.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: The Last Jaws

The Finnish DVD cover says the title for this is The Last Jaws, but the opening credits say it's The Last Shark. Be it as it may, the original Italian title is L'ultimo squalo. I'm sure this film has other names as well. It was banned in the US for being such a blatant rip-off of Spielberg's Jaws.

This epic falls not very neatly somewhere between a schlock horror thriller and a solid turkey. It's not as camp as it should be, nor as shocking as it should be, so it's pretty mediocre. Some very funny moments throughout, as the YouTube link shows (it's with Spanish dubbing). More Overlooked (is this "overlooked"?) Movies at Todd Mason's blog here.

Joseph Koenig on False Negative

Titan Books - Joseph Koenig on False Negative

New Hard Case Crime writer shares some of his memories of working for the true crime papers. Horrifying stuff.

Patricia Highsmith: The Cry of the Owl

Seems to me that people mostly remember Patricia Highsmith from her Tom Ripley books (which are very good, so I'm not complaining) and Strangers on a Train (would they if Hitchcock hadn't made the film?). Her other stand-alones can also be very effective, and The Cry of the Wolf from 1962 is indeed very effective.

The book's a story about a young man who seems to dislike other people and stalks a young woman who's living alone in a house some miles away from the city. The girl does have a boyfriend, but when she spots the young stalker and responses to him kindly, a very strange relationship starts to develop. It seems for quite a while that this is a rare murderless crime novel, but in the end there's one. I won't say anything more. This is a good example of female noir, the subgenre Highsmith shared with the likes of Margaret Millar, Doris Miles Disney, Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, Ursula Curtiss and others. Higsmith might be the cruellest of them all.

I see only just now that there is a rather recent movie based on this. Anyone seen it? Is it any good?

Edit: I was told that Claude Chabrol also made a film out of this, called Le cri du hibou (1987).

Turned 40 last Thursday

Since the thing mentioned in the headline happened last Thursday, I wanted to mention some of the things I've been up to:

- I just compiled and sent to the printers a small booklet that will come out next Friday, when I'm having a ball with some friends of mine (see the photo), it contains 40 items, mainly pictures and photos, from my life and the title means simply: Juri: 40 things.

- last Friday I finished doing layouts for the new anthology I edited: it reimagines the Finland's most famous soldier, the national hero Mannerheim as a pulp hero with a secret life, mission and whole new adventures no one has ever heard of; the book will come out in the sixth of June

- the anthology of old Finnish horror stories is finally coming out, it may be out already as I write this

- I've been trying to gather some stuff for the book on the history of misanthropy, but there have been some complications with the publisher that was supposed to do this

- my project for the history of animated cinema went busted, but I'll be resurrecting it as a book for children of 10-14 years; I don't really know how that will turn out

- I've been editing the manuscript of my coming sleaze novel, called this time Runkkuloma Rivieralla (hardly translatable, as the pun in the title makes no sense to anyone outside Finland), it didn't come out as well as I had wished, but I have hopes that with corrections I can make it work

There are also two fictionmags I'm hoping to put out, the other being the fifth and final issue of my Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories and the other being an aviation mag, with two new Finnish stories, one old Finnish story and one old translated story from a pulp mag. Details later, the title will be The Sky of Adventures (or, in Finnish, Seikkailujen taivas). I've also got some book ideas for the next Autumn, but more on them later.

PointBlank Reader

Anyone remember this? Could've been a contender. The anthology never came about. I wonder if the stories found other places to be published in.

The Raid: Redemption

I saw this new Indonesian action movie earlier today and I can echo Vince Keenan's sentiments when he wrote this piece on his blog. I thought some of the kung fu scenes were a bit too long (for some reason I like it better when a guy tackles 20 other guys, but less when there are only two or three, as in the longest battle scene of the film), but nevertheless this was great entertainment. I liked especially how the important plot points were hidden in quick, snappy dialogue. They didn't develop the things for too long, which is alway good. (Someone actually complained me just yesterday that my novel Jumalten tuho is too quick in introducing the characters. What, you wanted to hear two pages of telling what he eats and did twenty years ago?)