The Maltese Falcon, comic book version

Evan Lewis has been posting chapters of the comic book version of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon on his blog. Check them out here.

Interview with Ed Gorman

Check out this good interview with Ed Gorman at The Rap Sheet.

Letter from paperback writer Len Levinson

Since I mentioned Len (Leonard) Levinson in a longish post three years ago, this merits reblogging: Len Levinson has sent a letter to the blogger at The Post Modern Pulp blog, and I thought I'd share the link.

My new Tumblr blog

I was cleaning up an old computer and deleting most of the pictures stored therein, but I got to pity all the cover scans and other stuff I've been saving, so I decided to up a new blog. It's also called Pulpetti, but it's at Tumblr, so I could use the same moniker. Here it is.

On Charles Willeford

Great three-part blog post on Charles Willeford.

Peter Rozovsky on hardboiled

In his blog I too rarely read Peter Rozovsky has started a new series of posts: he looks into the classic American hardboiled crime fiction. Here are his posts on Lionel White, Edward Anderson (Thieves Like Us), James M. Cain, Dan J. Marlowe and Robert Silverberg (admittedly a small one) and finally Dan J. Marlowe (again!), Paul Cain and Jim Thompson. He has also some other fascinating posts on different subjects, go read them all!

Elina's blog

My wife Elina has just started her own blog. Take a look here. The blog, called Hopeapeili (Silver Mirror; an old Finnish fashion mag), will be largely about vintage fashion and it's in Finnish.

Margaret Millar's Tom Aragon novels

As I mentioned earlier, I was writing an article on Margaret Millar for a forth-coming book 100 American Crime Writers (or something along those lines, I'm forgetting the exact title - or then it is just that!). I was going to do a Forgotten Friday post last Friday on two of Millar's later novels, but I never got around to doing it, so I'll post it now.

Or actually I'm just copy-pasting what I wrote on the Tom Aragon books in my article. Tom Aragon was one of the few series characters Millar wrote about, and actually the only in her late career. There were couple short-lived series characters in her early books, but her mature phase (from around 1950 to the mid-sixties) hasn't any.

Millar's late phase is also worthy of note, even though her books from the seventies and eighties don't rise to the level of her classics. A good example is Ask For Me Tomorrow (1976) that is also one of her most traditional crime novels. The hero of the book is a young lawyer called Tom Aragon, who's called for help to search for a missing first husband. The book takes the reader on tour to Mexico, especially the poor wasteland of Baja California. Millar draws memorable characters of people living in destitude and their struggle to survive which often turns into quest for the impossible. Millar is very good at depicting Americans trying to find the American Dream, to rise from rags to riches, and their dishonesty towards themselves.

Ask For Me Tomorrow is not one of Millar's best, and neither is The Murder of Miranda (1979), which also stars Tom Aragon. Both books are a bit uneasy mixtures of social satire and the private eye genre. Millar is not very good writing humorous scenes (which is paradoxical, since her earlier books were full of satire), and the books change the point of view rather clumsily. The best parts are those with Aragon, but in these scenes Millar shows the influence of her husband - they could've well been written by Ross Macdonald (which of course is a compliment). The last of the three Tom Aragon novels, Mermaid (1982), is about Aragon searching for a mildly retarted runaway girl.

Do you think I'm right saying that Kenneth Millar had an influence on his wife, Margaret? I think I sensed the Ross Macdonald vibe in Ask For Me Tomorrow even when I read it in the mid-eighties, when I was 15 or 16. There are similar themes and plotlines, with the private eye figure (sure, Aragon is not a private eye, but still close and he acts like one) travelling from place to place and unravelling the mysteries of the past. Of course Ross Macdonald had died by the time Ask For Me Tomorrow was published, but one could possibly imagine that it was based on an outline Macdonald had made.

And, oh, the editor of the book 100 American Crime Writers, Steven Powell, maintains a crime-related blog here at the Venetian Vase. Take a look.

French paperback covers, with a dash of Surrealist items

Here's a link to a French blog, with largely erotic and hardboiled paperback covers, some of which are pretty crude, but also eye-catching. Seems like the French also knew how to produce cheap trash. Fascinating, nevertheless. Notice the Gold Medal rip-off series called, seemingly, Oscar.

Listed are also some Surrealist items, like the first edition (rather non-descript) of André Breton and Philippe Soupault's Magnetic Fields.

Review of Jarkko Sipilä's Against the Wall

Someone called Toby commented on my months old post on Finnish writer Jarkko Sipilä's Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall, the English translation of his cop novel. Here's his review he wrote some time ago - it's not entirely positive, but still merits a look, as he's clearly knowledgeable and mentions having read one of David Peace's crime novels. (I haven't read Sipilä's book myself, so I can't really comment.)

A review on Conrad Hirst

Jussi Katajala's review on Kuka on Conrad Hirst (in Finnish). Quite positive: gets four national states departed from Yugoslavia out of five!

A Chap O'Keefe story I almost published

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

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

The Mary Poppins Massacre

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

Vince Keenan's Noir City reports

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

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

Creme de la crap

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

Steranko on pHinnWeb's blog

I link too rarely to my friend pHinn's excellent blog, as it contains lots of interesting stuff on Finnish cinema, experimental cinema and music, electronic music, psychedelia, nostalgia TV, etc. etc. Here's pHinn's take on comic artist Jim Steranko.

Suomen Dekkariseuran blogi

Suomen Dekkariseura on perustanut blogin, jota vetää seuran puheenjohtaja Kirsi Luukkanen. Uuden blogin voit tsekata täältä.

The Finnish Whodunnit Society has started a blog.

Teeemu Tairan suositeltava blogi

Haluan vain suositella ystäväni Teemu Tairan blogia. Uskontotieteen tutkija ja monipuolinen kirjoittaja Teemu käsittelee blogissa laajalti monenlaisia asioita, psykobillystä ranskalaiseen filosofiaan.

Lisään sen oikealle linkkilistaan, niin kuin pari muutakin blogia. Detectives Beyond Borders on hyvä dekkariblogi, jota seuraan itse vähän satunnaisesti, mutta jossa on aina jotain kiinnostavaa - ja monesta eri lajityypistä. Lee Goldbergin Writer's Life on hyvä paikka, jos haluaa tutustua amerikkalaisen kirjailijan ja tv-käsikirjoittaja-tuottajan elämään - ja samalla tuohtua tämän fanifiktiota käsittelevistä mielipiteistään.

(Just recommending some blogs.)

Länkkäriseuran uudet sivut

(About the new blog of The Finnish Western Society whose magazine, Ruudinsavu/Gunsmoke, I edit.)

Monet ovat epäilleet, että Länkkäriseura on lakkautettu, kun nettisivut eivät toimi. Uudet löytyvät täältä - alkoi olla jo liian noloa, että vanhoja sivua ei päivitetä. Blogimuotoiset sivut eivät ole täydelliset ollakseen viralliset sivut, mutta kaikki muu näytti olevan nyt liian vaikeaa tai monimutkaista, ainakin meille. Näillä näkymin vanhat sivut jäävät olemaan, vaikka ne voivatkin hämätä. Uusin Ruudinsavu on vastikään ilmestynyt ja on aivan näinä päivinä haettavissa Akateemisesta - sivuja on pitkästä aikaa kunnon määrä ja juttujen aiheina sellaista klassikkokamaa kuin Gary Cooper, Anthony Mann ja Jesse James. Myös Konni Zilliacuksesta ja tämän siirtolaisnovelleista on pitkä artikkeli, sekä tietenkin vakiopalstoja.

Valentine Day flash horrors

I'm not one to celebrate Valentine Day - I would've totally forgotten about it, if Ottilia hadn't sent me a Valentine Day's text message (yes, she has a cell phone of her own!). I more or less think that you should have Valentine's Day everyday - if you don't really care for the people, what's the point trying to once a year?

Nevertheless, here's a fine selection of Valentine Day's themed flash fiction stories, the focus on crime. Not very romantic stuff, let me tell you! The thing was concocted up by Patti Abbott, who's a very fine writer of short stories and one who I'll be publishing in Isku. I liked her and Patrick Shawn Bagley's story the best (I didn't read them all, though, I most certainly will, on a later date).