Black Horse Westerns on crime/western authors

I've forgotten to link to this: Keith Chapman alias Chap O'Keefe talks in lenght about British and American crime authors who've also written westerns (or vice versa). It's very interesting and gives background on British paperback and pulp authors. There are also other articles of interest after Chapman's piece.

Utterly fascinated by Mystery*File blog

Everyone blogs about Finnish politics and other important matters, but I'm most fascinated by articles, essays and reminiscences about largely forgotten mystery and other authors on Mystery*File: just take a look at these two long posts about H. Beam Piper, M.E. Knerr and Elliot Chaze.

Pictures from Cyprus

Don't have time to write a full travelogue, but here are some shots from our trip to Cyprus. Captions explain at least something, hopefully.

There are some other pictures at the Daddy Blog here. The texts there are in Finnish.

Here's Kauto and me playing minigolf in front of the hotel.

Haunting pictures

Here are two misfortunate shots from somewhere in Cyprus. Don't know what they are, but they seem like stills of an experimental film, don't they?

At the airport

We had to wait for two hours at the Pafos airport on Sunday. Kauto was able to entertain himself playing zoo with his plastic animals and empty strawberry packages.

At the old castle

On the last day on Cyprus, we visited the medieval castle in the centre of Limassol. It was very impressive spatial experience. Here Kauto and Elina are at the roof of the castle. Elina was afraid all the time that Kauto would fall off.

At the zoo

We are so poor photographers that we when we visit the zoo, we don't take pictures of animals.

Too much wine?

Kauto and Elina at the delightful meze meal somewhere in the mountains. Kauto has had too many glasses of wine (which was excellent, by the way - and cheap!). Meze, for those who don't know, is a large festive meal with some dozen plates of different courses. This one was the better of the two we had during our trip and everything was self-made, even the excellent halloumi cheese. Kauto enjoyed his bulgur, cooked with tomatoes and onions. Elina has fond memories of potatoes cooked with white wine and then fried in oil.

Afrodite and I

We climbed to a

hill on top of which had been a temple dedicated to the worship of Afrodite. The large urn had been found intact among the ruins. It was very impressive.

Kauto and I at an old church

Here we are at an old church in the little village of Lania (or Laneia).

Ellroy's Blood On the Moon

I mentioned James Ellroy and my admiration for his LA Quartet in a previous post and that reminded me that I completely forgot to make a mention that I read his Blood On the Moon (1984) just recently. I didn't like it at all. In this, for some reason, Ellroy's characters are not believable in any sense, they are just walking symptoms and manias, especially the hero Lloyd Hopkins. The plot is pretty thin and doesn't have the depth of which Ellroy's better novels are known. The serial killer angle doesn't feel much nowadays, after dozens and dozens of serial killers have stomped crime literature to death (well, boredom, at least!).

The Finnish publisher of the recent translation claims that this was the first serial killer novel. Please!

True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne

Ed Gorman posted a list of ten forgotten crime novels that should be read and reread over and over:

Odds Against Tomorrow William P. McGivern

The 31st of February Julian Symons

How Like An Angel Margaret Millar

The Blank Wall Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

Night and The City Gerald Kersh

The Far Cry Fredric Brown

Cocaine and Blue Eyes Fred Zackel

True Confessions John Gregory Dunne

On The Yard Malcolm Braly

Something in The Shadows Vin Packer

I've read, I think, three books out of the list (wanna guess what they are?) and I have Zackel's Cocaine and Blue Eyes on my TBR pile (which must be a mile long).

I'm getting to the climax of John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions (1972) and I must say that it's a very good crime novel that approaches literary novel without being pompous or "deep", like some books by someone like Dennis Lehane. There's a bit too much of inner monologue in here, too, but it's always connected to a greater scheme of politics and corruption in the Catholic church. And the book is very funny - Dunne writes great dialogue and especially the scene with the detectives in a radio show people can call their clues to is hilarious. Compared to Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, well, I'm a fan of Ellroy's LA Quartet, but the books are so different from one another that they don't compare very well, even though both are about the Black Dahlia case.

I haven't seen the film with Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro, but I remember that my dad used to like it - and he's not someone to recommend films too easily.

Borowczyk's Dr Jekyll et les femmes

Last night I saw Walerian Borowczyk's weird erotic horror film Docteur Jekyll et les femmes. The film is from 1981 and very weird indeed. It takes Stevenson's novel (Borowczyk claimed that he had found the original manuscript Stevenson's wife is said to have burned because of its erotic content) and takes the erotic aspects of Edward Hyde's behaviour to the extreme: he rapes and kills with his 35 cm long penis.

The film is very disturbing, because it celebrates the beauty of destruction at the same time it shows there's nothing glamorous in it. I was reminded of Luis Buñuel's The Golden Age: they both tell the same story of a man and woman who try to make love, but are always stopped by stupid rules and regulations or tepid discussions on metaphysics, religion and science. In the end, they both reach transcendence - but only through giving themselves up to lust, killing and raping. Very beautifully photographed, the film sure is one to stick to mind.

The film also reminds me of Guido Crepax's rendering of Stevenson's novel, but it lacks the political undertones of Borowczyk's film in which the world of bourgeoisie deserves nothing but the destruction.

A book out

I just saw the first drafts of the Turku crime story anthology I've edited. It looks good, with the cover by Jukka Murtosaari. I'll post the scan and other stuff later on. The book will be out Tuesday, third of April.

Viides testamentti, Turun alueen kirjoittajien jännitystarinoiden kokoelma, julkistetaan tiistaina 3.4. klo 15 Turun Akateemisessa. Paikalla on kirjan kustantaja Harri Kumpulainen, kirjan toimittaja (c'est moi), kirjoittajia sekä haastattelijana Kari J. Kettula. Kaikki Pulpetin seuraajat ovat tervetulleita!

Kirjan sisältö on seuraava. Mikäli toisin ei mainita, novellit ovat alkuperäisiä:

Pirkko Arhippa: Välikäsi, ilmestynyt alun perin RikosPaloissa 1/1987
Boris Hurtta: Ikonipuinen arkku
Harri Erkki: Tunneli
Harry Etelä: Mustaa verta, ilmestynyt alun perin Seikkailujen Maailmassa 11/1939
Totti Karpela: Perin inhimillinen tekijä, ilmestynyt alun perin Suomen Kuvalehdessä /1974
Olavi Tuomola: Hantšungin kultainen buddha, ilmestynyt alun perin Mustassa Kuussa 1/1945
Markku Soikkeli: Viides testamentti
Sami Myllymäki: [uups, tästähän puuttui novellin nimi, pitänee kaivaa se sitten esille kun kirja ilmestyy]
Aake Jermo: Hiljainen yö, ilmestynyt alun perin teoksessa Outsider (toim.): Hiljainen yö, Lehtiyhtymä 1944
Kirsti Ellilä: Pyhän kosketus

Lisäksi mukana on toimittajan alkusanat ja kustantajan jälkisanat.

Vastakkainasettelun aika on jälleen

(This is about Finnish politics.)

Sunnuntain Hesarissa kirjoitettiin kokoomuksen vaalivoitosta. Jutun kärkenä oli Sanna Perkiö, jonka boheemius kuulemma auttoi häntä ja puoluetta vaalivoitossa. Perkiön boheemius on sitä, että hänen firmansa sijaitsee Kaapelitehtaalla ja hän keräilee kotimaista nykytaidetta. Heikoissa kantimissa on boheemius nykyään. Näin ajatellen mekin olemme vaimon kanssa boheemeja, jopa varsin hurjia sellaisia.

Jutussa puhuttiin myös kokoomuksen onnistuneesta vastakkainasettelun aika on ohi -sloganista. Sanottiin, että se oli erinomainen idea, jonka suomalaiset ottivat vastaan tyytyväisinä ja innostuneina. Jutusta kävi kuitenkin ilmi, että maassa vallitsee edelleen toinen vastakkainasettelu, vasemmisto-oikeisto/duunari-porvari -vastakkainsettelua julmempi ja häikäilemättömämpi: siinä nimittäin sanottiin, että moni äänesti kokoomusta, koska tuntuu paremmalta samaistua voittajiin kuin häviäjiin.

Paljon on puhuttu myös SAK:n vaalimainoksesta ja sen aiheuttamasta äänten kadosta. Olisi ollut kiinnostavaa nähdä, mitä olisi tapahtunut, jos mainosta olisi käytetty aiottuun tapaan eikä media olisi ruvennut kohkaamaan siitä, miten ikävä, vanhanaikainen ja syyttelevä se on. Monet niistä, jotka omaksuivat median näkökulman, eivät ole mainosta YouTubesta tai vastaavista jaksaneet kaivaa eivätkä ole siis nähneet sitä. Mietin myös, miksei kukaan ottanut kantaa kokoomuksen järkyttäviin nami nami -mainoksiin, joihin oli isketty reivien flaierityyppisesti kaikkea kivaa sälää. Olen itse sarjakuvien ystävä, mutta silti mielessä käy, että vaalit voitti sarjakuvapuolue.

Lukekaa myös Kari Kosmoksen hieno analyysi Jyrki Kataisen työaiheisesta retoriikasta. Kari ei voisi olla enempää oikeassa.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and other flicks

In lieu of a travel report, here are some bits of films seen lately:

John Cassavetes: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1974): a great, underrated attempt to deconstruct a small crime flick, Ben Gazzara's night club owner is clearly a precursor to many loser characters in the neo noir of the 1990's and 2000's (say, Jason Starr's novels). The film has a loose new-wavish narrative, but it's not really new wave and there's none of the trickstery the new wave films used. It's a bit close to some of Altman's films, but the looseness seems more improvised. The night club scenes with a weird stand up comedian and his girls are quite odd, but entertaining in a way.

Herman Shumlin: Confidential Agent (1945): I don't really recall if I've read the Graham Greene novel this is based on, but the film itself is very good, atmospheric and adventurous political film noir about a Spanish freedom fighter on a desperate journey to buy coal from British industrialists. Lauren Bacall should be a British lady, but she just doesn't have the right flair. That notwithstanding, she's a treat.

Joe Novak

I've mentioned my private eye hero Joe Novak here so often that I thought the thing could need some explaining. Here's an entry I wrote for Kevin Burton Smith's extraordinary Thrilling Detective site:

Joe Novak
by Juri Nummelin

Joe Novak is a private eye working in Los Angeles, getting mixed up in sleazy swindles, but usually looking at things happening as an outsider.

Joe Novak stories are somewhere between parody and pastiche, and some of them are not really stories about a P.I. solving cases, but they can also be about a P.I. getting out of the troubles in his own personal life. Novak is a WWII veteran and he has horrible memories from the Ardennes. Novak delights in reading hardboiled paperbacks, but he has also studied philosophy at university under the G.I. bill. He dates several women and has trouble finding a suitable one.

The series of short stories is written by Juri Nummelin, who is normally a non-fiction writer. The Joe Novak stories have been published in the Isku magazine, a Finnish small press zine specializing in hardboiled crime fiction.

The stories:

Änkyttävän naapurin tapaus/The Case of the Stuttering Neighbour, Isku # 5 (2006).
Eripuraisten naapurien tapaus/The Case of the Quarreling Neighbours, Isku # 4 (2006).
Merirosvoaarteen tapaus/The Case of the Pirate Treasure, Isku # 3 (2005)
Kävelykeppien tapaus/The Case of the Walking Sticks, Isku # 2 (2005).
Ikkunattoman monadin tapaus/The Case of the Windowless Monad, Isku # 1 (2004).

Another fictionmag coming - soon?

Here's a cover by Jukka Murtosaari for another fictionmag that's coming out some time later this year: it's called Mälli/Spunk, with the subtitle (do magazines have subtitles?) Tosi Miesten Toimintakertomuksia/Action Stories For Real Men. (Joo, tiedän, että kuvassa lukee "seikkailukertomuksia", mutta pitää pitää palaveria kuvittajan kanssa vielä.) It's supposed to be a pastiche of a early sixties' men's mag à la Argosy, Rogue or Man's Story or Male, etc. My story is about Joe Novak and it's called "The Case of the Sleazy P.I." I mentioned having started the story some time back and I think I managed to sneak in all the references I mentioned in the earlier post.

The logo is made alongside the old logo of Jermu, a Finnish men's mag from the seventies.

A new fictionmag

A new fictionmag came out today: it's called Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories and it contains mostly new stories by Finnish writers, but also one reprint from Heikki Jylhä from 1940 and translations of stories by Stanley G. Weyman and Molly Brown. The mag is meant to resemble a general pulp magazine à la Short Stories or Argosy and the stories have great variety: there's swashbuckling adventure, a crime story set in the late 1800's, a story about ancient Egypt, a weird Western short story, and so forth. So it should be a treat.

Published by me, of course. For the Finnish readers (and for others, too, since there's a cover), go to the Isku magazine's own blog here.

Bill Clinton in a Finnish pulp story

Here's a snippet from a Finnish horror story from 1939 that I'm editing for a collection of short horror stories of Harry Etelä (about whom I'll have to write more in a near future):

At first I couldn't remember who the boy resembled, but when he got nearer to us and I could see his pale face clearly, I felt like my brain had turned upwards and a freezing cold filled my body. Bill Clinton.. Bill Clinton.. kept pounding in my head. The boy dressed up in work overalls was Bill Clinton... without a doubt.

(From Kauhun kahleissa/Frozen In Terror, Seikkailujen Maailma/The World of Adventures, 4/1939. Transl. by JN.)