Only short story translations

Here's a list of important, mainly American, crime authors who've had only short story translations in Finland:

William Campbell Gault
Norbert Davis (see also this)
H. Bedford-Jones
Lawrence Blochman
William G. Bogart (the WikiPedia link doesn't say that Bogart's hero Johnny Saxon was an ex-pulp writer himself)
Hugh B. Cave (see also this)
George C. Chesbro (two Mongo stories, if I remember correctly)
George Harmon Coxe (okay, he had some serials published in magazines)
Charles Einstein
Hal Ellson
Steve Fisher (I've been forgetting to link to this excellent post at Woody Haut's blog)
William Lindsay Gresham (you've all seen the film about his wife, haven't you?)
Robert Martin
Harold Q. Masur (see also this and this)
Bob McKnight
Sam Merwin, Jr.
Frederick Nebel (see also this)
Francis M. Nevins, Jr.
William Nolan (see also this)
Lawrence Treat (see also this)
Robert Turner (see also this)
Richard Wormser
Leslie T. White

Does William Barrett count? Many of his Needle-Mike stories from Dime Detective were published in Finnish in the fourties, but none of his adventure and religious novels ever appeared here.

I also noticed that I was wrong about William Ard when I said that he has nothing translated in Finnish. He has a short story in a men's mag in the fifties, called "The Only Piece of Evidence" (or something to that effect).

By the way, Bart Spicer has been published in Finland only in Swedish!

Megan Abbott blogging

I haven't read either of Megan Abbott's two crime novels that have been highly praised, but if her blog posts at The Rap Sheet are any indication of their quality, I'll be reading them pretty soon. Here, for example, is, to me at least, a very thought-provoking post about film noir - and maybe noir fiction in particular.

The cover for her novel is quite striking, don't you think?

African psychedelia and heavy metal

I wrote here once that as a teenager (an eccentric one, let me tell you that) I dreamed of a new music genre: African garage rock and rock'n'roll. I wrote my own hypothetical reviews of garage punk bands coming out of Nigeria and Senegal. A year ago, I found a song that fits my scheme: Vum Vum's "Muzangola". I wrote about it here.

Now I've been listening to a collection of Nigerian funk from the seventies. It's great stuff throughout, but the most interesting thing is that there are two pieces that also fit my dream about the new genre: Tunji Oleyana and the Blenders's "Ifa" is a moody piece of weird psychedelia and Ofo The Black Company's "Allah Wakbarr" (sounds like a religious piece) is quite heavy and rollicking rock'n'roll tune, almost without any African elements. The guy - whoever he is - plays his electric guitar like Jimi Hendrix on speed.

Here's a review of the album. It says pretty much the same thing about Ofo The Black Company.

It would be interesting, though, to hear real garage punk bands from Africa. There must've been at least some in countries like South Africa and Rhodesia. But I don't think they had any African influence.

Scroll down

Scroll down to see a post about thriller/crime writers that have been published here in Finland only in the Readers' Digest Condensed Books. I had been saving it as draft, but you'd think it would come up as the first post, but no.

I may do yet another post of important and interesting crime writers who have been published in Finnish only in short story form. (Not very sexy, you say. Yup. Not sexy at all. I like to be sexy only when I'm not blogging. When I cuddle up next to Paris H... umm, my wife.)

Ed Gorman

I totally forgot one of the most important paperback writers who's worked for a long time in the industry and hasn't been translated: Ed Gorman. There's not a word from him in Finnish. (I haven't even interviewed him, but I'll take care of that.) Ed Gorman blogs here.

Blogs sexy?

There seems to be some kind of contest in the midst of Finnish blogs as to which blog is the sexiest. (Or actually the word is "the most fuckable", but I wouldn't dare use it here. This is a family blog, after all.)

But, hey, c'mon, blogs sexy? Yeah, right. Maybe three or four years ago, maybe not even then. It's just nerds and introverts pointing to other nerds and introverts. Check this out (sorry, it's in Finnish), someone writes about how to make a popular blog. If I understood correctly, Juha Seppälä, the Finnish author, was heavily accused of racism (or some such) when he wrote in a newspaper column two or three years back that bloggers are narcissistic. Point proven. (Except that Seppälä has his own blog now. (He gets paid for it, though.))

I may have to post more of Ottilia's bunny drawings here, if not for anything else but to keep these people from coming here.

Stephen Crane

(It's about a coming collection of Stephen Crane's Western short stories that have never before been translated.)

Turkulaiselta kulttuurikustantamolta Farokselta tulee kevään aikana kokoelma Stephen Cranen lännentarinoita, joita ei ole aiemmin suomeksi käännetty (paitsi "Sininen hotelli", joka ilmestyi puolitoista vuotta sitten Länkkäriseuran tilaajalahjana). Anssi Hynysen kokoama ja kääntämä kirja on sen verran hieno kulttuuriteko, että pistän tähän kirjan sisällön:

"Morsian saapuu kaupunkiin ja muita lännentarinoita" (työnimi) sisältää seuraavat tarinat:

Takaa-ajo (”Horses – One Dash!”, Philadelphia Press, tammikuu 1896)
Mies ja muutama muu (”A Man and Some Others”, Century, helmikuu 1897)
Morsian saapuu kaupunkiin (”The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky”, McClure’s Magazine, helmikuu 1898)
Viisi valkoista hiirtä (”The Five White Mice”, New York World, huhtikuu 1898)
Sininen hotelli (”The Blue Hotel”, Collier’s Weekly, marraskuu 1898)
Kello kaksitoista (”Twelve O’Clock”, Pall Mall Gazette, joulukuu 1899)

Authors translated only in Readers' Digest Condensed books

As I mentioned the Readers' Digest books below, I thought I'd make a list of, mostly American, crime and thriller writers who have been translated only in those abridged collections.

F. Paul Wilson (apart from short stories in SF/horror fanzines and collections; the medical thriller, The Select, in 1995)
Stephen Hunter (Point of Impact, in 1997; there seems to be a movie coming up on this)
Barry Eisler (Rain Fall, in 2003)
Stephen Leather
James Thayer (several translations in Condensed Books)
Greg Iles
Susan Geason
Brian Haig
C.J. Box
David Lavallee
S.K. Wolf (just who is this? gotta be a pseudonym)
Sam Llewellyn
Robert Byrne
Ken McClure

Doing the research I noticed that there's a novel The Long Kill by Reginald Hill in 1991 in one of the Condensed books under the pseudonym Patrick Ruell. I don't think this is mentioned anywhere else (in Finnish sources, that is).

Ridley Pearson in Finland

As a part of my on-going series on crime and thriller writers' reception by the Finnish publishers, here's something on Ridley Pearson (whose The Angel Maker I didn't like a bit, as evidenced below). I'd thought he would've been bigger in Finland than he apparently is.

He's had only four books published in Finland by a big house, Gummerus. These include The Angel Maker, No Witnesses, Beyond Recognition and Chain of Evidence. Two of his books, Hard Fall and The Seizing of Yankee Green Mall, were published by Kauppiaitten Kustannus which is a publishing house not specialized in translated fiction. These precede the ones by Gummerus. There are two books done abridged in the Readers' Digest collections, but they were already published by others.

1997's Chain of Evidence (Todistusketju in Finnish) was the last Pearson to be translated. While I might be able to say that this speaks for the Finnish readership's good taste, it's still a puzzle to me. The Angel Maker had two printings in 1994 and while the first one may have been a small one, it's still an evidence pointing out there could be a market for Pearson in Finland. It is no service to Finnish readers - and to the reading culture - to drop authors like this.

Ridley Pearson sucks!

(I had difficulty writing the last word on the title: "susck", "sucsk", "suksc", "sukcs". It sets the tone for this diatribe.)

I finished my first Ridley Pearson last night. It was The Angel Maker from 1993, second offering in the series recounting the adventures of Boldt and Matthews, the cop couple almost in love with each other. It was such a boring book that I had difficulties to get through with it. I almost fell asleep reading it... And this is a friggin' bestselling crime thriller! C'mon! What's with you people, getting this kind of bull to the bestselling level?! Read something good for a change!

Okay, let's calm down. I'll give you that there was some inventiveness in the ways the serial killer did his stuff, but beyond that there were no redeeming elements. The characters are clearly meant to be paradoxical and deep human beings, with inner contradictions and ever-going self-doubt, but Pearson cannot give them but some extra points - i.e., Boldt takes his little baby with him to interview possible leads (but the baby really doesn't act like a baby; if I were to take my little boy (0kay, he's two) to my job gigs, it would only break all hell loose) - that really don't add much to anything. The same with the baddie, a heart surgeon/vet who's supposed to be this monumental genius seeing himself above all the others - I didn't believe in him for a minute.

Pearson says this at his website: "Being a fiction writer is really like being an actor, because if you're going to write convincingly it has to sound right and play right." Okay, the guy's right. But why then does he write books that don't sound and play right? It was like watching some puppets do overlong scenes. (Or then too short. This guy switches the point of view every two pages, when he's not doing scenes that take 300 pages. Especially the scene at the pawn shop had me bite my nails - but not with excitement. And don't ask me about the action scenes. My mother would write better action scenes.)

Someone might say that it was the Finnish translation. No way translators are not that bad in here. It might be the case, though, that Ilkka Rekiaro was so bored with the book that he did a purposefully bad job. But then he wouldn't be so prolific a translator as he is. He'd get canned.

I remember when my book on crime paperback fiction, Pulpografia, came out in 2001 and I was on television. The interviewer asked me if there were any well-written books in the selection. I was mildly put off by the question, but didn't let it show. I could say now that each and every one was written better than The Angel Maker. What's worrying is that this is what people buy and read and think it's the state of the art.

I must be a bit slow

I just should've payed more attention. The shutting down of Flashing In The Gutters got good coverage here.

Untranslated paperbackers

After writing down how the Finnish publishers have treated Block, Leonard and Brian Garfield, I decided it might be interesting to see which prominent (and not so prominent) paperback writers have been neglected in Finland. The list focuses mainly on crime fiction writers and is in random order.

Charles Willeford: no translations before Miami Blues in the late eighties (I don't really consider this surprising, since Willeford wrote mostly for quite obscure publishers)
William Ard: no translations, unless one wants to count a pseudonymous effort that was really written by John Jakes (Give Me This Woman, Monarch 1963, which is great and sleazy in the best paperback tradition)
Frank McAuliffe: no translations
Malcolm Braly: no translations
Glenn Canary: no translations
James O. Causey: no translations
Jay Flynn: no translations
Al Fray: no translations
Charles Runyon: no translations
William Fuller: no translations
Donald Goines: no translations
Iceberg Slim: no translations
David Karp: no translations
Herbert D. Kastle: no translations
Robert Donald Locke: no translations (or actually "no translation", since A Taste of Brass (1957) seems to be his only work, apart from science fiction stories in mags)
David Markson: no translations (the link says that there should've been a reprint of his early crime novels, but has anyone seen them?)
Vin Packer: no translations
James Reasoner: no translations (with the exception of two stories, one in Isku, one in Ruudinsavu, that have been conducted by me in the recent years)

Robert Randisi has got only four or five of his adult Westerns translated and having read those, I find it hard to believe they represent him at his best. He has also some Destroyers, written with Warren Murphy, and Nick Carters (that are quite good within the series). Nothing under his own name and not even his Gunsmiths or other series he's deservedly famous for.

There are no Ed Noons by Michael Avallone translated. He's "known" here only through his pseudonymous work in the U.N.C.L.E. series and Nick Carters.

One of the most peculiar cases is Jim Thompson. The Getaway was translated as a hardback after the Peckinpah movie came out, but we had to wait until the late eighties to see Killer Inside Me in Finnish by a very small press. After that there was still a long gap before Like started translating his books in the nineties.

In the Western field, the most prominent example must be H.A. DeRosso, but there's four or five of his short stories published in Finnish fictionmags, so he won't quite qualify. Other important Western paperbackers not translated in Finnish include authors like Matt Braun, Dan Cushman, Vernon Fluharty, Paul Durst, Lee Hoffman, William C. Johnstone, Nelson Nye, T.V. Olsen and Giles Tippette.

Most of the above-mentioned writers wrote paperbacks. Here are some earlier pulpsters and hardbackers who never made it to Finland:

Cleve F. Adams
Dwight V. Babcock
Leigh Brackett (see also this)
Charles G. Booth
Paul Cain
Lester Dent
Kenneth Fearing
Richard Hallas (unless one wants to count his Lassie, Come Home and a war novel, This Above All, as by Eric Knight)
Roy Huggins (I mean his three early crime novels)
Robert Reeves
Eric Taylor
Roger Torrey
Raoul Whitfield
P.J. Wolfson
Benjamin Appel
A.I. Bezzerides (just recently deceased)
Jay J. Dratler

There's of course the possibility that some of the pulpsters above may have had some stories translated, since the prominent Finnish pulp, Seikkailujen Maailma, didn't always print the writers' names on translated stories.

I may have and must have forgotten lots of authors, but I'll keep you posted if I come up with other names. I couldn't find a link to all the authors, sorry.

Flashing In The Gutters gone

I haven't seen anyone post about Flashing In The Gutters having gone and been shut down. Man, that's huge. I would've hoped he'd've at least saved the archives, there was lot of excellent stuff there.

Richard S. Prather talks about Shell Scott and channeling

Here's a lengthy interview with Richard S. Prather who penned many entertaining and funny PI spoofs with Shell Scott as his hero. The interview focuses sometimes on other things than Prather's career, but it's interesting to see that Prather is a devout in new age religions (or something like that, I'm not exactly sure what his beliefs should be called).

But the most interesting thing to see is that he's very critical of the Bush administration and talks in length about the 9/11 lies (or "lies"). The Shell Scott books are very anti-Red and anti-Left, so I would've thought that Prather is a right-winger himself. Clearly this is not the case. (Or then he shouldn't be discussed in these terms at all.)

Also don't mind the fact that the interviewer is Don Pendleton's widow. It only explain why she's so enthusiastic about Don Pendleton's Mack Bolans. Having read some ten of them I can tell you that Pendleton wasn't the one to ask questions about plotting and style.

Thanks to Steve Lewis for the tip! On top there's Shell Scott as drawn by Robert McGinnis.

Hard Case Crime update

I should really post more often this kind of news items. I'm lazy, though, and I suspect that those who follow this blog also follow those blogs that do post interesting pieces of crime fiction related news - such as Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine.

But as I've liked the Hard Case Crime line very much, I can't help but link to their latest list about coming books. It's impressive - two Robert Bloch crime novels as a Double edition! - and I'd like to start something similar here in Finland. (It's just that the Finnish crime fiction has been pretty lame and there's not so much to reprint even from the seventies and eighties.)

Here's also a list of Stark House coming releases. Elizabeth Sanxay Holding comes very highly recommended by me: nice touch on female noir. Dan J. Marlowe's The Vengeance Man is also very, very good.

I also want to congratulate James Reasoner for writing his 200th novel. Amazing!

PS. I seem to have left out that the Spunk magazine mentioned earlier will be one of those mags I edit and publish with my own money (like Isku), so the publication isn't much of a merit to me. But there are other writers, too, with very funny takes on the so called true stories of the sixties' and seventies' men mags. And there's also some vintage stuff: a story from a Finnish porn mag from 1974.

Spunky story

I'm again writing a new story about my private eye hero, Joe Novak. It's set in a PI conference in the early sixties (Novak is already thinking about getting married and settling down) and Novak is only an innocent bystander when a Texas private eye with cowboy boots comes to him and starts spinning his tall tale about a gig gone hugely wrong. It's meant to be a pastiche of the wild stories that sixties' men's adventure mags printed, but as yet I don't exactly know what will happen. Something wild about biker gangs and their blood-lusty cult leader and his horde of rapist baboons (that are results of a Nazi experiment conducted in Madagascar).

This will come out in Mälli: Tosi Miesten Toimintakertomuksia, which will translate as Spunk: True Men's Action Stories. (There's a spin in Finnish "toimintakertomuksia", but it won't translate.) The mag will come out in late Spring or early Summer.

The Texas private eye in the story is called Jack MacLane. His and Novak's mutual friend is mentioned in dialogue, his name is Jay Reasoner. You know who you are.

Brian Garfield

I'll mention briefly one other author for whom I have high respect and who has had a rather nonchalant response from Finnish publishers: Brian Garfield. He's had four different publishers (one being a paperback house in the mid-seventies) and none of the big houses that have translated his work has done more than two books. The latest ones seem to be two reprints from the early nineties.

The weirdest thing is that Garfield's best-selling Death Wish came from a big house (Karisto, which has always been second rank among the big houses in Finland) in 1975 and its sequel, Death Sentence (1975), came out in paperback from a totally different publisher in 1979, without any blurbs or other stuff pointing out that it was the sequel of the famous book whose film version had spawned a bunch of sequels of its own. (And, by the way, Garfield's own sequel is excellent and very reflective of the vigilante idiocy of the Charles Bronson films.)

Crime fiction careers in Finland

I was writing earlier about John Gardner's following in Finland, which has been sporadic at best. First, three Boysie Oakes books, then nothing, then some half dozen of his James Bonds. A one-off during the interval. At least, the publisher has remained the same.

I got to thinking about other examples. Two of the most frustrating ones have been Elmore Leonard and Lawrence Block, both very professional and widely-read authors working in the crime and mystery field. Leonard has had at least four different publishers, even though there's been some 15 translations in all. Some of the translations are wildly wrong about Leonard's style.

The first Leonard novel to come out in Finnish was, to me, one of his best, Mr. Majestyk. It came out as a cheap paperback in 1979 and it was followed by 52 Pickup from the same paperback house the next year. I think it's a small wonder none of his Western novels came out as paperbacks, even though there were lots of those by writers like Lewis B. Patten and Gordon Shirreffs.

Then the turn was shifted to Tammi who did some pretty bad translations in the late eighties - this was a phase when I was wondering what was so great about this Leonard (I'd been reading some magazines that had articles about hardboiled crime fiction that praised Leonard). Then came Book Studio, a smallish independent publisher, who did lots of Leonard's later efforts from Rum Punch to Out Of Sight. And then another big house steps in with Pagan Babies and Tishomingo Blues - I hear with good results regards to translation. These are the only Leonard translations in the 2000's. No one has ever touched his earlier books, save for the paperback house who did Mr. Majestyk and 52 Pickup.

Lawrence Block has been served more ill than Leonard. He's had only two publishers in Finland, first Vaasa Oy, newspaper publisher and printing house, who had several paperback lines from early sixties to the eighties. In the Manhattan series (which was actually of Swedish origin) Block's thriller Deadly Honeymoon (1967) came out in 1974. I think it's a small wonder that not even Block's paperback originals came to be translated, when there were at least two or three new titles every month from the Finnish paperback houses. I'd love to see a Tanner novel by Block to have come out from Vaasa Oy in their Manhattan series.

Then there was a long break, after which Book Studio made several of Block's Matt Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, starting from the mid-eighties. Then Book Studio was bought by a bigger house, which ultimately caused the main editor and original publisher to leave the business and the Book Studio line was dropped with all of its crime fiction. Without Book Studio, Block has no Finnish publisher. (The Book Studio head honcho Kari Lindgren has a new publishing firm with him, but last I heard he had dropped the plans to publish more Block - I think it was meant to be a collection of Block's short stories. I'd hope someone grabbed Block's early novels, the ones that have been dug out by the good folks at Hard Case Crime.)

Alongside Deadly Honeymoon, there were half dozen short stories in several magazines in the 70's and 80's and an early porn paperback Block is reported having written as by Sheldon Lord (Kept, I think, is the title; Maksettu rakastaja in Finnish). I don't think Block ever received any money from the translation...

The similar thing has occurred also with Donald Westlake. And I bet there are dozens of other good, respectable authors who should've deserved better.

Cranky heirs

Some of you may remember that I've compiled a book of Finnish pulp fiction. It should come out soon, but there are now problems. I wanted to reprint a total unknown who had a rather good private eye story in the late fifties. I didn't even know if the name was a pseudonym or not, but the surname was rare. The phone numbers for the possible relatives were restricted, but I was able to find one with Google: a young guy, playing hockey in a junior team.

I wrote to the coach of the team and asked him to deliver the message. Then one day the father of the hockey player phoned me. He was the grandson of the said writer. He hadn't read any of his granddad's stories,which seemed pretty weird to me.

The phone numbers were restricted because his father's ex-wife (father had died a while back) made harrassment calls. It turned out that this son felt pretty much okay if there were a reprint, but there's an evil and greedybrother. The son I talked to said that he fears that his brother - with whom he doesn't communicate at all - gets ideas that there's lots of money in this. I said that there would be some sort of a payment for the reprint rights, but nothing fancy. The man said he'll talk with his sister - who obviously is a sane person - and will get back to me. (Nothing has happened so far, though.)

I asked around some people who have done similar collections of old stuff and found out that it's not actually a simple issue: heirs don't necessarily represent the rights of a writer. A writer may have donated his rights to charity or something like that.

I don't think, though, that was the case with a Finnish guy who penned two dozen short stories just to make some quick money and abandoned writing soon after that. I don't think he ever dreamed about getting his stuff back to print, even in fifty years' time. I hope that the thing resolves and I'll manage to make justice for a forgotten author.

Back to work

Will be busy for couple of days, but there are some things to blog about, so stay tuned.

Reading Fear Is The Key by Alistair MacLean. It's pretty good and the opening is catchy. If this were written by an American author, it would be even better - MacLean is strictly British in his choice of words and sentence structures. I seem to have first hardback edition by Collins from 1961 - am I a millionaire? Will post the cover scan later on. And the Finnish cover, too, by the great Eino Tepponen.

Ottilia's bunnies

I've been posting lots of Ottilia's and my drawings and comics in Pulpetti. Here are some ad hoc drawings about bunnies Ottilia made on receipts during a train trip not long ago. There's also a comic strip, but I don't know what's going on in there. It says "The End" in the end.

Evil Buddhists and lame superheroes

Couple of links I stumbled upon:

The Lamest Superheroes (I don't know much about superhero comics, but these dudes sure sound lame!)

The Attack of the Evil Buddhist Monks (it's about real history, not pulps of any kind, even though there were some Eastern monk heroes in pulps, most notably in Arthur J. Burks's The Great Mirror (1942/1952), in which the Buddhist monks fight the Martians)

Still on Gardner

I forgot to note that Understrike was published in Finnish in 1967 under the title Isku vyön alle. The publisher was Gummerus. Gardner hasn't had a good luck with Finnish publishers: out of his whole output, there has been only three Boysie Oakes books and some of his James Bonds published in Finnish. And a one-off novel called Flamingo from 1983. From a quick look, I'd say there was almost a fifteen-year gap between the third Oakes book, Amber Nine, up to Icebreaker which was translated as Tehtävä Suomessa, James Bond/Mission In Finland, James Bond in the early eighties. This is typical of Finnish publishers who don't care to follow anauthor's career, unless he/she is big or very respected. And John Gardner isn't either, even though he seems very capable (though I had my reservations about Understrike and his James Bonds).

Here's his bibliography.

John Gardner's Understrike

As I promised, I'd say something about Understrike, a comic spy thriller by the English writer John Gardner. He's nowadays best known as a writer of James Bond sequels (one of which didn't impress me a bit), but earlier he was known first as the creator of the Boysie Oakes series which are spoofs, and then complex and serious spy novels. It seems to me, based on an conversation on an e-mail list I'm on, that Gardner's reputation was pretty much marred by the Bond books and his new books - which I've been told are quite good - don't gather much readers.

Understrike, from 1965, is the second of the Boysie Oakes books ("Poju" in Finnish) and, to me, it's a bit dated. There's too much interplay with beautiful women and not enough action. When there's action, in the climax, there's not much of it, even though it's expertly written. The parody and spoof elements don't seem as funny as they could be - someone like Richard S. Prather did this sort of thing much better. It never seems very convincing to me how a self-pitying coward like Boysie Oakes gets to be a spy, and I think Stephen Frances, of the Hank Janson fame, did more convincing job with his John Gail thrillers he wrote after abandoning Janson in the mid-sixties. John Gail, besides being a self-pitying coward, is also a Leftist and a pacifist...

If this were not my job, I'd give up, but as I'll have to write an entry for Gardner for the upcoming reference book on thriller writers, I'll have to read some more of his work.

Right now, I'm reading Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean. The opening has so many catches for the reader that it almost makes me want to say that MacLean is the master of the genre! ("I've seen the future of the thriller genre and his name is..." Well, not that.)

Victorian snakes?

A new article by a friend of mine, Jussi Parikka (and also another writer), about the cultural history of mobile games. May contain some tough-to-crack terms and words.

What happened?

Some of the bloggers I follow have been posting posts about what happened in 2006 (I especially envy James Reasoner when he writes having read 139 books last year!), but I don't seem quite up to it. I couldn't say what was the best book I read last year. Or the best film.

And I've got some work to do: I'm going on a sofa to read John Gardner's comic spy triller, Understrike. Comments later.

(I realize I promised I'd blog about Peter Jackson's Tolkien trilogy and the last episode of Six Feet Under, but I really don't know whether I'd have anything worthwhile to say, something others haven't already said before.)

My headlines

The headline for the previous post was supposed to run thus: "Don't tell anyone, but I did some work!"

Don't tell anyone

I wasn't supposed to do any work during the holidays. As you've read here, I've been slightly depressed and also may have had the first anxiety attack of my life. So, I decided to take it easy.

And I did. I watched the whole Tolkien film, ate lots of Xmas food and chocolate (and gained two kilograms), read some books (Fury by G.M. Ford is a good read, let me tell you that, even though it's a tad overlong with too many point-of-view characters) and saw the last episode of Six Feet Under (may have to blog about that later on).

But then, all of a sudden I wrote a short story. It took just twenty minutes before Six Feet Under last Tuesday and some ten to fifteen minutes during the commercials. It's an experimental fantasy story, with something of horror in it, told entirely as witness testimonies (even though the story spans, or at least seems to span, several years or even decades). It's very short, with only 1700 words, but I hope there's enough to tickle a fancy. I'm sending if off to a short story contest with the deadline next Sunday. Wish me luck! (It's appropriate that I now read through the story and also happen to read an interview with G.M. Ford in which he says that all writers have to do is conquer self-doubt.)

Happy holidays to everyone!

(A stupid title, if there ever was one. I don't seem to be very good to come up with inventive titles. There was a title in a music magazine, maybe New Musical Express, in the late eighties: "Yule love it!" I could use that one.)

Merry Xmas to all! (Even to those with shitmass coming!)

I've been alone at home for two days, as Elina and Kauto are with her parents. I'll pick Ottilia up later today and we'll catch with them on Saturday. While alone, I've been shopping for Christmas and watching the extended DVD versions of The Lord of the Rings. I watched the last two episodes yesterday. I'd like to comment on the movies, but I have some other business to do. Maybe after the holidays. Which, I hope, are happy to everyone! Don't beat anyone and don't eat too much! (My menu for these two days has been pizza and Chinese take-away, so I'm not full of Xmas food already!)

Marcel Duhamel on Série Noire

Definition of noir literature or noir fiction is a bit elusive. Here's something to start with: it's a preface to a thing called Série Noire, a series of crime novels published in France, starting from 1946, and including mainly American and British hardboiled crime novels. Duhamel was closely linked with the Surrealists, so it's appropriate that he praises the subversive elements he finds in the books he selected for the series.

Let unwary readers be warned: books in the Série Noire cannot safely be placed in just any hands. Those who like Sherlock Holmes-type puzzles won't find what they're looking for. Neither will systematic optimists. The immorality generally accepted in this type of work solely to serve as a foil for conventional morality is just as much at home in our books as fine feelings, even just plain amorality. The spirit of such books is rarely conformist. In them there are police more corrupt than the criminals they're chasing. The nice detective doesn't always solve the mystery. Sometimes in our books there is no mystery. And sometimes there isn't even a detective. And so? So what remains is action, torment and violence, in all its forms, especially the most shameful - from beatings to massacres. As in good films, moods are expressed through actions, and readers who are fond of instrospective literature will have to do the reverse gymnastics. There is also love — preferably bestial — disorderly passion, pitiless hate. In short, our goal is quite simple: to keep you from sleeping.

Marcel Duhamel, founder of the Série Noire, 1948
translated by Karin Montin, 2006 (originally posted at the Rara-Avis e-mail group; reprinted with the translator's permission)

From the files of Duane Swierczynski

I haven't as yet read Duane Swierczynski's second (ehem, third) crime novel The Blonde, but I really loved The Wheelman and hopefully will see it published in Finland at some point.

Here's the prologue from the book Swierczynski posted on his blog. It's thrilling as hell, but he was convinced that the book doesn't need it. So he cut it.

I have pretty much the same feeling about prologues: they are not necessary. Swierczynski quoted Laura Lippman saying "cut it out", but I could've said that to Laura Lippman herself when I read her, otherwise brilliant, The Sugar House: there's a prologue and I didn't find it necessary.

Fuckin' fuck

My blogger friend Tosikko said in a post a while back that she doesn't like cursing and foul words. What do you think she would say about this, the latest masterpiece by Allan Guthrie?

See for yourself

I've recently written an article about the amateur writers of erotic stories. It's finished now and will soon be published in Aamulehti's Valo weekly supplement, but the debate goes on. I tried to get some interviewees from a website featuring erotic stories and all I got was a bunch of whining bitches trying to get back at me. Check for yourself (sorry, it's in Finnish only, which makes me wonder why I wrote this in English in the first place).

Some stuff before Christmas

A depression is still lurking and I've given up doing any work for the rest of the year. I'll be reading books on a sofa for couple of weeks and then we'll see what comes.

I just finished Robert Ferrigno's first novel, The Horse Latitudes (1990). It's a good, comic, erotic, fast-moving noir thriller, with just a little too much of the late eighties' yuppie feel to it. And I could've preferred a bit tighter plot. Will have to pick up his much-fuzzed book, Praeyrs For The Assassin, about the Islamic United States of America, in the near future. This seems to have been reprinted as a paperback and is quite easily obtainable, otherwise I would've told the boys at Hard Case Crime to reprint it.

Now, off to read Brian Garfield...

I was walking home this morning after having taken Kauto to daycare and couldn't help noticing a poster for a gig by some death metal bands. The tagline: "Shitmass is coming..."

***

Raimo Väyrysen sosialidemokraattisuudesta on päkisty paljon ja on vaadittu, että Tuomiojan Tieto-Finlandia pitää harkita uudestaan. Panu Rajalakin kuulemma äityi ehdottamaan, että tällaisista palkintoraadeista pitää poliitikot ottaa pois. Väyrynen ei kait ole poliitikko, ja minusta on vähintäänkin outo ajatus, että ihmisellä ei saisi olla puoluepoliittisia mielipiteitä. Lisäksi Tuomiojan kirja ei ole mikään yksittäinen pyrskäytys, vaan johdonmukaisen kirjallisen tuotannon yksi osa.

Mietimme tosin Elinan kanssa, suhtautuisimmeko yhtä tyynesti asiaan, jos kirjan olisi tehnyt joku selkeästi kokoomuslainen politiikko ja palkinnon olisi valinnut joku kokoomukseen kytköksissä oleva tyyppi. Sanoin: "Kokkareilla ei ole yhtään vastaavaa tyyppiä kuin Tuomioja, joka edes voisi tehdä yhtä kiinnostavia ja uskottavia kirjoja." (Never mind this: it's about politics in Finland.)

Mikko Koukin tekstimainontaa

Luin marraskuun Annan loppuun äsken työtauolla ja kirjoitin äkämystyneenä tällaisen palautteen lehden päätoimittajalle:

Olin järkyttynyt huomatessani Mikko Koukin mainostavan omaa elokuvaansa kolumnissaan marraskuun Annassa. Kolumni alkoi kohtuullisen kiinnostavasti hauskasta aiheesta, mutta muuttui tekstimainonnaksi puolivälissä, kun Kouki alkoi kirjoittaa Aku Louhimiehen elokuvasta Valkoinen kaupunki - sehän on Koukin käsikirjoittama, mutta tätä Kouki ei syystä tai toisesta maininnut tekstissään ollenkaan.

Minusta kolumniin piilotettu tekstimainonta sotii journalistin eettisiä ohjeita vastaan ja on outoa Annalta, että teksti on tässä muodossaan solahtanut toimituksellisen verkon lävitse, varsinkin kun lehden ilmestyminen osui juuri Valkoisen kaupungin ensi-illan tienoille.

I must be in my maniac mood

Depressed today, maniac tomorrow... as you can see, I'm not all depressed anymore. But I'll stop posting after this. It's a meme - sorry, in Finnish only. I got if from here. Hi there!

Käytän meemissä kannettavalle ladattua nigerialaisen 70-luvun funkin ja rockin kokoelmaa.

1. Sukupuolesi? Upside Down
2. Mikä on suurin unelmasi? No Discrimination
3. Mitä inhoat? Jeun Ko Ku (Chop'n Quench)
4. Millainen fiilis sinulla nyt on? La La La
5. Miten elämäsi sujuu ylipäätään? Allah Wakbarr
6. Mistä asioista pidät? Orere Elejigbo
7. Mitä haluaisit sanoa ihastuksellesi/tyttö-/poikaystävällesi? Tire Loma da Nigbehin
8. Missä haluaisit olla? Akayan Ekassa
9. Kuvaile elämää? Kita Kita
10. Kuvaile itseäsi? Ja Fun Mi
11. Mitä sinä haluaisit juuri nyt? Ifa

Okay, something more Pulpetti-like stuff

Earl Kemp has made an eZine out of his 1960 questionnaire, Who Killed Science Fiction. You can read it here. It makes fascinating reading, as the magazine science fiction has almost been killed during the last fourty years - reading Kemp's editorial makes you wonder what took so long. It's also intriguing to see so many signatures - Sturgeon, Asimov, Robert Bloch, Alfred Bester... Frank Kelly Freas has a pretty weird signature, don't you think.

(Thanks to Bill Crider for the link!)

***

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe is getting back, now on tube. Rap Sheet's J. Kingston Pierce isn't exactly happy.

***

Christa Faust's interview on Tribe's blog: interesting reading. A writer who gets called "pulp writer/bondage artist/rockabilly (etc.) priestess" really can't be all that bad. And she's getting her novel out from Hard Case Crime - it's called Money Shot and it's about a porn actress getting a revenge on his former employers (so I understood it). And she's already written a crime novel about Mexican wrestling!

And yet another one

Here's one, with a different location. Courtesy Robert Seger.

Another one

Here's another one from the Daddy Blog sessions.

Kauto and me: how's about this?

This is a publicity photo that was never used, much to my chagrin, for the Daddy Blog I keep with a friend of mine, Ville Hänninen, the comics connoisseur extraordinaire and fellow writer and editor. The photo was taken by Robert Seger, who's one of the best magazine photographers working in South-West Finland.

PS. The Finnish-speaking commentator in the previous post meant something like this: "And de wimmin sgream!" (She was referring to an old beer commercial.)

I'm the sexiest guy in the whole of Finland?!

Bill Crider (in an old post) posted about our prime minister, Matti Vanhanen, whom the French president dubbed the sexiest man in Finland (Vanhanen was also voted to the same position by the readers of a Finnish tabloid). Bill thinks I should've been the one nominated.

Well, I don't know. You can judge for yourself. These are photos from a session in which I modelled for my photographer friends, Susanna and Tero. The photos were never used with the article they were intended for, but I look good in some of them. Better than Matti Vanhanen, at least, eh? (I'll be posting some other modelling photos of me later on, so stay tuned! You're so lucky to have this!)

Depression hitting me hard?

I said to Elina yesterday: "Doing work sucks."

I've felt this way for several days now. I don't know what started it - maybe it's the on-going rain and the goddamn pre-Christmas darkness (for the foreigners reading this: there's absolutely no snow around here and it's fucking 8 degrees Celsius all the time and it's pouring water like Noah's waiting around the corner with his fucking animal ship) -, but I do know that I want it to end. I don't feel like doing anything - well, maybe I'd like to read.

Even watching television last night - Sopranos and Six Feet Under - felt like a burden. Well, okay, I was drawn to them when they started and especially Six Feet Under, with Nate's burial, was very, very touching. I was thinking I'd post about the series saying something like "it makes us want to get hurt so that we could feel ourselves heroic under the tragic circumstances", but I don't feel like doing it.

Well, I managed to do something: I finished another draft of my crime novel The Dostoyevsky Reel and will be sending it to a small press publisher that showed interest in it, when I sent them a short synopsis. We'll see what happens. I'm also sending my other crime novel to another, newly formed small press house - you remember that one, about the right-wing private eye working in the present-day Finland?

As I mentioned in passing, I was reading Laura Lippman's The Sugar House. I finished it the day before. It was very good, but I had some trouble in the climax when the baddy turned out to be a Democrat, Jewish and homosexual at the same time. I'll maybe go reading on a sofa after I've sent the manuscript to the publisher - maybe some Robert Ferrigno. I have his first, The Horse Latitudes, on my TBR pile.

Check out the new issue of the on-line crime fiction mag, Spinetingler. There's an interview of Duane Swierczynski, amongst all.

James Reasoner in movies

My friend, American writer James Reasoner, has had his story filmed. It's the first for him - and I believe also for the director. Check out the results here. (James's comments on the story (he hasn't been able to see the film as yet) are here.) I thought the film is pretty good, a quite effective short story, told with only a voice-over narration and with a footage that looks like surveillance camera's point-of-view.

James mentions that the story has been reprinted once or twice. Here are the facts:

Graveyard Shift, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, November 1978, reprinted in Hard-Boiled, ed. Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian, Oxford University Press 1995, and Love Kills, ed. Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg, Carroll & Graf 1997.

A new killer track from Kompleksi

Just received this e-mail from my friend pHinn:

'Slick Little Girl', a new Kompleksi track

Can be found for a limited time from:
http://www.phinnweb.org/kompleksi/temp/Slick_Little_Girl.MP3

In collaboration with Sonic Temple Assassins (a.k.a. Jani Hellén of Forssa,Finland)

She's a slick little girl
she's a slick little girl...
Bambi eyes and baby-pink lips
and her Pilates hips
a little lip gloss won't hurt it
because you're worth it

She's a slick little girl
she's a slick little girl...

Her skin is made of Revlon,
Max Factor and teflon
Keeps her life in neat little boxes
girls like her are sly like foxes

She's a slick little girl
she's a slick little girl...

She's a shopping mall queen
won't ever vent her spleen
Never takes a digression
being bad for her complexion

She's a slick little girl
she's a slick little girl...
She's a slick little girl
she's a slick little girl...

Waiting for her Mr. Right
she's prowling for him all night
Not just a small boss, no
she read a tip from Cosmo
Got to be rich and famous,
isn't that contagious?
Got a grin like Cheshire cat
wants a chauffeur and pillbox hat

She's a slick little girl
she's a slick little girl...

Poe's best story

As I wrote here earlier (in a couple of posts, one of which was in Finnish) I was reading the collected stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I didn't like his humorous stories in the least (with the exception of "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" which seemed to balance the jokes and the horror quite well), but I'm glad I was able to finish the book. (Um, well, I skipped some stories for being just too damn awful. Another reviewer of the collection wrote in Helsingin Sanomat that the funny stories were delightful... I just cannot comprehend that statement.)

But nevertheless, I made up a small contest on the Fictionmags e-mail list I belong to and simply asked the people on the list to name Poe's best stories. Here are the results. The stories that got only one vote:

The Gold-Bug
Ligeia
Purloined Letter
The Black Cat
Loss of Breath
Ms. Found in a Bottle
William Wilson
The Tell-Tale Heart
King Pest

Two-vote stories:
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
A Cask of Amontillado

Three-vote stories:

The Masque of the Red Death
The Fall of the House of Usher

There were no four-vote stories.

And the winner, with five votes from the members of the Fictionmags list, is Hop-Frog! You can see an old illustration for the story on the left. I don't know the original source. (I'll be posting some other old Poe illos when I'll have the time.)

My favourites would've been "William Wilson" and "Ms. Found in a Bottle", which is quite intriguing and almost absurd.

What are your favourites?

What's with me?

Sorry, I haven't been blogging lately. There's no apparent reason for this, unless maybe it's that I've been busy and a bit stressed too. I'll start blogging again when it doesn't feel a complete waste of time.

In the meantime: I'm reading Laura Lippman's The Sugar House and enjoying it so far - but I'd skip the personal events in the hero's life if I were the author. But I'm not. This lady hasn't been translated in Finnish so far - should someone change this fact?

As you're aware, I'm also a small press publisher. A new issue of Pulp just came out, with articles on the porn novels of Stephen Frances, the Hank Janson creator, and porn stories of the Finnish film director Aarne Tarkas (yes, he did write some, in the last years of his life), reviews of Mike Ashley's wonderful Transformations and Feral House's delightful Sin-A-Rama and lots of other stuff.

The new issue of Isku is coming out - it's already the fifth and I'm not broke! There are stories by JA Konrath and Duane Swierczynski, with stuff by Finnish authors. I'm especially proud of the ultra-hardboiled story from 1940 by Reino Helismaa, the singer-songwriter who abandoned crime writing after the war, much to my chagrin.

There's also Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories that's meant to be like a good old all-genre pulp, with stories ranging from highwaymen to the Egypt of pharaohs, from the exotic India to the 19th century Finland. Check out the cover by Jukka Murtosaari. The mag's not out yet and may not be until next January, but it's going to be good!

Okay, that settles it for now. We are leaving to visit my mom tomorrow morning, back on regular schedule on Monday. And I'll promise to get back to blogging!

Why I'm reading books I don't like

You may remember that I was reading books that I don't normally care for, such as a James Bond adventure by John Gardner. I mentioned that the reason for this is a professional one. Well, I'm compiling and editing a reference book on thriller writers. I'll be writing entries for MacLean and Gardner, among others. It also seems that I have to write ones for Sidney Sheldon and Ridley Pearson, too. What one does for a living...

This merits mention because the postman brought today a letter announcing a 3,000 euro grand for the book! Yikes! I didn't actually believe for a second that I'd get this, since my experience has been that edited books don't get grants. But I'm not complaining.

(Foreigners reading this, especially Americans, must be pretty confused as to why I get grants: they are the most important source of income for Finnish writers, from poets to non-fiction writers. In Finland, there's no opportunity to live solely on book sales. Maybe for five writers, tops.)

Bad, bad day

Two books went bust today. Our YA novel was turned down by a biggish publishing house today (via e-mail! what nerve!) and another publisher returned our offer about a book on Biblical first names.

Well, a writer friend said later when I complained about this over e-mail that the biggish publishing house is a conservative one, which probably explains why they wouldn't touch a book about the homosexuality of a young girl's dad. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Poetry blog

Decided to launch a blog for my poetry after all. They seemed a bit inappropriate here. The new blog, called Min Dikt (My Poetry in Swedish, that is, after the first collection of poems by the Finnish-Swedish Elmer Diktonius in 1921), is here.

(Hey, by the way, here's an article of mine about Diktonius. He's also in the picture, as you might've surmised by now.)

The project

Umm... where to start? Okay, the project that we were supposed to be doing until our asses dropped off (or something to that effect) has been postponed. It's now due to be published next Fall.

So, now I could start blogging again. Where to start? I'm reading - again for professional reasons - John Gardner's almost awful James Bond entry, The Icebreaker (the one with Bond in Finland). It's boring, yet somehow pretty fluent. I've been told that Gardner was a really wonderful spy and thriller writer, but he went strictly downhill after signing to write James Bonds.

What else? Haven't really slept last night, so won't brag much now. Will be taking a shower soon, then having a cup of tea. Am writing an article about erotica writers and Marmite - not in the same article! Am listening to seventies' Nigerian funk - great stuff! Soon I'll be going to get Kauto from daycare. So, bye bye for now!

Busy, busy world

Just wanted to let you know that I'm working on a project in a quite tight schedule, so I'll have to cut the blogging down a little. I'll let you know in due time when everything's finished.

Here are some starred reviews for some books I've read and am reading (out of five):

T. Jefferson Parker: California Girl **** (starts slowly, but builds into a very effective tale of hippie age syndromes)
Ken Bruen: Rilke On Black ***½ (my first; could've preferred tighter plotting and less cultural references - after all, it's a book with a moron in the lead!)
Alistair MacLean: The Guns of Navarone **** (as some of you may remember, I've been having my doubts of MacLean: I read him in my teen years and liked him, but then I got intellectual and declared being bored with this type of thing; now this is work-related [will post later on this] and I find myself enjoying the quite crisp, yet literal style)
Edgar Allan Poe: collected short stories *-***** (the best being, in my mind, "William Wilson" [will post about this later on])

Okay, now back to the project No. Uno.

Velvet Underground ja Gor

(English summary: this is about the name of the band Velvet Underground and the Gorean society that lives somewhere in the net. It's a comment I sent to the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper and two articles they had published. They didn't use my comments. It's really nothing important, though.)

Tony Conrad muisteli Harri Römpötin jutussa (HS 17.11.) Velvet Underground -bändin nimen historiaa - hänenhän on usein väitetty keksineen yhtyeelle nimen. Conrad kuitenkin vain kertoi jättäneensä samannimisen kirjan treenikämpälle. The Velvet Underground oli vuonna 1963 kioskipokkarina ilmestynyt reportaasikirja, jossa floridalainen toimittaja Michael Leigh tutustui ajan suosikkipuuhaan, vaimonvaihtoon eli swappingiin, erilaisissa asiaan vihkiytyneiden kerhoissa ympäri maan. Kirjassa oli itseään lääketieteen tohtoriksi tituleeranneen Louis Bergin esipuhe, jossa hän tuomitsi kansakunnan perversiot ja vertasi niitä muun muassa sotaa edeltävässä Saksassa rehottaneeseen dekadenssiin. Pokkarin kannessa nähdään piiska, fetisistinen nahkasaapas ja naamari, jotka ovat varmasti vedonneet Lou Reediin ja kumppaneihin. (Kuva täällä.)

Jussi Ahlroth taas kirjoitti lauantain lehdessä Visual Life -keinoelämästä ja mainitsi sen piirissä asustelevat goreanilaiset. Oikea termi olisi varmasti gorilaiset, koska sana viittaa John Norman -salanimellä ilmestyneisiin Gor-fantasiaromaaneihin, jotka ovat jo 60-luvun lopulta saakka kuvanneet planeettaa, jonka kulttuuriin kuuluu naisten täydellinen alistuminen. Suomentamatta jääneet Gor-kirjat ovat olleet jostain syystä juuri naisten suosiossa alusta alkaen ja tähän liittynee myös Ahlrothin mainitsema gorilaisten yhteisö.

Editing a pulp anthology

I've been compiling an anthology of old pulp fiction stories by writers from the Turku region. The book will be published by Pelipeitto next March and it will also feature a bunch of new writers, such as Boris Hurtta, Markku Soikkeli and Sami Myllymäki, and perhaps Kirsti Ellilä. There are also some old stories by such present-day veterans as Pirkko Arhippa and Totti Karpela.

But there will also be four or five stories from the thirties and fourties (well, at least three). I've tried to gather information about the writers' heirs. It seemed to be very difficult at first, when I tried to go the legal route, through magistrates and such, but then it clicked: I just googled. Well, it wasn't as simple as that, but it proved to be more fruitous than I first thought. I've managed to secure the rights for a story by Aake Jermo and will be phoning for some others next week. There was just one writer about which I'm not so sure what to do: there are three heirs, two daughters and a son. One daughter is suffering from a bad case of dementia and the other daughter and the son don't speak to each other. I talked to the son and he said everything's okay, but you'll have to ask the other daughter first. "But don't say anything about me or it backfires. She's a nuisance, totally unpredictable."

I didn't phone the other daughter, as I wanted to hear what the publisher had to say about this. Can we go only on the base of the son's okay? I'd really like to print a story by the said writer and wouldn't want to tackle with the bitter and angry heirs. The son said that his father would've been delighted to hear someone wants to reprint him, but it seems that not everyone thinks so.

Runoja/Poetry

I've been writing quite a lot poems lately, but haven't posted them here. I've been also thinking about setting up a (yet another!) blog for these poems. They do get in the way, don't you think?

Maksukehotukset putoilevat taivaalta,
syli on täynnä, kertaheitolla
tehtyjä valheita, pankit ovat muistoja vain,
tiliavaimet ovat oleellisia jos haluamme eteenpäin,
taivaaseen, helvettiin, on valta jos haluaa,
ota se pois, itseltäsi ennen kaikkea,
muilta takautuvasti, taannehtivasti,
remburssit heijastuvat seinään, liiketoimintakieltoon
on asetettu vain joitakuita, joita et tunne
etkä tule ikinä tuntemaan,
vaillingit lankeavat, vekselit tuleentuvat,
aikamme on täynnä totuuksia,
kuka niitä kuulee, napsii ilmasta,
heijastuu seinälle, metsän kaltaisena.

***

Heijastu seinälle, ammuta itsesi taivaalle,
kuoleman kaltaiset olotilat, ktooniset murrosikäiset,
ktooniset kuoleman kaltaiset nuorison käsitykset,
meillä on muovipusseja kivesten tilalla,
kauniit kukat käsissä, kuljemme kohti mitä sitten ikinä kuljemmekin,
muovipussit katatooniset, minun katatoniani,
oi katatonia, onni on maratooni juostuna ja piestynä,
keskittyminen kannattaa aina, keskittäminen on jo asia erikseen,
mene ja tee mitä pitää tehdä,
miehen osa, naisen vaisto, siitä välistä on löydyttävä jotain,
arvotontakin se saa olla,
kuinka minä tämän päätän, on ihan oma asiani,
hiukan dokumenttia, hiukan romanssia, eikö jätkä tajua mitään,
keskusteluista palasia, hyppäävät miehet, pomppivat naiset,
naiset katatoniassa, miehet perässä juoksemassa,
härät Pamplonan,
maagisuus on viimeinen toivomme.

***

Haluatko säästää muutokset, tallettaa rahat, viimeiset rahat,
varat on kuoletettu tästä päivästä maailmanloppuun,
koskaan et mihinkään pääse käsiksi,
loppu tulee jo ennen kuin olet mielestäsi päässyt alkuun,
lyhyet ilot ovat nautintojasi,
haluatko todellakin säästää itseäsi,
kasvojasi, häpeääsi, muuria jota vasten itket,
kuinka muka voisit tietää
mistä maailma on tullut, tietoisuuteesi,
kamalat väitteet ovat raivattavissa, tiet eteenpäin ja taaksepäin ovat auki,
sivuilta on sinun mentävä,
kuinka sen teet on oma asiasi,
tyttöystävät, siilit, pienet elottomat esineet, luonnonmukaiset,
meillä on niitä kohtaan velvollisuuksia,
moraalista on puhuttu jo maailman alusta saakka,
sitä on tutkittu, etiikkaa, journalismia,
meille on kerrottu paljon, mutta ei vielä oikein mitään,
meiltä on pimitetty paljon oleellista,
kuten jalkojen järjestys öisin, pääministerin sydämen muoto,
sinulle ne on kerrottu, mutta et tiedä mitä tiedolla tekisit,
myy ne, myy ne mustassa pörssissä, myy ne kaikille, kenelle tahansa,
saat korvaukseksi maailman mustan silmän.

***

Kaikki ajatukset, kulkevat pitkin katuja, katuja kiveyksiä maailmoja,
auringot kulkevat tuosta noin ja takaisin,
hiekkaa on minun suuni täynnä,
auringot auringot, minulla on tarpeita,
väistykäähän vähän, hajaantukaa,
maailmaan mentiin silloin ihan toista kautta,
sikiöt puhuvat pitkin metsiä,
meillä on menoa: matka kutsuu kohti Pariisia,
pariisia, riisiä, paperia pinkka, pinot, pinkat,
rahaa tukoittain, takataskut pullollaan,
takaisin ei ollut enää tulemista, joten lähdimme pois,

auringot ovat lavoilla, niitä pystytettiin illalla,
eilen illalla, muistatko vielä,

sinäkin olit siellä,
minä en, minä olin muualla, kaukana ratsastamassa, horisontissa,
taivaanrannassa, taivaallako on ranta,
kuka sen on keksinyt,
nouskaa ylös, metafora on tarpeeton tässä yhteydessä,

jonkinlainen järjestys on säilytettävä maailmassa.

***

Maailma kuiskaa korvaani:
lähde maailmaan, maailmasta,
pois, kokonaan, kausittain,
minulla on vastuita joita en voi välttää.
Minun on oltava muualla kun sinä olet täällä.
Vieressäni. Vieressäni lepää myös suuria kissapetoja.
Ne ovat valmiina.
Kuka muu on valmis.
Minusta tämä ei tunnu enää miltään.

***

En ole osannut järjestää sanojani oikein.
Joskus osasin. Silloin maailmakin oli toisenlainen.
Lapseni kysyy minulta: mitä toi tekee,
enkä osaa vastata koska en tiedä mikä on "toi",
salaperäinen tuo, kaukana kaukana oleva otus, olio,
viime kesänä nähty haikara,
katoilla pesivä outolintu,
viime kesänä koettu outous, toissapäivänä aamulla eilen illalla
ollut väsymys,
toinen lapseni sanoo minulle että toinen lapsistani näyttää pöllöltä:
linnut siis kulkevat mukanani tästä iänkaikkiseen.

***

Mikä heittyy seinälle, piirtyy mieleen, mikä heittyy mieleen, on piirretty
ikiajoiksi sydämeen. Mikä maailman banaalius siinä tuntuu.
Kukka on kaunis kuin sydämesi,
rakastuminen on ollut maailman ajoista asti tunnettua,
tutkitaan sitä, niin kuin journalismia tai etiikkaa,
maailmanräjähdystä, näinkö systeemit loppuvat, ihan tuosta vain,
isolla pamauksella vai olemattomalla pierulla,
pierukin on sana jota et välittäisi käyttää,
sinulla on käskyvalta, sidottu, ratkaisu-,
avaimet oviin joiden takaisesta maailmasta et tiedä vielä mitään,
tiikeri vai nainen, nainen vai tiikeri,
kummasta astut, hehe, siinäpä sinulle dilemma, varsinainen ongelma,
ratkaise se ja olet oman maailmasi valtias.

***

Vaimoni kirjoittaa kännykällä,
linnut kirjoittavat itsensä,
glöginmaistelu saa jäädä,
kupit ovat tyhjentämättä, vaimolla on pyyhe pään päällä, turbaanina,
se tuskin on ideologinen kannanotto,
harmillisesti maailmasta poistetut tilanteet.

***

Keskusteluryhmä on lakkautettu, sanoo kirjallisuuteen keskittynyt nettisivu.
Se on minusta jo jonkinlainen paradoksi,

rautateitten kaltainen poliittinen manifesti,
linnut ja puitten lehdet ovat valmiita protestiin.

From Lumière to Tawny Kitaen

Recent films seen:

on Monday, Just Jaeckin' s (of the Emmanuelle fame) Gwendoline. It's based on John Willie's famous bondage cartoon from the 1930's, but takes many liberties with the original text. The film was probably made in 1984 to capitalize on the success of Spielberg's and Lucas's Raiders of the Lost Ark: there's the same locale in South-East Asia, the same cynical hunk adventurer (played by very handsome Brent Huff). The sadomasochist imagery, however, was pure Willie and Jaeckin who'd directed also The Story of O couple years earlier. I don't know if this was a good film or not - it has a pretty big budget and lots of action going on, but the erotic content - save the sadomasochism - is pretty naïve and laughable. Tawny Kitaen in the lead has a stupid 80's haircut - but then again she was the wife of the Whitesnake lead singer! The Finnish censorship had been quite harsh on this and several of the fighting scenes had been cut severely. It was enjoyable and funnily entertaining, though, and the audience was having lots of fun - they even started applauding and clapping hands when the film was over!

On Wednesday, the reconstruction of the first film screening ever showed in Finland. This was already in 1896, in Helsinki's Kaivohuone, and consisted of the films by the Lumiére brothers. The Finnish Film Archive had done some research and ordered the most likely films from the Lumière estate. The new screening consisted of 22 films and was accompanied by the lecture of archivist Juha Kindberg. There was one very interesting point in the lecture: The most famous train-arriving-on-a-station film wasn't the first film ever, as is often being said, as it was possibly made only in 1897, based on the the age of the Lumière kids shown in the picture. Lumières had made earlier some train films and one of these was shown yesterday - it wasn't as striking as the most famous one, which probably explains the error is still prevalent.

Some other, rather trivial points: the Lumière films seemed to be precursors of many home movies to come. Maybe someone could write a history of home movies and start it from Lumière (and perhaps some others who preceded them; I haven't seen enough specimens to really suggest anyone). It would seem that the same narrative regulations are at use both by Lumière and many 8mm and VHS photographers who capture only random shots of family and domestic life and travel scenes.

Lumières didn't really succeed at bringing humour to their pieces. Especially the slapstick scenes are very, very bad. However, one of the films that shows some soldiers trying to get up on a horse reminded me of Spede Pasanen (note to foreigners: Spede Pasanen was a famous Finnish TV and movie humourist; not a very good one, in my mind). The gag just keeps going on and on and on... Vesku Loiri tai Simo Salminen olisi hyvin voinut olla siinä hyppimässä hevosen päälle.

Keskustelua Valkoisesta kaupungista ja ideologiasta ja elokuvien poliittisuudesta

Kävin katsomassa Aku Louhimiehen Valkoisen kaupungin ja kirjoitin siitä arvion, joka ilmestyy jonkin ajan kuluttua Peili-lehdessä. Postitin arvion ystävälleni Jussi Parikalle ja sähköpostissa kävimme seuraavan keskustelun, joka alkaa sitaatilla jutun lopusta:

Olisin vain suonut, että Louhimies viimeinkin luovuttaisi itsestäänselvistä kulttuurisista viittauksista, joihin hän on ollut Levottomista asti rakastunut: siinä oli Camus ja Sivullinen, tässä Scorsese ja Taksikuski. Alun monologi on suora kopio Robert De Niron monologista, mutta Scorsese osasi Taksikuskissaan sijoittaa De Niron hahmon hajoamisen kiinnostavaan ideologiseen kehykseen.

- hyvä juttu, tuli mieleen, että eikö Louhimiehen taksikuskin maailman valuminen tyhjiin sijoitu kovin mielenkiintoiseen yhteiskunnalliseen taustaan, ts. 90-luvun jälkeinen lama, yms.? Siis myös ns. "ideologinen" kehys? t.jussi

Joo, mutta se ei käy tarinasta ja elokuvasta mistään ilmi.
juri

sitä ei eksplikoida esim. sanoin, mutta jokainen katsoja, jolla hiukan "taustatietoa" voi ajatella tämän linkin. lisäksi: mitä kulttuurintuote ilmaisee ei ole vain jokin tietty sisältö, tietty teesi, ideologinen ajatus (vaikkapa:uusliberalismi ajaa ihmiset kaaokseen), vaan koko elokuva on ilmaus, osa sitä yhteiskuntaa jossa se syntyy. eli leffa ei representoi aikaansa, vaan on sitä.Esim.: synkkä elokuva ei heijastele aikaansa, vaan "aikakausi" koostuu juuri näistä elokuvista ja muista ilmauksista, jotka eivät ole siitä irrallisia.näin siis itse ajattelisin! t.j.

Joo, olet varmasti oikeassa, mutta sehän tarkoittaisi sitä, että kritiikille ei jäisi tilaa. Ja täytyy taiteilijan edelleenkin silti osoittaa jollain tavalla se, että hän on itse tietoinen siitä mitä hän aikoo omalla teoksellaan sanoa ja osoittaa että hänellä on siihen keinot ja taito. Mutta tiedän kyllä, minulla on taipumus heittäytyä vanhanaikaisen ideologiseksi tämmöisissä kritiikeissä, mikä tekee minusta aikamoisen jäärän. Mutta minähän olenkin vanha kommari!
juri

joo, monet filmit voi ehkä ajatella ns. mikropoliittisiksi, eli vaikka ideologinen teema jää lausumatta niin niiden audiovisuaalinen ilmaisu voidaan tulkita tietyllä tavalla esteettis-poliittiseksi. Tähän Godard taisi tavallaan viitata kritisoidessaan sitä Fahrenheit-leffaa, Michael Moorea: se on lausutusti anti-Bush, mutta ilmaisultaan aivan samaa - ts. käyttää samanlaisia av-muotoja, jotka implikoivat tietynlaisen havainnon mikropolitiikan kuvan ja äänen tasoilla...mutta en minäkään ideologiakritiikkiä vastaan ole! :-)t.j.

Ymmärrän ajatuksen, mutta tuntuu Louhimiehen kohdalla hiukan kaukaa haetulta... sen ilmaisussa ei ole mitään erityisen haastavaa, jonkalaista Godard varmasti kaipaisi. Ja leffa on sitäpaitsi kuvattu digikameralla - eli siinä on Godardin mukaan pelkkää positiivia, eikä negatiivia, mikä heikentäisi sen ideologista (mahdollista ideologista) sisältöä. Ja kyllähän minä nautin siitä, että elokuvista löytyisi hedelmällisiä ristiriitaisuuksia, jotka tekisivät niistä mahdollisesti subversiivisen, mutta tästä ei löytynyt sellaista, ei sitten millään. Olisin voinut olla elokuvaa kohtaan paljon ankarampi jos olisin halunnut.
juri

joo, enhän minäkään tätä leffaa ole nähnyt, joten spekulointia sen tv-sarjan perusteella, lähinnä. Itse väittäisin, että teemasta saisi paljon irti - poliittistakin, ei ideologista ehkä. Ja Godardin digi-kritiikistä olen kovin eri mieltä...toisin kuin joku von Bagh... t.j.

***

(Kirjoitin vielä vastauksessa siitä, että Valkoisesta kaupungista saisi varmasti kiinnostavan analyysin - esimerkiksi siitä, miten elokuvassa kuvataan katsomista - mutta sen paikka ei ole keskipitkässä, noin 3000 merkin pituisessa arvostelussa. Valitettavasti tämä viesti katosi sähköposteja tuhotessa johonkin, joten sitä en pysty enää rekonstruoimaan.)

Vanhaa suomi-pulpia

(English summary: I read some old Finnish pulp stories.)

Lueskelin junassa joitain vanhoja kotimaisia lukemistolehtinovelleja. Olavi Tuomolan "Hantshungin kultainen buddha" (Musta Kuu 1/1945) on kohtuullinen pulp-seikkailu Pertti Kaarna -nimisestä kapteenista, joka sekaantuu Kiinassa seikkaillessaan uskonnollissävytteiseen kapinaan ja saa käsiinsä vahingossa buddhapatsaan. Tuomola oli forssalainen, mutta toimi Turussa muutaman vuoden ajan asianajajana.

Olavi Linnukselta pistelin kaksi novellia, joista toinen oli aiemmin mainitsemassani Keltainen kotka -korsulehdessä. Kummassakin novellissa seikkailee komisario Vahtonen, joka oli Linnuksen vakiohahmo romaaneissakin. Tarinat olivat lyhyitä ja ihan kelvollisia murhamysteereitä. Keltaisessa kotkassa ollut tarina (sori, en muista nimeä!) käytti hyväkseen, ehkä vähän kömpelösti, suomalaisten ennen sotaa vallannutta intoa muuttaa Amerikkaan. Tarinassa "Kuolemanuhka saharakennuksen kellarissa" (teoksessa Hiljainen yö, toim. Outsider, Lehtiyhtymä 1944) Vahtonen kaapataan - hänelle on varattu mielikuvituksellinen kuolema.

Aake Jermolta on samaisessa Hiljainen yö -kirjassa novelli nimitarina, joka on ronski juttu toimittajasta, joka sekaantuu puolivahingossa salakuljettajien bisneksiin. Hiukan hätäinen, mutta kohtalaisen sujuva. Suomen kirjallisuus ei ilmeisesti menettänyt mitään, kun Jermo hylkäsi jännityskirjallisuuden. Jermo toimi myös Turussa ,40-luvulla toimittajana, mm. Uudessa Aurassa.

Luin myös kaksi Osv(ald). Rahkosen novellia. "Liian monta onnettomuutta" (edelleen Hiljaisesta yöstä) oli juttu nuoresta toimittajasta, joka selvittää perheessä peräkkäin tapahtuvat kolme murhaa. Klassisen perinteen ihailijat pitäisivät monia novellin juttuja huijauksina, ja vähän minäkin. Hauskempi oli "N:o 13" (teoksessa 14 matkustajaa, toim. Outsider, Lehtiyhtymä 1945), joka oli amerikkalaistyyppinen juttu insinööristä, joka kehittää uudenlaisen taistelukaasun. Hiukan hatusta tempaistu suurrikollinen N:o 13 anastaa kaasun kaavan, mutta jää jalkoihin...

Holger Harrivirralla, joka paremmin tunnetaan suomalaisen elokuvan uutterana kameramiehenä (hänellä on alan muistelmat Lykättävät lyhdyt ja kannettavat kamerat, 1983), oli novelli "Mies putosi pikajunasta...", niinikään jo mainitussa Hiljainen yö -kokoelmassa. Se on ihan ookoo tarina ruumiista, joka löytyy ratapenkalta - missä on murhaaja?

Kompleksi remix

Here's an e-mail I received from my friend pHinn:

Here is our brand new remix for Boys of Scandinavia's (http://www.myspace.com/boysofscandinavia) 'Dead End Beat'. It's downloadable for a limited time only, so try to check it soon...

http://www.phinnweb.org/kompleksi/temp/Kompleksi_RMX_-_Dead_End_Beat_-_131106_Master.MP3

Sandra Scoppettone on Dan Brown

I went over to Sandra Scoppettone's blog via Lee Goldberg's blog and noticed this comment which struck me as pretty accurate:

I do pray that The Da Vinci Code clones will disappear. They aren’t real writers. In my opinion they’re opportunists. I don’t know what to call the agents who want/expect writers to imitate Dan Brown. Maybe stupid is the word.

***

It was Father's Day today. (I don't know what the exact English word is.) Got three (!) cards and two presents from Ottilia and one card and one present from Kauto. It was nice and sweet, even though with those two kids it's impossible to have the day only to yourself, even though there's one other parent in the house alongside yourself. Nevertheless, I love them very much. Don't know what I'd do without them. (Well, I do, but you know what I mean.)

Am going to Helsinki to shoot this year's last insert for the TV show I've been doing some stuff. It's maybe my last. I think I reported a while back that the show was to be aborted (after a measly year!), but I heard only recently that it's going be on production for the coming Spring after all. We'll see if I'm in or not.

You may remember about me ranting about a small town of Loimaa and its flea markets and charity shops. Well, one of them - the best of them - is closing down. (Did I mention this already?) We went there for the last time (well, you never know) and still found some stuff. We are (Elina and I, that is) also making an article about the change in flea markets in Finland in the last ten years. The closing down of the charity shop in Loimaa is the signal: the times, they are a-changin'. There will be no more these cozy and messy shops, only sterile and uninteresting and chaotic flea markets where you'll put your stuff up for others to sell.

Susanna and Tero were there taking pictures. They do great work and would post some of them here, but they haven't mailed them yet. Which reminds me that I haven't posted any pictures from our holidays and weekends at the cottage. Should, any of these days. Kerrankos meikäläisen jotain pitäis, as the Finns say.

Over 20 blonde jokes at Duane Swierczynski's blog.

This and that: quick observations, in many languages

1. I just can't approve of Saddam being killed. A state cannot, must not kill its own citizens. (And there's also the logical fallacy that was pointed out by Finnish philosopher Tuomas Nevanlinna in today's Nyt supplement: death sentence does only what's evitable anyway and it also saves the person from suffering. It has also been mentioned that it's convenient for the US administration that Saddam cannot now be questioned about the US support he got while gasing the Kurdi people.)

2. Listening to Peaches's Fatherfucker. Great stuff.

3. T. Jefferson Parker's California Girl is a bit slow.

4. Ensi viikolla Avanto-festivaali ja vuoden kulttuuriteko: Sähkömetsä-sarja, jossa on suomalaisen kokeellisen elokuvan koko historia!

5. Dokumentti Petteri Jussilasta viime tiistaina on ollut upeinta suomalaista tv-ohjelmaa vuosiin! Absurdi, pelottava, järkyttävä - kuin toisesta maailmasta.

Edit: Otin Kuros-kohdan pois, koska aloin tuntea itseni tyhmäksi höpöttäessäni sellaisia.

Outsiderin Atoroxin edeltäjä

(English summary: this is about a pulp magazine story that I recently found. It's a precursor of the Atorox robot stories by the same writer, hitherto unreprinted.)

Käväisin eilen yliopiston kirjastossa tutkimassa sinne tilaamiani lehtiä ja muita julkaisuja. En ollut edes muistanut tilanneeni sinne Keltainen kotka -nimistä lehteä - se oli korsulukemisto vuodelta 1943, julkaisijana Lehtiyhtymä. Lehdessä oli pilakuvia, pakinoita, novelleja, sen semmoista. Ei mitään kovin mullistavaa. (Laitan lehdestä myöhemmin lisää kuvia, jahka ehdin.)

Paitsi että sivulta 75 eteen tuli Outsiderin eli Aarne Haapakosken novelli "Insinööri Murron Robomax". Tarina kertoo hiukan sekopäisestä keksijästä, joka kehittelee ihmismäisen robotin, ja kutsuu muutaman tutkijaystävänsä tutustumaan uuteen keksintöön. Robotti ei käyttäydykään aivan odotetunlaisesti... Outsider tarjoilee tuttuun tapaansa loppukäänteen, mutta novelli on aivan liian lyhyt tehdäkseen kovin kummoista vaikutusta.

Kuten kuvasta ja robotin nimestä käy ilmi, kyseessä on lähin esikuva Outsiderin neljä vuotta myöhemmin debyytin tehneelle Atoroxille. On keskusteltu paljon siitä, kehittelikö Haapakoski Atoroxin täysin itsenäisesti vai plagioiko hän surutta ranskalaista Otomox-sarjakuvaa, joka ilmestyi vuonna 1943. Robomax-tarinan perusteella hän plagioi sarjakuvaa saman tien, jos hän vain sai Pic et Nic -nimistä lehteä Suomeen sodan aikana. Jonkin verran epätodennäköiseltä se kyllä kuulostaa. Yhteensattumia on tosin liikaa: Outsiderin paha keksijä esimerkiksi on romaaneissa Minax, ranskalaisessa sarjassa hän on Minuscus. André Mavimuksen ja Roger Roux'n sarjakuvassa Otomoxkin näyttää aika samalta kuin löytyneen novellin Robomax.

















For the record: Simo Sjöblomin dekkaribibliografian mukaan "Insinööri Murron Robomaxia" ei ole julkaistu kirjamuodossa, mutta on mahdollista, että se on ilmestynyt joissain hänen toimittamissaan Outsiderin tarinoita sisältävissä vihoissa. Jos joku tietää, niin ilmoittautukoon!

En tiedä, kuka on tehnyt novellin alkuperäiskuvituksen. Keltaista kotkaa kuvitti paljon Ami Hauhio ja tyyli voisi olla Hauhiota, mutta varma en ole, koska signeeraus puuttuu.

My IMDb

Here's a link to four films I've commented on IMDb. I don't really know what links those four films, but you can find it out yourself.

Buster Keaton commercials

Here's Buster Keaton doing Alka-Seltzer commercials in the late fifties. I like the man's voice and outlook. He could've done - and should've done - better in his late careet. The last film he ever made (hope I'm remembering this correctly) was a 30-minute film with him travelling through Canada in a motorized hand car. (Resiina in Finnish, if you don't get that. I'm not really sure what the actual word for the vehicle should be.) The film is not funny and it's too long - a sad ending to a career of one of the most important comedians in the history of cinema.

Culture-oriented Sunday

Vow! I want more days like this! I had a most culture-oriented Sunday and I felt it was just what I needed. Not much of it was work-related, but maybe it was only for the good.

I saw two films: The Falcons (1970) by the Hungarian István Gaál and The Dark Mirror (1946) by Robert Siodmak. We also viewed the last week's episode of Six Feet Under that I had taped. On top of that, I was able to finish The Lincoln Lawyer. I also had time to start a new book, T. Jefferson's Parker California Girl.

The Falcons was a truly compelling film, something which the theaters don't show anymore. It's a film about training falcons and the best way to interpret the film is to see it as a political satire, with falcons representing the spies and snitches working inside the Communist system and praying on the ordinary citizens (which are symbolized by herons and magpies). The film trusted on the spectator to understand the symbolism and didn't give out any information on the characters and why they were doing what they were doing. There's only one scene in the film that says that falcon farm is owned by state. Other than that, it's just a falcon farm in the middle of Hungarian pusta plains. Strangely compelling and quietly rewarding.

The Dark Mirror, on the other hand, was a nice little film noir from the early-to-middle years in the noir cycle, about identical twins who are played by Olivia de Havilland. The tricks were very good, and so was de Havilland. The plot was a bit forced and the outcome was pretty obvious, even though I had some doubts in the middle as I was hoping for some twists. The ending was forcedly happy, but the photography was very good and there's always something very intriguing about the early noir's fascination with double identities and mirror personalities.

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly has been hailed as one of Connelly's best, but I wouldn't say so. It was pretty cool and detached for Connelly, whose series characters, Harry Bosch and Terry Caleb, are quite hotheaded and deeply involved in their cases. In this one, there's not the same dramatic drive. I was hoping that the plot would have more twists (there's a scene in which I thought it would get as complex as the best Bosch novels), but it's surprisingly straight-forward. Nevertheless, a very entertaining and suspenseful novel.

Okay, now I'll have to get back to work.

Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer

I'm in the middle of reading Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer which I believe is still his newest one, even though it's from 2005. It's great so far, even though there's a feeling of having read something similar before. I get that a lot when I read thrillers of this kind, but Connelly is so much more engaging than many of his colleagues and his characters are real and vivid and full-blown, not simply cardboard. I'll post later thoughts when I'm through with the book.

I was also thinking that one of Connelly's Harry Bosch novels (The Lincoln Lawyer is a one-off) should be included in the top 10 detective novels list, but I couldn't name a favourite. What's the book that has Bosch investigating kiddie porn? Is it Angels Flight? That could be my choice.

By the way, I've interviewed, via e-mail, Connelly couple of times and had a chance to meet him for a live interview two years back. He's a very nice guy. I was quite awkward in the interview, but could relax afterwards and we chatted for quite a while in a Russian restaurant in the middle of Helsinki.

A song for Anna Politkovskaya

Here's a song Finnish musicians made for Russian journalist and activist Anna Politkovskaya who was murdered some weeks back. Check it out. The song is great and the video has Enligsh subtitles. The English translation (and some other stuff) of the song is found here.