Joe R. Lansdale binge

I've been reading lots of Joe Lansdale lately, since I wrote an article on him and his works for the magazine of the Finnish Whodunit Society. Here's a lowdown and some mini-reviews:

The Thicket: amazing Western novel that approaches horror literature without using any topics of the horror genre.

Paradise Sky: great epic Western with a very sympathetic African-American lead, some very violent scenes throughout.


Cold in July: great film, but even a better book, one of Lansdale's best. Lansdale himself dubbed this as his Gold Medal paperback. Lots of twists and turns, but I thought each and every one of them was logical.

The Bottoms: great mix of Mark Twain and more gory horror, though I saw quite early who the killer was. (It's never any reason for me to read a crime novel, to keep guessing who the killer is.) Great characters, people you wanted to know about and care for them.

Sunset and Sawdust: maybe a bit too reminiscent of The Bottoms, but still a very good crime novel, with a plausible and likable female lead and his two not-so-likable helpers. Lansdale does the epoque very well without emphasizing it too much. I like that.

Leather Maiden: possibly Lansdale's most conventional crime novel, but thoughtful and gripping nevertheless.

The Nightrunners: some terrific scenes and great characters, but there seemed to be a subtext of warning about teenage criminals, which felt odd.

I'd read almost all of the Hap and Leonard books earlier, so I read now only Mucho Mojo (great) and Vanilla Ride (a bit too straight-forward, but entertaining nevertheless). I didn't have time to read Devil Red nor Honky Tonk Samurai (nor the novellas that were published interim), a short mention based on what I could find had to suffice.

Lansdale doesn't have a Finnish publisher now. He hasn't had one since 2003. That's a crime. Someone should do something about it, what with the Hap and Leonard show on HBO and the graphic novel series coming out.

Donald Westlake's James Bond treatment surfaces as a novel

Hard Case Crime has dug up a James Bond novel Donald Westlake wrote as a treatment several years ago. It looks great. I'm not interested in the Bonds in the least, but this might be worth a look.

The bibliography of science fiction pornography released

The title says it all. This is done very well and exhaustively, it seems, by Kenneth R. Johnson, published via Phil Stephensen-Payne's website. Merits a look, I'm sure.

Paul DiFilippo on the VanderMeers' new massive anthology

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have compiled a massive anthology The Big Book of Science Fiction, which indeed looks big. Paul DiFilippo dissects it here and gives it a highest praise. The intro on the anthologist's work resonates with me, as there's been some discussion on the new curator culture. I've been drawn into that discussion (over here in Finland, that is), but I merely think of myself as an anthologist, nothing more (and nothing less!).

(I'll promise to get back to blogging once the vacations end!)

Friday's Forgotten Book: It Rhymes with Lust

Possibly a first edition,
based on the defects on the cover.

One of the stablemates in any genre is to discuss what was the first artifact produced in the particular genre. Hence there are many first graphic novels. I don't know what the first graphic novel really is, but I do know that there were many before It Rhymes with Lust was published in 1950 by a small outfit called Picture Novels, a subsidiary of St. John Publications.

It Rhymes with Lust was written by Leslie Waller and Arnold Drake and illustrated by Matt Baker. Drake and Baker had been doing regular comics for some time, mainly for DC, Waller had published a crime novel or two. Later on he did lots of movie novelizations. There have been two reprints, one in Comics Journal ten years ago and one by Dark Horse in 2007. It's been sold out for some time now, but I managed to pick up a copy.

It Rhymes with Lust (a great title, by the way!) is a slightly noirish exposé story of a cynical journalist who's called to a town called Copper City to run a newspaper published by the big man of Copper City, Buck Masson. Masson has passed away just before the story starts, but our man doesn't know it entering Copper City. It's soon revealed to him that Copper City is a corrupt place and eventually he has to stop the corruption. He has to face some thugs run by the deceased Buck Masson's lusty widow, Rust ("it rhymes with lust"), but he also falls in love with Buck Masson's daughter.

It Rhymes with Lust wouldn't be great literature if if were a prose novel, but now it's interesting, at least as a curiosity. It might work also as a movie, but even then it would be cliched. The active woman, Rust, is a bad femme fatale, and the passive one, Buck Masson's daughter, is a good girl. You've seen this a thousand times. Matt Baker draws well (beautiful women especially), his line is fluid, and the continuity is pretty good - this stuff reads fluently -, but as a story this would require some extra twists.

Picture Novels published another graphic novel, The Case of the Winking Buddha, by pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab -, but that's never been reprinted, so I'm not very likely to be able to read it. It has a great cover, though. Stokes wrote some crime novels from the thirties on and later he did a dozen Nick Carter paperbacks.

I noticed while reading this that a new small publisher Automat.Press has just launched a new Kindle edition of another early graphic novel, also in paperback format, i.e. Joseph Millard's Mansion of Evil. It was originally published by no less than Fawcett Gold Medal! Millard was an interesting character in his own right, making comics in the 1940's and 1950's and then moving to paperback originals. He wrote as Joe Millard some The Man With No Name westerns in the early seventies (though everyone knows Clint Eastwood has a name in all the Sergio Leone movies he's in). There are some free pages of Mansion of Evil in Amazon, and from those it seems that Mansion of Evil is purer noir, with its doppelgangers and all that stuff. Graphicwise, it doesn't seem as solid as It Rhymes with Lust.

Arthur Lyons: The Dead Are Discreet

Arthur Lyons is one of those now forgotten private eye writers who brought some seriousness to the genre, following in the footsteps of Chandler's later novels and Ross Macdonald, shying away from Mickey Spillane's evangelist violence and Brett Halliday's light-heartedness. I don't think many read Lyons now, and there are no Finnish translations.

I'd read earlier one of Lyons's Jacob Asch novels and liked it a bit, so I decided I'd try another one. I'd found a used copy of a No Exit Press reprint of Lyons's first novel, The Dead Are Discreet (originally from 1974), and started to read it while we were at the summer cottage. I had to bring the book to town, since I didn't have time to finish it at the cabin. Jacob Asch is a grumpy and lonely man, in the normal tradition of the hardboiled private eye literature. In this book, his first outing, he tackles the early seventies' Californian milieu of Satan worshippers and other firm believers of the occult.

The premise is intriguing, but The Dead Are Discreet was a disconcerting experience for me. I like Asch's character and Lyons keeps the story moving, but the image of homosexuals as sick perverts was disgusting - and, mind you, also clichéd. It's very much of its time, and I don't think Lyons would make this kind of book any more (he's not writing, though, he died some years back).

Some books I read: Michael Connelly, Mack Bolan, David Markson, Patrick Modiano, Lee Goldberg et al.

After completing my book on Finnish Westerns, I decided to take a little break and read anything I just wanted to read, not anything I had to read. I'd been quite worn out by the Finnish Westerns many of which were not very good and I wanted something that could grip me and entertain the hell out of me. Usually this happens in a vertical position - I read on a sofa. I once thought I'd read in a chair, but doesn't seem to be the case.

I often find comfort in the work of Michael Connelly, and The Drop proved no exception (Luottamuksen hinta in Finnish). Harry Bosch is a very likable character in his grumpiness and Connelly plots like a master - I still find it very distracting that he said he doesn't plot beforehand, he just makes it up as he writes and corrects afterwards. But The Drop was too long, only because Connelly decides to explain some of the things that are taking place or Bosch or the other cops are doing, I don't know if this has something to do with the American readers - do publishers think they are stupid and make their authors put all these explanations in their books? I mean I can do fine with less facts, less explaining. Still, The Drop was entertaining. Should reread some of Connelly's earlier novels, stuff like Trunk Music and City of Bones is cracking good.

I also read some e-books on my Kindle. I don't have a credit card and I have to rely on books that can be loaded free from Amazon. Luckily I have quite a few Facebook friends who like to post about such things, and I have a pretty good collection of newish indie noir and western stuff, with a bit of new pulp thrown in. I read one short story by Lawrence Block ("Like a Thief in the Night", supposed to be published in Playboy, but never came out, exquisite story telling) and two novels and one novella of which short reviews have to suffice:

Lee Goldberg: My Gun Has Bullets (originally published as by Ian Ludlow): hilarious, occasionally too hilarious Hollywood-cum-crime romp. Westlake on speed, one might say.

Jake Bible: Z-Burbia: mediocre zombie novel that's too reminiscent on The Walking Dead, but some nice touches here and there and a likable narrator, also with some seriously nasty characters some of whom turn out to be so nasty after all. The book starts well, but starts to lag soon. Finished it nevertheless, the climax was better.

Rob Hart: The Last Safe Place: another zombie story, in novella length, but actually quite atmospheric and with a clever twist. Hart seems to come highly recommended by the noir gang.

The third novel I read on my Kindle is worth more wordage. I've never cared much for the Mack Bolan series. I found Don Pendleton's original novels lacking plot and character, just endless killings after endless killings. I'd never read any of the new ones written by other writers and when I was suffering a fit of gastroentritis, I thought I'd give it a try. I had a book called Arctic Kill on my Kindle, and it was written by one Joshua Reynolds - of course not the painter, but a new writer mostly concentrating on neo-pulp and pastiches of Conan Doyle and other Victorian and pulp writers. This shows in Arctic Kill, and I think Reynolds uses here the same neo-Nazi conspiracy he has created for his more pulp-related writing. This is by no means great literature, but I found Arctic Kill quite enjoyable on its own terms. Reynolds keeps the story racing along, though he's a bit wordy. There's certainly no character development in Arctic Kill, but there's a solid plot, which was missing from the Pendleton Bolans I'd read previously. Might even read another Mack Bolan by Reynolds. I hear Harlequin killed recently its Gold Eagle line that focused mainly on the Bolans, which is a pity.

I also read the latest Finnish translation by the 2014 Nobel prize winner Patrick Modiano (So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighbourhood in Enligsh). If you're in the mood for some melancholic mystery, Modiano is your man, though he's no crime writer. There's still not much differentiating him from the likes of Sebastian Japrisot or other French crime novelists of the 1950's and 1960's. Should be reading more of that stuff. I realized reading this that Modiano possibly affected my short novel on Lovecraft in Hollywood, called Haamu ("Ghost"). The same short sentences, the same melancholy feel are there.

Ernesto Sábato's The Tunnel also belongs to the same category: a literary novel that could be seen as a crime novel. Originating from 1948, this novel by the Argentine writer is dark psychological suspense about a sociopathic artist who torments a young lady, whom he sees as his lover. It's not surprising this has been compared to Camus's The Outsider.

More on the artsy side was also David Markson's Reader's Block (1996) that was recently translated in Finnish for the first time, as Lukijan luomislukko. Markson had another foot in the world of pulp, as he wrote three beatnik private eye paperbacks in the early sixties and also a Western novel called The Ballad of Dingus Magee (later turned into a film, which I haven't seen). Reader's Block is no pulp, though, it's a collection of fragments snatched from other books, including trivia on how famous and not so famous writers have died. It's a fascinating read, though not for everyone obviously. It's quite light, though, and I found it pretty hypnotizing. There's also a quote in which Markson (or his narrator or narratee) says that John D. MacDonald was a better writer than Saul Bellow! I've never really liked MacDonald, so I don't know, but the quote cracked me up nevertheless.

After Markson and Modiano I thought I should get back to work and work-related reading. I decided still to dip into Bill Pronzini's Games of which I'd heard good things. And it proved to be a pretty good and suspenseful thriller, though the ending was a bit of a let-down and misogynistic at that. But then again, noir and hardboiled are full of misogyny. Still glad I finally read the book.

Now I'm reading a Zane Grey and thinking I really should get back to work. It's just that after a large body of work it's hard to concentrate on other books, not really knowing what to focus on. I have some news coming up, so stay tuned!

PS. I realize after posting this that all the authors I read were male. Oh well, have to remedy that.

Swedish paperback cover for Edward Aarons

I found this book in a trash bin and decided I should at least salvage its illustrated cover.

The book, originally Assignment - Treason is the second one to come out in Edward S. Aarons' Assignment series that took its protagonist, Sam Durell all over the world. The books are at least serviceable, if nothing great to my mind. The Swedish edition came out in 1959 from Wennerbergs Förlag, translated into Swedish by Margareta Sahlström. The illustration is by Mitchell Hooks. It wasn't originally meant for this book. "Förräderi" means "treason" in English.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Battle Beyond the Stars

Science fiction can be pretty stupid at times, especially olded science fiction, the stuff with zap guns and space ships. But it can also be pretty entertaining, as proves the Roger Corman-produced Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) that I saw last night on a 35 mm film. I'd seen it before on television, but never on big screen.

At core, the film is indeed stupid: John Saxon plays a maniacal tyrant, who wants to destroy or enslave whole planets. One of the planets, Akir, wants to fight, and a young man is sent to find some hired guns to help them. Battle Beyond the Stars is a riff on The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven (with even one of the actors of the latter film, Robert Vaughn recreating his role as a lone gunman), but more essentially it's a Star Wars copy, with lesser space fights and less fictional mythology. The film races along fast, but the scenes are loosely jointed. The battle scenes are clumsy and a bit confusing at times.

But on the good side are many things: John Sayles' funny and clever script with lots of sexual innuendo that's largely missing from George Lucas' Star Wars, many nice actors in bit parts (Sam Jaffe, George Peppard, Vaughn), Sybil Danning in a goofy role as a female warrior, and good music from Howard Shore. Sayles' script shows his feminism also in the female computer of the hero's space ship, she's clearly an grumpy older lady who takes no shit from no one. Too bad she doesn't make it in the final battle.

Though nothing great, Battle Beyond the Stars was a good-humored film and I left the cinema grinning to myself. And oh, by the way, I thought I spotted Sayles playing one of the doll-like androids in Sam Jaffe's space station, but IMDb doesn't mention him.

Huge amount of links to other reviews on Todd Mason's blog here.

Sarah Weinman on Benjamin Black, Chandler and other literary brands

Just a sidenote: this article by Sarah Weinman is already two years old, but it caught my attention only just now, when I noticed Weinman post it on her Facebook page. It's a very intriguing piece, you should check it out. Lots of stuff I didn't know and also lots of stuff that piques my interest and fascination.

My book on Finnish Westerns

Sorry for the absence, folks. I've been working my ass off and writing my book on Finnish Westerns, but it's finally ready and being sent off to the printers. The book turned out pretty huge, clocking at 370 pages in its final version. You can see why I haven't been blogging - and not doing pretty much anything else either. This took me at least ten years from the first idea, and the actual writing took at least four years - but of course I did some other books in the interim.

I'm too tired at the moment to write more fully about the book and its contents, for now it's enough that I post the great cover by Timo Numminen. The book is out in May.

The book will be accompanied by an anthology I also compiled, with twenty or so Finnish Western short stories from the 1820s on up to this day. I'll post about it as well later.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Mikey and Nicky (1976)

I'd read of this little gem of a crime film a long time ago, but always failed to see it. I once had the Finnish VHS published in 1989, but I couldn't watch it, since the picture ratio was so wrong, my eyes started to bleed. Now I finally had a chance to see it on screen, and boy, was it good! Mikey and Nicky was ahead of its time as a crime film and hasn't aged as some other crime films of its era have.

John Cassavetes and Peter Falk play minor gangsters in the movie. In the beginning we see the freaked-out Cassavetes in a sleazy hotel room, seemingly afraid of everything. He thinks other gangsters are trying to kill him, and Falk offers to help him. It becomes a bit of an odyssey through night-time streets, dirty joints and movie theaters. Ned Beatty plays the hired killer who doesn't seem to get anywhere on time. There's a bit of a surprise twist near the end, but more essential is the actual ending of the film, very poignant and touching, with a nice touch in the dialogue.

The writer and director Elaine May let Cassavetes and Falk improvise their scenes (at least partly), and this brings life to the characters that otherwise might be stock. There's warmth, energy, fear, abruptness, violence and jerkiness to these guys, and while they are not very likable, they feel very real.

The improvisation led to film being burned, which made the studio angry, and then Elaine May sat on the results for three years and trying to bring the thing together, but then the studio decided otherwise, and the end result isn't what May had in mind. I don't know whether we'll ever see May's version of Mikey and Nicky. (The Finnish version, seen here after a five-year break in 1981, is slightly shorter than the original American print.)

Someone has said this is the best film ever produced in Hollywood directed by a woman. I don't know if this is the case anymore, but it may have been. At least Mikey and Nicky is different and interesting. Here's Jonathan Rosenbaum on the film.

More Overlooked Movies at Todd Mason's blog. (Hopefully.)

PS. Oh, I'd written about this and the goddamn Finnish VHS earlier.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Jesuit Joe (1991)

I'd seen this ultra-rare French northern film back in the day, in 1992 actually, and I saw it twice, even though it made only a short round in Finnish cinemas. I'd never seen it again, but for some reason or another it had stuck to my mind and having an opportunity to see it again on 35mm film (okay, I had a hand in organizing the screening) I jumped the wagon.

Saying "ultra-rare" means that Jesuit Joe has only been released on VHS in French with no subtitles and on DVD in French with no subtitles. It's never been shown in Finnish television and before this it was never shown on the Finnish Film Archive screenings. It seems from IMDb that Finland was the only country where the film was shown originally beside France. So not many have seen it. It's available on YouTube, but they have only the cropped VHS copy without any subtitles.

The copy on YouTube is in French, but the copy I just saw was dubbed in English, so the producers at least tried to make this international. The film is based on Hugo Pratt's 1980 graphic novel with the same title and Pratt also was writing the screenplay, but they did some extra and not so necessary changes here and there. The original graphic novel, for example, has no vulture buzzard giving a voice-over narration, as in the film. It works at times, at times it doesn't.

The whole film suffers from the same problem: at times it works, at times it doesn't. The aerial scenes of the wintery Canadian landscape (the film was shot in Canada) are breath-taking, but the actors are pretty bad almost throughout. The screenplay has some dubious explanatory scenes or dialogue, which are not necessary. The director, Olivier Austen, has done only some unit managing in some other films beside this, and it shows. There are some very clumsy scenes here and there. Even the soundtrack shows the same undecisiveness, with hard-rock themes suddenly bursting out.

Yet there's something intriguing about the unrelenting story about the half-Indian Jesuit Joe killing mercilessly those he doesn't like or approve - or not killing. Take a look if you have the chance - or can speak French and can suffer through the bad VHS copy of YouTube.

Todd Mason doesn't seem to be gathering any links to other Overlooked Film posts, but here's his blog anyway.

Possibly British comic needs ID

Friend was asking whether anyone knows the artist behind this possibly British series of comics. It was published in Finnish in the 1950s as Esa and Eenokki, so possibly it was something like Eazy and Enoch (but most possibly not). Can anyone help my friend here?

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

I just saw this little thriller - if that's what you could call it - the other day and decided to blog about it. The film received with good reviews here in Finland and, I believe, elsewhere in Europe as well, but I don't know how largely it was seen in the US. (Wikipedia says it had a limited release, but it's out on DVD and possibly available on Netflix and other venues.)

The film has a quirky title, but you shouldn't worry about that, since it's a pretty well done drama of a young woman, Martha (played by Elizabeth Olsen), who's gotten herself mixed up with a sect leading a reclusive life somewhere in the mountains. John Hawkes plays the leader of the sect with charisma. He's not given any background, so the viewer will have to fill up the blank spaces him/herself. The leader looks and feels interesting, yet he's there only to satisfy his own sexual needs: he gets to have sex with all the newcomers. He tells the women the act of sex starts the purifying process. The young woman can't take the abuse anymore and takes a hike. She hides herself in her sister's house, but she can't leave the past behind her. The sister and her husband seem helpless and don't really know what to do, and Martha won't tell them what has really happened in the two years she was away.

Directed by debutante Sean Durkin, this is a quietly disturbing thriller with almost no scary moments. The ending is very disturbing. Highly recommended, though not for those who seek fast action and thrills.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Luis Buñuel: The Young One

(I'm blogging again! I really don't have time for this, but I just can't let this one go.)

Surrealist film-maker Luis Buñuel has for long been one of my favourite directors, but in the recent years his stature in my eyes has even grown. I've really liked, even loved, some of his films I've seen recently, even though I'd've seen them before. One example is one of his Mexican melodramas, Èl, of which I wrote here. A more recent example is The Young One (1960), made in Mexico in English, with American actors. It was called La Joven in Mexico, which I believe means "the virgin", and it's only fitting the film's Finnish title is Neitsytsaari, meaning "The Island of Virgins" or "The Virgin Island". I won't go into the plot and its details, the Wikipedia entry will suffice. I just saw this film on screen on 35 mm film, and though I'd seen it earlier, I hadn't really realized what a magnificent little film it is.

It's a very current film tackling issues of racism and sexual abuse. You know, we also have this thing called hate speech in Finland, and it's getting very tiresome and worrisome at the same time. In swift dialogue, Buñuel reveals the speech patterns the racist uses: if the rapist is a white man, the woman is to blame, if the rapist is a black man, kill him. There's wonderful irony in the end: everything seems to be well, but the black man is still running from his hunters and the white man still can carry on raping the 12-year old girl. The priest, who at first seems to fight against abuse and racism, has to make a deal with the white man in order to get the black man to escape. This is no casual irony, it's a strike in the white heart of bourgeoisie.

Yet The Young One is also fluent entertainment. There's not much violent action, but Buñuel knows how to keep the story racing along. This is something many of his experimental colleagues don't know. The noir and western stalwart Zachary Scott is mighty unlikable, yet weirdly human as the white man in the lead. Key Meersman is captivatingly innocent in her almost only role. The film was written by Buñuel and Hugo Butler, who had earlier been blacklisted because of his communist sympathies. The film could indeed be too much for people like Donald Trump.

More Overlooked Films here, when they show up. (Edit: I guess Todd has had something else going on, since nothing has shown up.)

Happy Cthristmas!

I haven't been blogging much lately, but it's only due to two facts: I've been swamped with work and family matters (you might remember we have a 10-month old kid in our house), and I also haven't really been reading any books I should be blogging about. I've been doing a book on Finnish literature, and while there might be some interest in it among my followers, it all comes down to the fact that I've had really little extra time in my hands. I've even been thinking about calling it quits, but I don't want to do that. Blogging here at Pulpetti has brought me new friends and even professional contacts (hey, I wouldn't have been publishing Kevin Wignall were it not for Pulpetti!), and I'm thinking there might be some in the future.

I've also been doing another book: I've compiled a collection of Finnish Cthulhu mythos stories, mostly new, but also with four previously published stories. The book will come out next Spring. I've been at it for almost two years, so it also took some extra energy. But the cover is really nice, as you can see. The title means "The Guardian of the Forbidden Book". I sent the finished manuscript with the foreword and all yesterday to the publisher, so you can see I'm relieved and can finally say: "Happy Christmas!"

Erik Munsterhjelm: A Dog Named Wolf

Anyone read the book? It's a book published in English in 1972 as A Tale of Wolves, Dogs and Trappers in the Canadian Wilds, and as A Dog Named Wolf in 1977. Erik Munsterhjelm was a Finnish writer, who emigrated to Canada in the 1920s and lived there for a dozen years hunting and prospecting gold. Later he came back to Finland and wrote a three-series book of memoirs set in Canada; later on he published four adventure books for young readers set in the same regions. Munsterhjelm returned to Canada in the late 1940s and lived there for the rest of his life. I'm writing on him, but can't get my hands on A Dog Named Wolf. What I'd really like to know is that if it's a fictional book or a memoir and if Munsterhjelm himself is in the lead. If it's a novel, it never came out in Finnish and I'll have to get my hands on it. (There are plenty copies on Abebooks, but I need the info quicker.)

Mind you, there's also a book by Munsterhjelm called The Wind and the Caribou, it's an English translation of one of his memoirs. I thought it was pretty wonderful, you should seek it out if you're interested in the so-called Northern genre.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Morons from Outer Space (1985)

Some time ago I watched a virtually unknown movie by Mike Hodges, the director of such masterpieces as Get Carter and Flash Gordon. Now I watched another one, but of this I'd heard before. Morons from Outer Space (1985) was shown in Finnish cinemas, so I'd seen ads of it and I even remember a friend of mine discussing it.

I bought the now rare movie on VHS and my viewing of it may not have been the best quality, but I still think I got a good picture of what the film was doing and how well it was accomplished. The morons of the title are four foul creatures travelling somewhere in space and somehow ending up on Earth. One of them is played by Mel Smith, amiable comedian, who performed a lot with Griff Rhys-Jones, who plays a reporter in the film. Jimmy Nail merits a special mention as one of the aliens. Morons from Outer Space aims for parody (there are references to 2001, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and even One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and satire - the space morons end up being celebrities, though they don't know or even understand a lot. They do speak good English, though, which is a joke unto itself. The film is a bit wacky and a bit quirky, but never funny enough. Not enough good jokes, not enough crazy slapstick comedy, not enough witty ideas. The satire is also a bit obvious, maybe dated.

The film bombed at the box office and probably made sure Mike Hodges's career will never rise to the heights of Get Carter and Flash Gordon. Mind you, though, Croupier from 1998 is a pretty good neo-noir, and Black Rainbow, made in 1989, was occasionally very good (see the link above). He made some TV stuff between those two, but his film career has been erratic and very mixed.

More Overlooked Films here.

Gil Brewer in Wikipedia, at long last!

Remember when I noted that Gil Brewer didn't have a Wikipedia article to his name? Now he does. (I didn't do, though I set out to do it.) It's still a stub, but it's a start.

There must be dozens or even hundreds of paperback crime and western writers who have no Wikipedia articles, someone should start making up a list of those who don't have (I just noticed the other day that Giff Cheshire doesn't have one). Maybe I should do it?

Science fiction westerns

I'm editing a collection of my writings on genre and pulp literature. Included is an essay on horror and sci-fi western hybrids. I'd added some comments in English at the end of the text, possibly snatched from the Fictionmags or other e-mail list discussions, but I won't be incorporating them into my essay (or at least all of them), it's long enough as it is. But here they are, for your reading pleasure:

Did you ever read FOR TEXAS AND ZED by Zach Hughes? (Popular Library, 1976) It's my all time favorite in the SF-about-Texas sub-genre, and it's a pretty good story to boot!

From the jacket copy:

"Spacemen from Texas on Earth had settled this remote planet centuries ago. While the rest of the galaxy was being divided between two vast warring empires, Planet Texas preserved its
independence, created its own unique civilization, developed its own advanced technology. But now all that Planet Texas was and all that it believed in were threatened, as the super-powers of space moved in for the kill."

William Rotsler's space western novel (THE FAR FRONTIER?)?

Eric Frank Russell, "The Illusionaries," PLANET STORIES 11/51, reprinted in Andre Norton's anthology SPACE PIONEERS.

David Drake's Hammer Slammer spinoff, The Sharp End, though set in a galaxy far far away, was structured along the lines of Sergio Leone's western, Fistful of Dollars.

PERTWEE, HIRAM
Julian F. Grow:
The Fastest Gun Dead (ss) If Mar 1961
The 7th Annual of the Year’s Best S-F, ed. Judith Merril, Simon &
Schuster 1962
The Sword of Pell the Idiot (nv) F&SF Apr 1967
The Starman of Pritchard’s Creek (nv) If Dec 1968
Bonita Egg (nv) F&SF Sep 1969
Formula for a Special Baby (nv) F&SF Dec 1969

Phyllis Eisenstein's "In the Western Tradition". Wonderful story. (A time viewer story, one of my pet categories.) F&SF, March 1981

William F. Wu's story and novel of a robot in the west: "Hong's Bluff" and HONG ON THE RANGE.

I dug out Eric Frank Russell's "The Illusionaries" (PLANET STORIES 1951, reprinted in Andre Norton's anthology SPACE PIONEERS), and that's the category it falls into also. Aliens land on
earth, are accustomed to enslaving lesser species by controlling their perceptions, try it on humans and it works fine, but decide that they can't make it work, get in their spaceship, and check out.
The end of the story suggests that the humans have been creating an illusion for the aliens and invokes Wyatt Earp and Jesse James.

All of Quinn Yarbro's vampire novels are historicals as well, and "In the Face of Death" is set muchly in the West of American Indians and San Francisco pre-Civil War ... and in the South during the war.

Howard Waldrop, with "Night of the Cooters" (Omni, April '87; also in the Waldrop collection NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, and in Kevin J. Anderson's GLOBAL DISPATCHES anthology) which has Texas Rangers battling H.G. Wells' Martian invaders -- of WAR OF THE WORLDS fame -- at the same time they are landing elsewhere on Earth (1898?). A gem.

SF/Westerns:
Anybody yet mention Jonathan Lethem, _Girl in Landscape_ (1998), which makes complicated (but perfectly recognizeable) play with _The Searchers_ .

WiIliam Tenn's story "Eastward Ho!" which, I think, was about the Indians crowding the white man out of America.

Bibliographical problem: Hugh B. Cave in Finnish

I just posted a short bibliography of the short stories by Hugh B. Cave that were translated and published in Finnish in my bibliographical sidekick blog here. None of the stories show up in any reliable Cave bibliography and he himself didn't remember them, when I had the opportunity to interview him just a month before he died. So, if anyone here can identify these stories, I'd be most grateful.

Stack of Robert E. Howards

I bought these nice items couple weeks ago. You can easily guess we don't usually have this stuff here in Finland. And what's nice is that I got them cheap.

Charles Beckman (1920-2015)

I just heard from James Reasoner that Charles Beckman died two weeks ago. He was probably the last real pulp magazine writer alive - I can't think of anyone else, after Hugh B. Cave, Jack Williamson, Frank Kelly, Ray Bradbury, and Elmore Leonard have all passed away.

Beckman's career wasn't straight-forward. He wrote for the crime and western pulps, he wrote for the sleaze houses in the mid-to-late sixties, he wrote for the men's magazines, he wrote for the romance publishers with his wife, he also wrote some non-fiction on jazz - he was a jazz drummer first. Beckman's first published short story was "Strictly Poison" in Detective Tales, October 1945.

Beckman got active just before the end, compiling two collections of his old pulp tales: Suspense, Suspicion & Shockers, and Saddles, Sixguns & Shootouts. I have the first one, but haven't had time to check into it. Note also the new biography Pulp Jazz available from CreateSpace. The book also seems to have a bibliography of Beckman's writing, but I thought I'd also include one myself, here at my bibliographic sidekick blog.

I also published Beckman myself. I put out a small booklet (see above) containing two of his stories, a noirish hardboiled pulp story "Die Dancing, Kid!" (Detective Tales, January 1947) and a more thoughtful "Class Reunion" (AHMM, June 1973). The first one was published originally in Finnish in a magazine called Seikkailujen Maailma (The World of Adventures) and the translator remains unknown. The latter one was translated by my friend Tapani Bagge and published in a short-lived crime fiction mag RikosPalat (CrimeBits) in the late eighties. Both were republished by permission from Mr. Beckman himself, with thanks to James Reasoner and Walker Martin!

Interview on Women Crime Writers

Here's Cullen Callagher's nice interview with Sarah Weinman on her 2-volume anthology Women Crime Writers. Check it out, it's a very good interview with interesting points.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Jack MacLane: Goodnight, Moom

I was lucky to find this almost ancient paperback from a junkyard sale at a comics book store here in Turku. Goodnight, Moom, published originally in 1989, is a cult item, cherished by few aficionados. And it deserves to be.

It's a sort of Frankenstein tale, set amongst the white trash of Texas. Victor Frankenstein of the book is Ed Leach, a car mechanic who abuses his wife and does nothing else but work at his garage and drink beer with his loser buddies. The monster of the book is his son, Harry, whom Ed throws against the wall when the kid is very small. Something happens to the baby and he grows up weird, not saying anything to anyone. He goes to school, but learns nothing. At one point, Harry tortures a kitten. Then he kills another child, a girl who's taken to liking him, since he's so quiet all the time. Ed decides to lock Harry up in the cellar. His mother, Harriette, takes care of the boy, but is afraid of him. And she should be... Harry breaks free and goes on a killing spree, repeating "moom" everytime full moon is up. Ed goes
after him, just like Victor Frankenstein does in Shelley's novel. It develops into a nasty mess, with Ed wanting to keep his son's misdeeds hidden.

Goodnight, Moom is a well-paced horror novel with a ghastly plot and ghastly details, but what's more important is that Jack MacLane can make Harry an interesting character, even though Harry can't speak and doesn't know any words for his strange emotions. You care for the sick, silent bastard. And you care for Harriette, his mother, and you even might care for Ed - you almost surely care for his loser buddies whom he takes with him to catch Harry.

Jack MacLane is really Bill Crider, the Texan writer, paperback collector and blogger. He used the pseudonym Jack MacLane in a string of horror books written for the now-defunct Zebra. The Texas landscape comes alive with many telling details about the wasted life of the small-town Texans. At times Crider goes into a tall-tale territory, like his friend Joe Lansdale also often does.

Goodnight, Moom is available as an e-book alongside the other Jack MacLanes Crider wrote.

One of the Jack MacLanes, Keepers of the Beast, was translated in Finnish in 1989 as Paholaisen opetuslapset in the short-lived horror series by the Viihdeviikarit publishers. There's a sheriff called Jay Reasoner in the book, but that's about all I remember from the book. Might be the time to reread it.

More Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog here or at Todd Mason's blog here.

Jason Starr: Savage Lane

As I've said a hundred times before, Jason Starr is one of my all-time favourite writers: nasty, twisted, funny, fluent. He's very readable and catchy, yet there's nothing amiable about his book. At the same time you really care for his characters, they are not mere pawns in the game.

Starr's newest book Savage Lane marks his return to noir thriller and does it with a wicked punch. Starr treads the same ground as Gillian Flynn, but there's nothing to suggest he's just going after a trend. This is his territory, pure and simple. 

There's something different this time, however. Savage Lane is set in the healthy suburbs, not the seedy downtown and the facile city of his earlier novels. Savage Lane is about the not-so-healthy relationships born out of the shallowness of suburban life and the self-treachery of the people inhabiting the nice homes. Starr's stablemate, sociopathic liars, figure greatly in the novel, and Starr's use the unreliable narrator is matchless. The shifts in the narration and what they reveal about the characters is laugh-out-funny. The timing is perfect. Yet there's no crime almost halfway in. When it comes, it's almost a shock - and after we've gotten over it, we start to laugh. 

Savage Lane is actually a pretty savage book. It's Desperate Housewives meets Psycho. Megan Abbott is right saying: "Who but Jason Starr could render suburban vice pitch black, sneakily endearing and wickedly funny all at once? Like James M. Cain meets Tom Perrotta, Savage Lane shows, in grand style, how twisted the hearts of All-American families can be, and how those picket white fences can be dangerously sharp."

Read more about the book at the Polis Books site (they seem to be doing good work bringing out new noir and hardboiled thrillers, alongside the more traditional ones) and at LitReactor where Keith Rawson has some nice things to say about the book. 

Gil Brewer: The Red Scarf

A Crest reprint

Gil Brewer was one of the best crime and noir paperbackers of the fifties and early sixties. I've read several of his novels in Finnish translation and liked them all. They are fast and plausible, and the protagonists have to overcome some heavy obstacles in their way.

Same goes for The Red Scarf (1958). It was published in hardcover by Mystery House, a cheap lending-library publisher that paid $300 for the book, after it was rejected by Brewer's usual publisher, Fawcett Gold Medal, and other paperback publishers. Still it's an outstanding book, one of Brewer's best, which is saying a lot. This is one of those books where your typical lower middle-class working person gets into a trouble, can't find his (or her) way out of it and just digs his hole deeper and deeper. In The Red Scarf the protagonist is a nice young man who runs a motel with his wife. They have no money and it seems there won't be the new highway that was promised when they bought the motel. Then a femme fatale comes in, with loads of money. It's just that the money belongs to the mob. (You'll find a longer description of the book at Mystery*File, by Bill Pronzini and Lynn Munroe.)

The Red Scarf is very well paced and tightly written little monster of a book. Before I read it, I was struggling with another book from the same era and thinking they must be all like this, but I was delighted to find Brewer's book just blew me away. I couldn't stop reading. The most important thing about this kind of a book is that it remains believable through the end - and the ending is not the most happy one.

By the way, Gil Brewer doesn't have a Wikipedia article! Quick, someone!

Friday's Forgotten Book: Old issues of Paperback Parade

Paperback Parade is (was?) a periodical magazine devoted to the study of old paperbacks and the culture surrounding them. It is (or was) published by Gary Lovisi, author and the head honcho of Gryphon Books. One could actually call it a fanzine, since there are lots of fannish elements in the magazine, such as a long letter column in the start of each issue. It's an interesting magazine, full of intriguing info and tit-bits on obscure authors. Some of the articles in Paperback Parade were the first ones to praise such now classic authors such as Peter Rabe and Bruno Fischer.

I've had six issues on loan from my friend Tapani Bagge for several years now, and taking a break from work, I decided to finally read them. I think I've read some of the articles earlier and used them in my books Pulpografia and Kuudestilaukeavat (Six-Guns). There's stuff in the articles that I don't recall reading, though, so it was good to go back to them anyway.

Popular Library reprint

Paperback Parades are a mixed bunch. Some of the articles are very well done and thorough, others are mere scratches, with bibliographical listings (they are sometimes pretty difficult to follow, but I know it's difficult to do a good bibliography). Some of the texts really don't tell much about the books themselves, as they deal more with dates, editions and cover illustrations. Same goes for the authors. There's a short review by Lovisi of a book called Shadow of a Hero by Allan Chase (Popular Library, 1951). We learn nothing about Allan Chase, we get only a synopsis of the book and a recommendation: "an exceptionally well-written book, hardboiled, fascinating - and a very plausible look at big-town politics." Maybe there wasn't much information on Chase available in 2001, when the issue #55 came out. (BTW, I'm wondering if this is our Chase.)

One thing kept sticking in my eye: Lovisi and other contributors often refer to paperback reprints of the earlier hardcover editions as if they are the true first editions. This happens for example in the interview with crime writer Henry Slesar, Lovisi seems to be more interested in the Zenith reprint of Slesar's crime novel The Gray Flannel Shroud than the fact it's not really paperback fiction. Luckily Slesar steers Lovisi on the right route and mentions the book came out first from Random House in hardcover. (The Zenith reprint has a great cover, though!) And Shadow of a Hero was also a reprint, hardcover coming out in 1949.

The Zenith reprint

But aside from this, it's an absolute delight to have interviews with writers such Peter Rabe, Bruno Fischer, Jonathan Latimer, William F. Nolan, A. S. "Sid" Fleischmann, Ted Gottfried (AKA Ted Mark, the writer of The Man from O.R.G.Y.) and Slesar. Also the British paperbacker and editor Laurence James is interviewed.

There's also a fascinating look at writing for lower markets in the interview with Morris Hershman. The interview with Peter Rabe by George Tuttle was very interesting and possibly one of the first instances where Rabe was taken seriously. Rabe mentions in the interview that he wrote some short stories in his later years, but didn't aim for publication. I started to wonder whether the manuscripts have survived and could be publishable. There's also Tuttle's essay on Rabe. By the way, Rabe mentions he really appreciated Donald Westlake's essay on Rabe in Murder Off the Rack, a very good book with ten essays on paperback crime writers. Get it if you don't already have it. Alongside Rabe there are also essays on Jonathan Latimer and W. R. Burnett. The interview with Bruno Fischer mentions his socialist affiliations (he was the editor of Socialist Call), but doesn't go further into the issue, I'd really like to hear more about this.

Some other points of interest: Graeme Flanagan's article on the Australian paperback series Marc Brody (though nothing I hadn't read before, must be noted that there probably wasn't much info on the Brody books before this), interviews with illustrators Gil Cohen and Bertil Hegland (the Swedish paperback artist), a look at Holloway House (containing lots of info, though it's a bit too fannish to my taste), an article on the Gold Eagle headquarters (they seem to be closing down, not sure if I knew this before). I also enjoyed Philip Harbottle's articles on British western paperbackers and how Harbottle got them back in print through Robert Hale's Black Horse imprint, though Harbottle doesn't really say much about what the books are about and what they are like and how they compare to their American counterparts. There's also some stuff on early Australian paperbacks I could use for an upcoming book I've been planning for years.

One of the more interesting articles in Paperback Parade (in the issues I have) is "Carny Cuties and Killers" by Kurt Brokaw (he must be same guy as the film critic of The Independent, he seems to be curating the course called "Killer Movies: Lost Films"). Though the article is a bit heavy on synopses, the article is full on information on books I hadn't earlier known about. Especially Edward Hoagland's first novel Cat Man (1956, in hardcover) seems very interesting.

Paperback Parade reminds me of my own magazine, called Pulp, that I published for several years (been dead for some years now). It was smaller in size (Paperback Parade is a sturdy, almost book-like object), but I do know the effort one has to make to this kind of thing possible and to happen. Some of the articles in Pulp were not very good or even interesting, but some of them have ended in some of my books (and some still will!). There are lots of articles and essays in Paperback Parade I'd like to see reprinted in an anthology!

The issues I had in chronological order:

# 19 (1990): Bruno Fischer, Gold Eagle
# 25 (1991): Peter Rabe, Gil Cohen, Marc Brody, Arthurian saga in paperbacks,
# 29 (1992): Jonathan Latimer, William F. Nolan, Ace Capelli (British house pseudonym)
# 45 (1996): Laurence James, W. R. Burnett, Morris Hershman
# 55 (2001): Sid Fleischmann, Bertil Hegland, Holloway House
# 56 (2001): Henry Slesar, Hank Janson, Carny Cuties, Ted Mark

More Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog! 

Swedish paperback covers

I found some Swedish paperbacks and other books in our house's trash bin. Took them out, but decided that I had no use for them, so tossed them back. I scanned the covers, included are some tidbits on the books and writers.

Two crime covers for American paperbacks.
The right one is by the great Bertil Hegland. 

James Morris was, if I recall, the pseudonym of Niels Meyn (in the other photo),
under which he wrote a series of Tarzan copies with Jukan.
I don't know who Jack Morris was.
Alibi-magazinet was a Swedish digest-sized fictionmag,
devoted to crime stories. Each issue had one story.

Niels Meyn was a Danish author, mainly of children's books.
This scifi title means "Around the World in 80 Hours".
See his Wikipedia page here.

Vernon Warren wrote pseudo-American private eye books
in the fifties, his hero was called Brandon. Not quite bad, actually,
I've read one and would possibly read another.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Black Rainbow (1989)

I watched this unknown gem from a VHS cassette I bought from a thrift store. The quality of the cassette was better than could be expected, no one had probably watched the film before me, which kind of makes me sad.

Black Rainbow tells about a medium (Rosanna Arquette) and her alcoholic father (Jason Robards), who travel somewhere in the forgotten parts of the United States, and put up shows where Arquette takes contact with the dead people, normally the loved ones of the members of the audience. Two things take place: Arquette starts talking with the dead persons who are not yet dead, and someone starts killing them at the same time. The premise is clever and it's pretty well developed, taking the story to directions one wouldn't easily guess. There are some very good scenes between Arquette and Robards, and some of the scenes from the clairvoyance show are silently thrilling, getting close to horror. Tom Hulce plays a reporter, who suddenly starts to believe in Arquette's powers. The main actors are believable.

Black Rainbow was directed by the English Mike Hodges. Hodges has done some very good films, like Get Carter and Croupier. Then he has done some outrageous camp classics, such as Flash Gordon (though it was done intentionally, I'm sure). Black Rainbow is surely one of his better films, a serious look at abuse and exploitation, not only at the clairvoyance shows, but also on a larger scale. It's a pity the film is not better known, as it didn't get a proper release at the time (Hodges seems to be suffering from this even now, since the same thing happened to Croupier). The film has been released on DVD, but some of the editions are no better than a VHS cassette.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here (as soon as he gets the post done, I'm sure).

Friday's Forgotten Book: Martin M. Goldsmith: Detour (1939)

The film made from Martin M. Goldsmith's novel Detour is far from forgotten. Detour by Edgar G. Ulmer from 1945 is actually one of the better-known film noirs of its era, though it's been erroneously labeled as an extra-cheap quickie. It's now known that Ulmer exaggerated his tight budget and claimed the film was shot in a week, although it took longer than that. This is all well explained even in the Wikipedia article for the film. It also states that the film was shown regularly on television throughout the sixties and seventies, which explains why it was picked up by the first American critics of film noir, such as Paul Schrader, when other equally interesting films were neglected.

But the original novel by Martin M. Goldsmith is a different story altogether. The book was published in 1939 by Macaulay (a lending library publisher, if I'm not mistaken) and getting no reprints until the small press did it in 2005. This is astonishing, given the quality of the book. It's a moving tale of two persons living during the depression, trying to make ends meet. The other one, Alexander Roth, is a violinist trying to get to Hollywood to meet his girl friend living in Los Angeles. The girl, Sue Harvey, is a wanna-be actress, who hates her agent and is working in a diner. Alexander hitches his way across the continent, looking like a bum. He's picked up by a strange man, who has lots of cash and smokes joints. The man dies in his sleep and Alexander is left on nothing. He suspects that if he notifies the police, no one would believe he's innocent. He takes the money and the car, but meets a strange girl, named Vera. Vera reveals he also travelled with the dead man and hence know Alexander is not who he says he is. Vera is one of the meanest bitches in written word, and I'm not saying this lightly. The way Goldsmith paints her with words just makes your blood go chilly. The hate and lack of interest in anything (but money) ooze from her.

The first edition from 1939

Alex Roth is an amiable young man, if not something of a bore, and Goldsmith gives him a plausible voice. Sue, on the other hand, is not so amiable. She's a bit of a gold-digger, but also very earnest at that. The novel is written in terse and hardboiled vernacular, and the story races along smoothly largely through point-of-view narration. The depression era with all its worn-out ramblers comes alive in the pages of the book. When the film was made in 1945, the story of Sue Harvey was dropped alongside with references to sex and drugs. The book ends in an open note, in the end of the film the police pick up Al (changed from Alexander). Otherwise the film is pretty faithful.

Detour was republished, as I said, by a small publisher called O'Bryan House. They seem to have done only two books, according to this. Detour has its share of formatting errors, seems like they haven't done enough editing for the scanned text. Nevertheless, this was a very welcome reprint, a forgotten classic that should stay in print.

Here's Bill Pronzini on Goldsmith's two other crime novels, and here's Steve Lewis's review of Detour. And here's (also on Mystery*File) the foreword by Richard Doody for the O'Bryan House reprint.

More Forgotten Books for Friday found at Todd Mason's blog!

Megan Abbott on why women love crime

This nice essay by Megan Abbott is related to the wonderful-looking collection The Women Crime Writers, edited by Sarah Weinman, that just came out. And Abbott's essay is worth reading as well.

Sarah Weinman was wondering in one of her Crime Lady e-mails whether there have been substantial female domestic suspense writers outside the US and UK. I got to thinking about this (lazily, I must admit), and I haven't come up with any contenders. Many female Finnish crime writers of the time period of Weinman's book dabbled mostly in puzzle mysteries, but there must be some. Anyone?

Jason Starr: Twisted City

Jason Starr has long been one of my favourite writers, and I can't help but fall in love with his plots. I picked up his Twisted City that I hadn't previously read and showed the back cover copy to my wife, grinning widely and saying: "This sure sounds like my kind of book!" It says: "Times are tough for David Miller, a journalist for a second-rate financial magazine who hates his boss, is tired of supporting his girlfriend's partying lifestyle and recently lost his sister to cancer. But things are about to get much worse."

David loses his wallet in a bar after a failed attempt at picking up a woman, and some days later a woman calls him and says she's got his wallet. David goes to a seedy neighborhood and meets Sue, who seems to be a junkie. She's asking lots of money for David's wallet. David goes to a bank to raise money and when he gets back, he's attacked by Sue's maniacally jealous boyfriend. After that, things really go wrong. It's a hell of a ride for David, and while everything's pretty dark and hopeless for our hero, you can't but laugh at his tribulations. Everything goes worse no matter what David does, even though there's one chance he could make things right, but he blows it too. The end is really, really nasty.

Jason Starr writes and plots with ease, and he's deceptive. Every time you think you miss a hole in the plot, it gets explained. The book moves with a breakneck pace and there's no empty page. This is a brilliant noir novel, once again. It's a damn shame my efforts to get Starr translated in Finnish have proven futile, but I'm still trying.

I read the 2005 printing from No Exit with a pretty bland cover, but their new covers for Starr's backlist are so stupendous (see above) I'm almost thinking I'd buy the whole set.

Cornell Woolrich's "It Had to Be Murder" and Hal Jeffries

I read Cornell Woolrich's short story "It Had to Be Murder" yesterday due to my book project on books (and seemingly short stories also) that were filmed. Woolrich's story (that, by the way, doesn't differ so much from Hitchcock's subsequent film Rear Window as is usually thought) was published in Dime Detective in February, 1942. It features Hal Jeffries (L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries in the film) as the hero, stuck in a wheelchair just like James Stewart in the film. Stewart's Jeffries is a photographer, but Woolrich doesn't give his hero any professional traits, but he knows the police and the lieutenant is his personal friend. The ending climax is a bit different from the film, as Jeffries of the short story doesn't have the photographic equipment Stewart uses in the film to distract Raymond Burr's Thorwald. One notable difference: Jeffries's hired help is an African-American man, not Thelma Ritter of the film.

I just got to thinking Woolrich may have written more stories that feature Hal Jeffries. There's something about the story to make me think he was familiar to the readers of Dime Detective. I can't find any info on this, however. There's no Hal Jeffries in the series index at the Crime, Mystery, & Gangster Fiction Magazine Index, so I'm must surely wrong, but I'd really appreciate if someone could confirm.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Split Second (1992)

Split Second is a B- or C-grade action/horror flick that should've been made in the eighties, but it came out only in 1992. For some reason or another, the film came to Finnish cinema theaters and I managed to see it. I remember thinking it was somewhat entertaining, but I also remember everyone else saying it was pure crap.

I picked the VHS up free from a thrift store and wanting to see something light, I decided to watch Split Second. It didn't very well hold up my interest this time, even though I'm ready to admit it was still somewhat entertaining. I found myself Googling bits of info on the film and its director, Tony Maylam, on my phone throughout the film, so I wasn't actually glued to the screen.

The story takes place in a near future, and the climate change has made London flood all over the place. An alien is on a killing spree and leaving mysterious signs behind, and tough loner cop Rutger Hauer is the only one who realizes they are not up against an ordinary man. The signs aren't however satisfactorily explained, maybe they were just a red herring. There's some banter between Hauer and his partner, a nerdy young guy who's just fresh from the academy (some fresh ideas in the film, huh?), but overall it's disappointing. Hauer's cop acts at times like an incompetent moron. I'm not sure I would assign him to any case. The alien, when it finally reveals itself, is quite poorly and badly made. Editing and shooting in darkness help a little, but not much. The monster in this film should've been huge! If I were rating this, I'd give it a ** or even *½.

However, I got to thinking that Split Second might have influenced my writing, at least on a subconscious level. My debut novel (well, my commercially published debut novel), called Jumalten tuho in Finnish (meaning "Twilight of the Gods") is about an alien (not a space alien, though, more like a monster from Christianity's darkest secrets) on a killing spree, ripping its victims wide open. There's also a tough cop almost alone working on a case. Of course there are dozens of films and books written about similar stuff, but maybe I saw Split Second during a sensitive phase (insert smiley here). If I saw it in 1992, that's about the same time I started writing the short story that gradually became my novel.

Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin as domestic suspense

Domestic suspense is a sub-genre that I've been long interested in. I've earlier dubbed it female noir, but I've never really been satisfied with that moniker, so "domestic suspense", coined by mystery maven Sarah Weinman, comes really handy. Weinman writes in her website dedicated to her excellent anthology Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives:

It’s a genre of books published between World War II and the height of the Cold War, written by women primarily about the concerns and fears of women of the day. These novels and stories operate on the ground level, peer into marriages whose hairline fractures will crack wide open, turn ordinary household chores into potential for terror, and transform fears about motherhood into horrifying reality. They deal with class and race, sexism and economic disparity, but they have little need to show off that breadth.

Instead, they turn our most deep-seated worries into narrative gold, delving into the dark side of human behavior that threatens to come out with the dinner dishes, the laundry, or taking care of a child. They are about ordinary, everyday life, and that’s what makes these novels of domestic suspense so frightening. The nerves they hit are really fault lines.

I recently read, due to a book project I've been working, Lionel Shriver's best-selling novel We Need to Talk About Kevin. I saw the film earlier, and I liked both a great deal. They are somewhat different, the film being a condensed version of the slightly too long novel, but very effective nonetheless. I got to thinking that Shriver's novel is a very good example of contemporary domestic suspense: it's about the concerns and fears of women, it operates on the ground level, peers into a marriage whose hairline fractures will crack open, et cetera. You get the drift. The suspense, the horror of the novel comes out with the dinner dishes, the laundry and especially taking care of a child. And this particular child is horrendous.

I won't spoil the book (or the film), there's enough information on it in the web, but even though I'd seen the film earlier, I was very captivated by the novel and its slowly unfolding secrets, to the very end.

The crime fiction issue of the Human Journal

Seems interesting, at least the lengthy interview with Michael Connelly. There's also an article about John P. Marquand's Mr. Moto series. Check it out here!

By the way, I got this link from one of Sarah Weinman's delightfully informative posts on her The Crime Lady e-mail list. Do subscribe to it here!