Friday's Forgotten Book: Tales of Suspense audio book

I bought this for one euro from the local recycling center. It had once belonged to a small town library in the Eastern Finland - and I really don't know why it was purchased there in the first place! I'd guess no one had ever loaned it.

There are two C-cassettes (and yes, I still have a C-cassette player) and a leaflet containing the four stories read aloud in the cassettes: Rob Kantner: "The Last Day", Nancy C. Swoboda: "Roomer Has It", Chet Williamson: "The Undertaker's Wedding" and Pauline C. Smith: "The Dog". The readers are William Hootkins and Barbara Rosenblat. The year is 1986.

There's just one problem: I don't usually have time to listen any audio books, so I guess I'll just read the stories.

More Forgotten Books here.

Fanny Ellsworth and the new Black Mask

Keith Alan Deutsch has some very interesting points to make about the evolution of hardboiled fiction and Fanny Ellsworth's editorship at Black Mask.

Wednesday's Overlooked Film: Martha, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

I meant originally to do this post on Tuesday and link it to Todd Mason's blog meme about Overlooked Films, but I simply didn't have enough time on my hands. Seems like there's a continual shortage of it, while I try to make a living.

Martha (1974) was an almost forgotten film before it was resurrected in 1994. There had been some controversy about the copyrights, since the made-for-TV film is based on Cornell Woolrich's novel (the title of which I actually don't know) and they probably forgot to pay the due sum to Woolrich's estate. Lucky the film is still available, as it is a gem. It's neo-noir in its purest form, universe where you can't escape from and you don't probably even want to. It's a tale of a possibly sadomasochistic love-hate relationship between a husband (played by sleazy, but respectable Karlheinz Boehm, who was very good in Michael Powell's Peeping Tom 14 years earlier) and a wife. The wife (played by not very beautiful Margit Carstensen, who fits her role perfectly) lets the man humiliate her in every possible moment and dictate her lifestyle. This is vivisection of bourgeoisie life.

Martha could've been directed by Helmut Newton, since the emphasis is on fetish: all the tight skirts and high heels and black stockings... and the scene in which Boehm lets his wife burn in the sun and then attacks her with a vehemence is strangely and cruelly erotic. This is noir at its cruellest and coollest, filmed in bright daylight.

Robert Crais: The First Rule

I hadn't read any of Robert Crais's private eye novels with Elvis Cole, but I had heard good things about them, so I was curious when The First Rule from 2010 was translated in Finnish just this month. It stars Joe Pike, who was first Elvis Cole's dangerous sidekick buddy, but has now his own series of books. He's a former mercenary and he's also as tough as they come.

The First Rule is about Pike investigating the killings of his former colleague and friend and his family. It seems soon that there are bigger things at stake and the clues lead to the Eastern European mafia. Crais moves the story along smoothly, which is always an asset, when you're talking about a book like this. This kind of stuff is almost comfort reading for me. Pike is violent, but only when it's necessary. He's a vigilante, but he doesn't go about babbling about it, which makes the ideology easier to stomach and the character more believable. There are some moments, where I would've cut down the wordage, but all in all this a compact book, gripping and fast to read.

This is by no means an entry for the Friday's Forgotten Books meme, but take a look at the other entries here.

Ayn Rand

"I hope you don't have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky."
- Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being

Friday's Forgotten Book: Peter Cheyney's Dangerous Curves

I have never read much Peter Cheyney, largely because his reputation has been so bad. I started to read an old paperback edition of his Slim Callaghan novels, Dangerous Curves from 1939. I'm not sure whether I'll read more by Cheyney, but seems like I have to, since I want to do my book on British crime writers one of these days... Give me a Hank Janson by Stephen Frances any day instead!

Cheyney's dialogue is terrible pseudo-tough wisecracking and I've rarely seen such stupid chauvinism in a book. There's some toughness to Callaghan, a London PI, but I must admit he's not a very interesting character. The plotline is confusing to follow - and it's also not very interesting! There's no life to Cheyney's characters.

I was very pleased to receive a Joe Pike novel The First Rule by Robert Crais in the mail today. I'll start reading it tonight and toss Cheyney gladly aside.

But do take a look at the Cheyney cover gallery at Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog here. Dangerous Curves was published in Finnish as Kuoleman huvipursi (The Yacht of Death or some such) in 1957. See photo. I don't know the illustrator.

More Forgotten Books here.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: The Way You Wanted Me

Teuvo Tulio is one of the most revered of the Finnish film directors, but his oeuvre is a mixed bag. Even in his best films there's an element of high camp, with crazy plotlines, wild characters, hazy motifs and incoherent editing. There's still a very strong vision of a human being controlled by his/her lust. Tulio made some of his best films during the expressionist-styled film noir era, i.e. in the fourties and the fifties, and it's fitting his films could be labelled film noirs. It's interesting to note that many of his films deal with sadomasochism and they were written by a woman - Regina Linnanheimo, who also acted in the films she wrote. And she could be a sultry baby! 

Such is the case with Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit (The Way You Wanted Me, 1952), a story of an innocent girl who makes an illicit child and tries to make a living in a big city. The simple story is done with some visual verve and some very nice noirish sets and scenes, but the ending is too abrupt. Here's a better text about the film in English, and this link leads you to the Berkeley University film screening of Tulio's films.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog here.

Joe Kubert

Here's a nice tribute to the comics giant Joe Kubert who just passed away.

Pulp crime writer Charles Beckman rescued!

This is simply wonderful! Charles Beckman who wrote for the crime pulps and digests and some paperbacks  is going to do a collection of his old stories. See discussion here at James Reasoner's blog!

Friday's Forgotten Book: John Creasey: Gideon's Risk

I haven't had time to finish this book, but here goes nevertheless.

John Creasey has been one of the most prolific writers in the world, but there are only few of his books translated in Finnish - his series on the Superintendent Gideon made its way in Finnish only twice. I believe it has something to do with the fact that the books came out of nowhere and the publisher didn't allow the readers enough time to get acquainted with the series and all the characters. It's interesting to note however that many aspects of the police procedural genre we usually associate with TV series like Hill Street Blues and The Wire and writers like Joseph Wambaugh were already fully used by a Briton like Creasey. There is the sympathetic and determined main character Gideon, there are lots of his colleagues and employees (what's the right word here?), there are intertwined plotlines, there are many subplots, there is the sociological perspective to all this. There's also the British class society very visibly in sight, many of Creasey's - or Gideon's - sociological notions lean on patronizing.

I would tend to say this is a bit outdated, but interesting nevertheless. Gideon ottaa riskin (Gideon's Risk, 1960) came out in Finnish in 1965. More Forgotten Books at Todd Mason's blog here.

The Return of Philip Marlowe - once again!

What do you think of this bit of news? I remember someone saying Banville's crime novels as Benjamin Black are poor, but I've never read any of them - or anything by Banville, for that matter. Doesn't he write reviews of crime literature for some British newspaper?

Scottish police procedural writer Bill Knox

In my on-going effort to write a book on British paperbackers, I read my first Bill Knox. Now, Know is pretty forgotten these days and on him I seem to rely solely on his Wikipedia entry which is a bit skimpy, but seems reliable. Take a look here. 

I read his first novel, Deadline for a Dream, that was published in 1957 and translated in Finnish five years later as Ei armoa unille (which is a misleading title). In the book Knox uses his knowledge about working as a journalist as the main character in the novel - beside the leading cops, of course - is a young journalist who's fallen in love with a good-looking woman who wants nothing but the best. The young writer decides he'll rob the money car. There's something in the set-up that doesn't ring true to me, though Knox uses it to a good effect in the scenes in which the journalist guy does the story on the robbery and interviews the cops. The climax in the end is exciting, but leaves a bitter aftertaste when Knox's police heroes say that the guy was really a victim, the actual criminal was the babe who just wanted more money and furs and fancy restaurants. 

Knox seems a reliable police procedural writer and I'll be reading more of him with some interest. I'm in the middle of John Creasey's Gideon's Risk (surprisingly the only Creasey novel translated in Finnish!) and see the tradition of the police procedural genre in England. There's also Leonard Gribble. (He and Creasey also dabbled in westerns, by the way, Creasey wrote as William K. Reilly and Gribble as Stetson Cody. Anyone read those?) Any other names you care to mention? 

Oh, here's someone writing about the five translated Knoxes in Finnish. I don't know the illustrator of the Finnish paperback edition, but it's a scene right in the beginning of the book. 

Book haul

I'm not huge on science fiction, but I like to read books in that genre once in a while (hell, I've even written a book in that genre!). I seem to be most interested in the noirish American science fiction of the fourties, fifties and sixties and would happily say that Philip K. Dick and Alfred Bester are my two favourite SF writers. Here's a picture of the books I found at a new thrift store here in Turku, Finland (Pansio, to be exact). There were at least two boxes of old SF paperbacks for euro a piece. I snatched these, but will probably go back for more. The Elmore Leonard doesn't really belong there with the other books, but it could be the first book I'll be reading of these.

Glenn Bowman at Thrilling Detective

After reading two or three Hartley Howard's Glenn Bowman novels, I noticed that Thrilling Detective didn't have an entry on him. I sent Kevin Burton Smith (the proprietor of Thrilling Detective) a skeleton entry, which he expanded almost into an article! Here it is, if you want to take a look. There are some errors in the links, but I sent Kevin another note saying about them.

(And thanks, I've just gotten back from the last trip of this Summer and plan to post something in the near future.)

Friday's Forgotten Book: Hartley Howard Double Bill

Okay, let's be honest about this: I haven't finished these two novels I'm about to introduce. I've been away and travelling and one of the books was forgotten behind and when I was able to get back to it, I couldn't anymore remember what had been going on. The other one then didn't simply feel rewarding enough.

Then why am I writing about these books? Because I'd really like to get my book on British crime paperbackers done. Hartley Howard's books were originally published in hardcover in England, but all of them were paperback in Finnish translation. They also have something of a paperbackish feel to them: Hartley Howard's private eye hero Glenn Bowman feels a mix between Mike Hammer and Lew Archer. The earlier of the two books, A Hearse for Cinderella (1956, translated as Kaikki menetettävänä/Everything to Lose; see the photo, illustrated by Bertil Hegland), starts like Kiss Me Deadly: Glenn Bowman is driving in his car late at night and almost runs over a young woman dressed only in an overcoat. Bowman takes the girl to the doctor to find out the girl escapes the minute he's taking the doctor to see her. Escapes - or is kidnapped. The plot is a bit too convoluted to be fluently followed, but there is big stuff at stake here.

Epitaph for Joanna, published much later (1972), reminds me more of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer books and is more serious in tone. Bowman comes across as a really sad type, being all the time all alone without any friends - which was typical to the private eyes of the bygone days. Did Archer or Philip Marlowe ever have any friends? The same goes for Bowman as well. The plot also reminds me of Ross Macdonald, with the stuff from the past affecting the present-day lives of the book's characters. In this book, the stuff from the past is the accidental death of a young woman called Joanna a decade earlier.

The biggest problem with Howard's books is that his scenes are a bit too long and stilted. The melancholy of Glenn Bowman is too meticulously told, the reader - at least I am - is too easily bored with Bowman's whinings. Less would do. The plots are over-complicated to be at times so thin. The books might read better in the original English, I read these in Finnish translation and the old Finnish paperback translations are not usually very good. But nevertheless I'm going to give Hartley Howard another shot or two.


More Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog here. 

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Maniac (1980)

This slasher flick by William Lustig is known for its outrageous violence and utter splatter, and it has been banned i.e. in Finland. Now it's been released on DVD in here as well - there are two discs, the other containing the uncut version. I watched the uncut version earlier today and wrote a three-star review of it.

There's a short introduction by Drive and Pusher director Nicolas Winding Refn in the beginning of the film. Refn says that Maniac is a combination of an European art film and a splatter film. He may well be right, as the film is purposefully slow and brooding, with Joe Spinell's confused monologue on top of everything else. The slow pace gives the film a detached, yet somehow intimate feeling. There are also no clear explanations as to why Spinell's character, Frank Zito, is killing all these women and scalping them. There are one or two scenes about it, but that's about it.

The combination of the slow pace and extremely brutal killings is an uneasy one, and I think John McNaughton did it better with his Henry: The Portrait of a Serial Killer, just six years later, but Maniac is still worth seeing, if you can stand it. There are some implausibilities, though. I didn't buy that a maniac like Frank Zito could pull out the artist act and almost seduce the woman photographer like he does in the film.

More Overlooked Movies at Todd Mason's blog.

Harry Patterson aka Jack Higgins: Comes the Dark Stranger

We were on a trip for over a week and my reading time was pretty limited, but I still managed to read a few books. One of them was an early Jack Higgins title under his real name Harry Patterson, called Comes the Dark Stranger (1962). It's a fast-moving thriller about a man who got a bullet in the head in the Korean war and comes back to England to find the man who was guilty of getting the squadron leader killed. There are lots of noirish elements throughout the book, such as the protagonist's foreboding doom. There's also stuff that's a bit reminiscent of Condon's and Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. This is a fast and fluent read, but not very original or ground-breaking. Published in Finland in 1987 under the title Yön varjot (The Shadows of Night). I'm not sure what edition is in the picture, but it sure ain't the first edition.

The Returners: Matt Helm being reissued!

I just learned today that Donald Hamilton's dark and brutal spy series with Matt Helm is going to be reprinted, starting from 2013. See for some details here. Added are two coming covers, with thanks to Bruce Grossman who blogs at Bookgasm. I'll also quote Bruce who said that "Matt Helm would make James Bond cry".

Ridley Scott: Prometheus

I've always liked the Alien movies and have a soft spot in my heart for almost each one of them. There's much to like even in David Fincher's Alien3 and almost in Alien Resurrection as well (don't mention the Alien Vs. Predator movies here). I was almost excited to see Ridley Scott's Prometheus, though I must admit I haven't particularly cared for anything Scott has done since, with the possible exception of Thelma and Louise. (I don't actually much care for Blade Runner either, but to be able to say something precise about it, I'd have to see it again.) Especially Gladiator left me utterly cold.

Prometheus has an intriguing, if over-developed and over-familiar premise (von Däniken, anyone?). I liked the way the film seemed to say: there's no point thinking about whether your God likes you, you have to go on living nevertheless. But the film also has lots of meaningless subplots and too many characters that are not developed enough. When you think "now this is finally getting somewhere", the film ends. (And the ending is particularly stupid.) There's still some nice tension-building throughout and some spectacular scenes. I liked the way this is an Alien film without actually having any Aliens (save the end).

Friday's Forgotten Book: Hartley Howard: Put Out That Star

There's not much info on Hartley Howard, real name Horace Ognall, in the web. No one seems to be talking about his books. Still he was a popular crime writer in England from the fifties to the seventies, specializing in hardboiled private eye tales that are so popular in some blog circles. Well, seems like Howard wasn't as good as this game as some of the better known names in the field.

I've started slowly getting back to my book project on British paperback crime writers and been reading some Hartley Howard. I've read one or two of his novels earlier, now I read one of his novels under the pseudonym Harry Carmichael, called Put Out That Star from 1957. It stars the insurance detective John Piper, one of Howard's series characters. In Put Out That Star Piper gets to solve the mystery of a disappearing starlet. This is almost a locked-room mystery, but not quite. The first half of the book is set almost like a play and there's lots and lots of talk. This is pretty far from Howard's better-known Glenn Bowman series in which the hero is a bit like Mike Hammer. They are slow-moving too, though, so I guess this is typical to Howard's output.

Put Out That Star is not a bad book, but it's not very good either. It's safe to say it's mediocre. Howard's career with over 90 novels was so long though he shouldn't have to be so forgotten. I'll be reading more of his work during the coming weeks and months and will be posting about it.

Put Out That Star was published in Finnish under the title Huoneisto n:o 15 in 1959, in the publishing house Gummerus's Salama (= Lightning) series of paperback novels.

More Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog here.