This Is It!!---Barry's Book Sale

The deadline to order from Barry before he donates his remaining stock is still Saturday, October 26, 2013. Go here to  http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/ and order while you can.  To those outside the U.S.: remember the weight of a package must be under 4 pounds because Barry doesn't want to fiddle with the customs paperwork. He will still sell you more than 4 pounds' worth of books and ship them in lighter packages days apart.


You may or may not know that Barry has been donating 20 percent of his sales to help us each month. On behalf of the family we very much thank Barry and those of you who have bought books from Barry.


Kevin

Barry's Book Sale---TIME IS RUNNING OUT!

Barry has asked me to post the below message immediately.....

You've received this message because you have in the past purchased some of the books I have for sale at http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/, or because you've expressed an interest in them. I'm writing today to let you know that I recently sold my house and will be moving into an apartment next month. Because of significant space limitations in the new place, I won't be able to continue selling books from my collection. Instead, whatever for-sale books are left over, including those I don't have time to scan and add to the lists, will be donated either to a local organization that sends Care packages containing all kinds of items, including books, to U.S. troops stationed overseas, and/or to a local public library. Therefore, if I still have any titles you want, now is the time to let me know.

        I'd love to continue to sell them from the new apartment, but the space constraints make it impossible. As it is, everything I have to take with me is going to consume a great deal of room, and I'm told the storage areas the building provides have dimensions of 3' by 5', so keeping boxes of books there along with everything else I have to hang onto would be impossible. Not to mention that having to root through umpteen cartons of books to find those a buyer requested would be a nightmarish prospect.

        At this point I'm figuring the cutoff date for orders will be October 26th, but depending on how things go in preparing for the move, it could be earlier. I have to play it by ear. I hope to be able to list some titles that aren't already on the lists, but this once again will depend on how the preparations go. Scanning covers, reducing the size of the scans, and posting them and verbal descriptions on the website is very time-consuming.

        As always, this is a first-come, first serve situation, so get your requests in ASAP.

        Thanks for understanding.

Best,

Barry

         

P.S. To those outside the U.S.: remember the weight of a package must be under 4 pounds because I don't want to fill out nine-page customs forms for heavier packages. If you want more than 4 pounds' worth of books, I'll ship them in lighter packages days apart.

More Books For Sale From Barry

Barry is moving and selling off his books. Here are some more scans of various covers of books he has in his personal library for sale. 

Go check it out here and give some books good homes while also making Barry's move a little easier.

More Books For Sale From Barry

I have mentioned before that Barry is selling off his personal library of books as he is getting closer to moving into a smaller place. The below are more books he has for sale in his humor category.

Hist stock changes as things sell so make sure you check back often.

As has been mentioned here before, his prices are lower these days. Barry has added more books having sold a bunch of stuff in recent weeks.

So go here and check it out as he has got some good ones. 

And fittingly, in honor of our joke of a Congress, he has this......

Got Pulp? Barry is selling "Just Pulp"

I have mentioned before that Barry is selling off his personal library of books as he is getting closer to moving into a smaller place.  Tonight he sent me a couple of scans of the covers for a couple of items he has for sale.

Spring 1980

(Makes me feel old as May 1980 I graduated High School)

Summer/Fall 1981

(By this point, if I remember right, I was working for a security guard company where I had a gun and no health insurance.)







  
As has been mentioned here before, his prices are lower these days and he has added more stuff having sold a bunch of stuff in recent weeks. So go here and check it out as he has got some seriously good stuff.

Barry Is Selling Books From His Library

Barry is looking to move and downsize and as part of that he is selling books. Go here and check it out as he has got some seriously good stuff.

FFB Review-- SMALL GAME (1992) by John Blades-- Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books. Patti is taking the week off to rest and recharge so Evan Lewis will be collecting the links and posting them on his blog here. If you are not already reading his blog you should be. So, after you read Barry’s review below of Small Game by John Blades surf on over and take a look. 

SMALL GAME (1992) by John Blades-- Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Scott Ryan is a man besieged. His opponents include coworkers, fellow commuters, neighbors, and—above all—his house. Oh yes, and squirrels. Living in an area the police sometimes treat as if it’s under martial law, having to duck below window level when his commuter train passes through a Red Zone to avoid being shot, his urban dream has become an urban nightmare.

He and his wife Kathy have purchased a fixer-upper in a becoming-gentrified section of their unnamed city. With three small children and the burdens their new home has imposed, and despite Scott’s ascendancy in the market research company he works for, they’re in over their heads. Working on the house consumes the bulk of Scott’s time when he isn’t working. He still manages to fit in some tennis now and then, but reluctantly because the house has become his Circe, luring him inexorably back to it and demanding that he cater to its every need and want.

When he isn’t cheating on Kathy with several different partners, that is.

Scott’s first-person recounting of events seems at first reasonable, if sometimes edged with desperation. But the reader soon realizes that something is wrong, that he’s an utterly unreliable narrator, that he may or may not be seeing things that aren’t there, claiming to do things he really doesn’t.

Some of the neighborhood squirrels have invaded the house and taken up residence in the walls and attic crawl space. They become Scott’s obsession, and his attempts to eradicate them become steadily more frantic—and sometimes dangerous.

John Blades’ short serio-comic novel might well be described as Kafkaesque in its depiction of a man driven to fulfill but overwhelmed by the popular notion of the “American dream.” Crisply written, and peppered with evocative turns of phrase, its episodic structure builds to a memorable finish.


Barry Ergang © 2009, 2013

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang's impossible crime novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, is available at Amazon and Smashwords. Barry is selling books from his extensive personal collection at http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/

Barry's Book Sale Message

BOOK SALE PRICE REDUCTION

As anyone who reads Kevin's blog regularly is aware, for the past couple of years or so I've been selling some of the books I've accumulated over many years because I'm running out of space in my home, and will in the near future be looking to move to even smaller quarters.

Today I spent a few hours at http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/ reducing prices on a majority of the offerings.

More books have just now been added in the non fiction, humor, and pulp categories. 

Thank you.

--Barry Ergang

BOOK SALE ALERT FROM BARRY ERGANG

Barry just sent me this and asked that I put it up on my blog. Barry is putting his house on the market and in coming days I will post information on that as well.

BOOK SALE PRICE REDUCTION

 

As anyone who reads Kevin's blog regularly is aware, for the past couple of years or so I've been selling some of the books I've accumulated over many years because I'm running out of space in my home, and will in the near future be looking to move to even smaller quarters.

 

Today I spent a few hours at http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/ reducing prices on a majority of the offerings.

 

I also recently added two new categories: Humor and Collage Novels. What's a "collage novel," you ask? I don't know either. But visit the site, click on the Collage Novels category, and look at the scans for a visual explanation that surpasses any verbal one I can offer.  

 

Thank you.

 

--Barry Ergang

 

 

Barry's Books For Sale

Barry has books for sale and helps us out a little bit with every purchase you make.  It also helps Barry thin down his personal library. The picture below is just a small sample of what he has to offer.....

Since clicking on the picture above won't take you to Barry's site, please see the picture over to the left and click on that one. Things work with that picture and it takes you to the site.

Both Barry and my family thank you for your interest and support. Things are pretty rough here right now with the food stamps being delayed and everything else so anything at all really helps. Thank you and please spread the word.

Kevin

Barry's Reviews: "The Drifter Detective" (2013) by Garnett Elliott

Awhile back I read this book and really enjoyed it. After I posted my review, I asked publisher David Cranmer if I could forward my copy on to Barry  so that he could read and review it if he so desired. David graciously said yes and that led to the review below.....

"The Drifter Detective" (2013) by Garnett Elliott

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

In Texas just after World War II, investigative jobs in cities like Dallas and Houston are hard to come by for one-man operations because big firms like the Pinkertons and others tend to get them, so ex-G.I.-turned-P.I. Jack Laramie tools around rural areas in search of business, hoping to eventually amass enough money to open an office in San Antonio or Austin. Towing a horse trailer, which he sleeps in, behind his DeSoto coupe, he's on his way to Abilene where there is a "hint of a job" when the car begins to act up. He manages to get it to the small town of Clyde and to a service garage. The proprietor assures him that because it's late afternoon, the car's problem won't be diagnosed until the next day at the earliest.

The man gives Laramie directions to the local saloon, and tells him the widow Talbot runs a boarding house where he might get a room for the night. (Laramie figures it wouldn't be a good idea to sneak back to the garage to sleep in the horse trailer.) Soon after he meets Sheriff Gideon Hawes, who says he can throw some work Laramie's way. The job, he learns the next morning, entails keeping an eye on the estate of a prominent local citizen, Thomas McFaull, who might be engaged in some illicit activities. Laramie agrees to do it, and quickly finds himself entangled with McFaull's promiscuous wife, a surly sheriff's deputy, a railroad worker, and the flirtatious widow Talbot. It isn't long before matters turn dangerous, and Laramie finds himself wondering if things are really as they seem and whether he'll survive so he can get back on the road to Abilene again. 

A neatly-paced, action-packed long short story, "The Drifter Detective" is written in a colorful but not overwrought style and populated with characters the author imparts life to. For fans of hardboiled fiction with pulpy flavor and texture, this one is well worth Amazon's 99¢ asking price.

*****

Barry Ergang ©2013

Derringer Award-winning author Barry Ergang's fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic--see http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/. He has been selling some of the many books he's accumulated over many years, and will contribute 20% of the price of the books to our fund--see http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/. You can find some of his work in e-book editions at Amazon and Smashwords.

Barry's Books For Sale---UPDATE

Karl has had to close his store on Amazon due to his computer crash and other circumstances beyond his control. Sandi is seriously considering shutting down her site on iOffer due to a lack of sales and her own health issues. But, Barry continues to rock on with selling his books. Barry wrote the below update and asked me to post it.

As regular readers of my blog know, my friend Barry Ergang has been selling a lot of the books he's amassed over many years. He periodically adds to his lists of various categories, so check his site--http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/--from time to time to see what's new. He contributes 20% of the price of the books you buy to our fund. He has recently added to the Mystery/Suspense list quite a few of Stephen Marlowe's novels starring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum.

Stuff for Sale

Things are very rough here money wise which is why I updated the donation button over to the left. I had hoped that we would never have to ask for any help again, but, Sandi's new bout with cancer and unpaid medical leave changed everything. Donations are always helpful and very much appreciated, but if you would like to have something physical for your dollars, here are a couple of ideas.

My wife, Sandi, has been making craft projects for years. What first was done as gifts for family and friends has expanded and she has stuff  at http://www.ioffer.com/users/sanditipple She has lowered her prices to the rock bottom to move things.

Back in 2010 l Karl set up a deal at Amazon for selling things under his online moniker of THUNDERCATSNYY. is store sells video games, movies, my old books¸ and other items. The store is at: www.amazon.com/shops/thundercatsnyy and changes almost daily because he adds things to replace stuff he has sold. 

And last, but not least, take a look at Barry Ergang’s books from his personal library for sale at http://barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/ He sells a few and adds a few a couple of times a week so even if you looked before and did not find anything that strikes your fancy, surf over and take a look. Barry is once again contributing 20 percent of what he sells to us to help us out. You can also his fiction at  http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B005GXMF86 and http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cassidy20.

Thank you for the support.

Kevin

Barry's Books For Sale--New Info

Barry Ergang, my friend who also occasionally allows me to post one of his book reviews, has some very neat books for sale. The correct main link is at http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/   and you ought to check it out.

Kevin

FFB Review: "Lucky You" by Carl Hiaasen (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books. Normally the list is over at Patti Abbott’s blog, but again this week, the list is over at Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom Blog. If you have not been over there before, you really should poke around a bit after you read the below review from Barry. 

LUCKY YOU by CARL HIASSEN

“Suspense” is one of those words that, in fiction, we probably take too much for granted as implying apprehension and associate purely with the sinister. We expect to experience suspense when reading a mystery, horror, science fiction or adventure story, but we forget that it can enter into even the homiest of tales--e.g., Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, unlikely as it would seem one of the most suspenseful novels ever. Ultimately, any good story contains an element of suspense or we wouldn’t bother reading it to the end. “Suspense” equals “page-turner,” whether the author is Homer, Dante, Dostoevsky, Raymond Chandler or Stephen King.

Where does suspense enter into comedy? A joke is a perfect example. You listen intently, waiting for the punchline, sometimes anticipating it, sometimes only thinking you’ve anticipated it correctly. If the punchline delivers the goods, you laugh; if it doesn’t, you remain silent--or groan.

Can a mystery or crime novel be both funny and suspenseful? All you have to do to answer that is read one of Jonathan Latimer’s Bill Crane novels, or Craig Rice’s novels and stories about John J. Malone. Even John Dickson Carr (a.k.a. Carter Dickson), best-known for the eerie atmospheres that surrounded his “impossible crime” tales, occasionally injected some wacky humor into otherwise macabre proceedings. Donald E. Westlake, in God Save the Mark, The Hot Rock and many others, has shown that the criminous can be comical.

Which brings us to Carl Hiaasen, who may be as good as comedic suspense writers get, and his book Lucky You. It’s a page-turning good time that’ll have you smiling and occasionally laughing out loud. The only problem Hiaasen elicits is the conflict between wanting to devour his books in one or two sittings versus wanting to savor the hilarity over a period of days.

Lucky You starts when a young black woman, JoLayne Lucks, a veterinary assistant in the small town of Grange, Florida, learns that she’s won the state lottery to the tune of $28 million. With her winnings, she hopes to purchase a tract of land called Simmons Wood before developers do, to prevent it from being transformed into a shopping mall. What she doesn’t know is that there’s another winner, a white supremacist wannabe named Bodean Gazzer, who has enlisted the dubious assistance of the glue-sniffing, aerosol-huffing misfit Onus Dean Gillespie, who goes by the monicker Chub. Bodean intends to steal JoLayne’s ticket, $14 million not being enough to fund his newly founded organization, the White Clarion Aryans.

Tom Krome, formerly an investigative reporter for a New York paper that downsized its staff, and now working as a feature writer for a small Florida paper called The Register, is assigned to interview the reticent JoLayne. When she’s robbed, beaten and humiliated by Bodean and Chub, Krome decides to help her recover her ticket.

That’s how the book starts.

Deliciously complicating matters are various bizarre subplots and characters, among them Mary Andrea Finlay Krome, Tom’s wife, whom he’s been trying to divorce for years and who keeps eluding his attempts to do so; Katie Battenkill, with whom Tom has had a two-week affair; Judge Arthur Battenkill, Katie’s philandering but vindictive husband, who dispatches an inept assistant to burn Tom’s house down; Sinclair, Tom’s managing editor, who has a religious revelation in Grange and begins “speaking in tongues” after he holds a turtle whose shell is painted with the image of one of the Apostles--painted by Demencio, an entrepreneur who preys on the devotions of the ultra-religious by creating and perpetuating roadside miracles--among them a statue of the Virgin Mary that weeps perfume-scented tears; Dominick Amador, the incompetent builder who cashes in on the religious trade by drilling holes in his hands and feet to create “stigmata” Shiner, the convenience store clerk recruited by Bodean and Chub and assigned by Chub to kidnap the love of his life: Amber, the canny waitress at Hooters; and Bernard Squires, investment manager for the Central Midwest Brotherhood of Grouters, Spacklers and Drywallers International, sent to Grange by Richard “The Icepick” Tarbone, who is skimming the union’s pension fund, to purchase under any circumstances the same tract of land JoLayne wants to preserve.

Hiaasen, himself an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald (which makes one wonder what kinds of people he’s encountered in real-life, and whether some of them find their ways into his books), skillfully blends these characters and situations into a plausible sequence of comic and not-so-comic events in a way that will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next. Like Swift, Twain and Thurber, all of whom he’s been compared to, Hiaasen has a satirical take on contemporary life; like Dickens, he has a knack for rendering outlandish characters so as to make them goofily believable. Even his villains, if hardly likable, are fascinating to watch.

If you haven’t read Hiaasen, whose previous novels--Tourist Season, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease (the book is infinitely better than the movie!), and Stormy Weather--are all eminently worth your time, Lucky You is a wonderful place to start. If you have read him but haven’t gotten to this one as yet, you’re in for a laugh-peppered treat rich with subtle social commentary that never hinders the pace.

Still doubt that comedy can be suspenseful? Lucky you: you can dispel the doubts by reading Lucky You.

Barry Ergang ©2008, 2012

Winner of the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s 2007 Derringer Award in the Flash Fiction category, Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of Barry’s fiction is available at Smashwords and Amazon.com, and Amazon also has available a couple of his poetry collections. His personal collection of books for sale are at http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/. 

FFB REVIEW: "THE RED SCARF" (1952) by Gil Brewer---Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Make sure you check out the entire Friday’s Forgotten Books list over at Patti Abbott’s blog at http://pattinase.blogspot.com/

See the update note from Barry at the end of the review....

THE RED SCARF (1952) by Gil Brewer

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Roy Nichols is a man in dire need of money. He and his wife Bess own a motel in St. Petersburg, Florida, a purchase they made because a new highway was supposed to be built that would run past it and virtually assure them business. But now there’s a chance the highway might be routed elsewhere. They’re behind on the repayments to the bank on the loan they took out to buy the place. They’ve been refused an extension as well as an additional loan. Thus, Nichols  has journeyed to Chicago to try to borrow money from his well-to-do-brother Albert, figuring a face-to-face appeal would be more effective than a phone call. “You must learn to hoe your own row,” Albert tells him, “I’d gladly help you if I thought it would really be helping you. But you seem to have forgotten that I warned you not to attempt this foolish motel business.”

Thus, when The Red Scarf opens, Roy Nichols is on his way back to St. Petersburg, having hitched rides from Chicago to Georgia. A trucker drops him off on a Georgia back road on a snowy, blustery night, and he makes his way to a seedy roadhouse populated by its owner and a drunk. He isn’t there long when he hears a car pull up outside and then a man and woman arguing. A moment later they enter, and Nichols gets his first look at the very attractive Vivian Rise and the big but unattractive Noel Teece. They’re arguing because Vivian is determined to get something to eat and Teece is in a hurry to get back on the road. Vivian wins out and orders a plate of barbecue. Teece tells the roadhouse owner he wants to put gas in his car, and he and the owner go outside. Seeing their absence as an opportunity to violently paw Vivian, the drunk begins to do just that—until Nichols intervenes.

Although Teece is opposed to the idea, a grateful Vivian agrees to give Nichols a ride. Despite the poor weather conditions, Teece has a lead foot on the accelerator, and all three of them are drinking liberally from a bottle of whiskey. The inevitable happens:

“The car was down there. Not too far, about fifteen feet, lying crumpled on its side, smashed to junk, in a rocky glen with the water splashing and sparkling in the moonlight.”

Nichols awakens sore, bleeding, and somewhat dazed, to find Vivian frantically searching for a briefcase. As for Teece, “The guy was spread out on the rocks, his feet jammed in the car by the steering wheel. The bright moonlight showed blood all over his face and his suitcoat was gone and his left arm had two elbows. He was more than just dead. He was a mess.”

The briefcase Vivian seeks and soon finds is full of money—a great deal of money that belongs to the mob for which Teece was a courier. Vivian is determined to keep it and get herself out of the country. She tells Nichols she’ll pay him generously if he’ll help her.

And so things really get underway as Nichols is confronted with an existential dilemma.  He knows that aiding Vivian is wrong, but his need for money that will bail him and Bess out of their financial straitjacket overwhelms his scruples. In classic noir manner, he compounds his difficulties via his actions and decisions. At the same time, he tries to protect Bess by not letting her know what he’s mixed up in and feels guilty about having to deceive her. He and Vivian experience some major shocks, one of which is in the form of visits from a contract killer whose suave civility underscores his implacable determination to recover the money. Nichols is also dogged by a police detective named Gant.

Saying any more about the storyline of this brief, fast-paced novel would spoil it for the reader. Its prose style is a lean, straightforward one, and often so intimate that the reader will feel as though Nichols is seated across a table from him recounting what happened. The tension he generates is often palpable.   

The prolific Gil Brewer began his career in the 1950s during the heyday of original paperback novels (see Bill Pronzini’s excellent article about him at Mystery*File: http://www.mysteryfile.com/GBrewer/FW.html), and has come to be regarded as one of the more important authors who emerged in that era. The folks at New Pulp Press who reissued The Red Scarf merit commendation for making the novel, generally considered among Brewer’s best, available once again to the general public. That said, they also merit condemnation for deplorable proofreading—at least in the e-book version I read; I can’t speak to their paperback edition. The e-book is riddled with poor punctuation; typos (“I had to hand onto my hat” appears on the opening page, “And I hadn’t killer her, so I was all right” appears much later); sentence repetitions in the same paragraph (“She came up to the door and stepped out on the porch. She came up to the door and stood there, scratching her fingernails on the screen”); and missing letters (“I kept looking toward the all doorway, the area drew my gaze”). Most of the time what’s meant is obvious, but one sentence contains a word that’s missing letters, and thus the whole thing is unclear: “It was ad, but she had it straight, anyway.” New Pulp Press would do well to make the corrections. If they develop a reputation for sloppy proofreading, they’re likely to alienate a lot of potential buyers.


Barry's Update:

On Friday, August 10, 2012, Kevin posted my review of The Red Scarf by Gil Brewer. Although I praised the novel as an excellent example of the noir fiction that came along in the 1950s and praised the publisher, New Pulp Press, for resurrecting it, I also took them to task for releasing an e-book edition riddled with various types of errors. I contacted them about it and editor Jon Bassoff got back to me promptly, thanking me for pointing out the problem and assuring me it would be corrected.

Today, September 8, 2012, Jon sent me the corrected e-version of the novel. (I don't believe the paperback edition had the same problems.) Therefore, I want to assure everyone who might be interested in reading it--and it's definitely worth reading--that you can disregard reader-reviewer complaints you'll find at Amazon and possibly at other sellers' sites about the errors. The publisher's responsiveness is commendable. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Barry Ergang © 2012

Some of Barry’s fiction is available at Smashwords and Amazon.com, and Amazon also has available a couple of his poetry collections. His personal collection of books for sale are at  http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/.

July 2012 Reads and Reviews

As always, the blog reflects a lot of reading/reviewing and not always mystery books. Along with market news, links to interesting pieces elsewhere, conferences, etc. these are the books that were read and reviewed for July 2012.

“No Remorse” by Ian Walkley

“The Poacher’s Son” by Paul Doiron (FFB Review by Kevin)

“Pigtastic!” by Scott Gordon

“Alphabet All-Stars” by Scott Gordon

“Save Me the Aisle Seat: The Good, the Bad and the Really Bad Movies: Selected Reviews by an Online Film Reviewer” by Alex Diaz-Granados

“Baby Shark’s Showdown at Chigger Flats” by Robert Fate 

“The Marble Orchard” by William F. Nolan (FFB Review by Barry)

“Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen: A Dan Rhodes Mystery” by Bill Crider

“Available Grace: True Short Stories of the Rewards of Intentional Living” by

Marianne Cassell

“Gone Missing” by Linda Castillo

“Sara's Search” by Jan Christensen

“Artie And The Green Eyed Woman: The Artie Crimes” by Jan Christensen (Short Story Review)

“Murder On The Side” by Day Keene (FFB Review by Barry)

“Damage Control: A Jonathan Grave Thriller” by John Gilstrap

While the reviews are always popular and the sample from the anthology I am in was as well, by far and away the most popular piece for the month was Dave Zeltsterman’s follow up piece to his original post “E-books and The Future” that first appeared on September 1, 2010. When his sequel piece appeared on July 12 of this year the site visits exploded. Both pieces are well worth your time and attention.

Kevin

FFB Review: "THE MARBLE ORCHARD" (1996) by William F. Nolan

This week for Friday’s Forgotten Books it is Barry’s turn front and center. The complete list of books is over on Patti Abbott’s blog at http://pattinase.blogspot.com/ While you are there, check out what is going on with Pulp Ink 2 and other things of note.

THE MARBLE ORCHARD (1996) by William F. Nolan

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Best known as the author of the science fiction novel Logan’s Run and the screenplay for the film adaptation of same, William F. Nolan is a versatile writer who has worked in several fiction genres and who has written a number of non-fiction works as well. In 1985 he wrote The Black Mask Boys, a book highlighting the stories of eight important writers who helped make Black Mask the most renowned detective pulp magazine of them all. Each story was prefaced with a biographical piece about its author. Nine years later he published The Black Mask Murders, the first novel in a trilogy that stars “The Black Mask Boys”: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner. All three appear in every book, but each is narrated in the first-person by a different writer: The Black Mask Murders by Hammett, Sharks Never Sleep by Gardner, and The Marble Orchard, under consideration here, by Chandler.

The year is 1936, and Raymond Chandler and his wife Cissy are living in the Los Angeles area. Chandler continues to learn and hone his writing craft by turning out stories for Black Mask, the magazine that has also been a home to stories by his friends Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner.

When Chandler answers a phone call from a homicide lieutenant requesting that Cissy come to the morgue to identify a body, he asks who the dead man is and learns it’s Julian Pascal, Cissy’s former husband. His body was found in a Chinese cemetery, and his death appears to have been a ritual suicide. A stunned Chandler tells the detective that he’ll come to the morgue, that he and Julian were friends. Once he confirms the dead man’s identity, Chandler dreads having to tell Cissy. When he breaks the news to her, she vehemently insists that Julian would never kill himself and urges Chandler to look into the matter to find out what really happened.

A mysterious woman in a white limousine appears at Julian’s funeral, a woman later identified as Carmilla Blastok, a now-retired actress whose claim to fame is a series of films that began with The Blood Countess, in which she portrayed a vampire, “a kind of female Lugosi,” as Hammett describes her. She retired after David DuPlaine, the director of all her hit films, was shot to death, ostensibly by a burglar he caught in the act of robbing his house. When Chandler meets with her, he learns she barely knew Julian Pascal, though the latter composed the scores for a couple of her films. She attended his funeral, she tells him, because she hoped to see her much younger sister Elina there. She suspects that Elina once had an inappropriate relationship with Julian.

Elina, who had had a brief acting career herself, has been estranged from Carmilla for three years, having taken up with an abusive former stage actor named Merv Enright. Carmilla begs Chandler to find her sister, just so she can know if the girl is alive and well. When he reminds her that he’s a writer, not a detective, she offers to pay him a thousand dollars, money he can sorely use. Thinking that Elina might be able to enlighten him about Julian and thereby enable him to definitively resolve the question of Julian’s death, he accepts. 

And so, enlisting when necessary the assistance of his friends Hammett and Gardner, Chandler’s adventure at “playing detective” begins, plunging him into some situations more appropriate to his fictional sleuths than to a middle-aged former oil company executive turned pulp writer. One of those situations is reminiscent of a similar one in his novel Farewell, My Lovely, as William F. Nolan no doubt playfully intended readers to believe Chandler used his “real life” experience as the basis for Philip Marlowe’s fictional one several years later.  

As entertaining a whodunit as The Marble Orchard is, the detective-story portion feels like one of novelette length, the rest a lot of filler. Thus the reader is given scenes involving real-life personalities including William Randolph Hearst, Orson Welles, and Shirley Temple, among others—scenes that do nothing to advance the plot but which serve to fix the story in a particular place and era. The reader is given historical information about a number of locales within the greater Los Angeles area. And there is a secondary story thread involving an African-American man and woman that is clearly meant to depict the racial attitudes of the period but which is wholly irrelevant to the principal plotline. Fortunately, Nolan is a skillful writer with a smart sense of pace, so the filler is equally entertaining and doesn’t disrupt the flow.

Since I first discovered him when I was in my early teens, Raymond Chandler has always been one of my literary heroes. (The Long Goodbye is my all-time-favorite novel.) So enamored of his style was I that, back then, when writing a story, I’d often ask myself, “How would Chandler handle this scene, or this section of narrative, or this exchange of dialogue?” Ultimately I realized that developing my own style and voice, for better or worse, was preferable to imitating another’s. Playing Robert Louis Stevenson’s “sedulous ape” will only get you so far; eventually you have to (and should want to) come into your own. To truly write like someone else requires one to be someone else. 

Chandler has had plenty of imitators. I personally think his style was among the most influential of  the 20th Century and might very well still be one. Whether they intended to imitate him some of those writers might dispute, but the influence is indisputably there. Three who carried it off well were Howard Browne writing as John Evans (incidentally the name of one of Chandler’s pre-Marlowe pulp-magazine detectives) in his Paul Pine mysteries; Roy Huggins in The Double Take; and Keith Laumer in his purposed homage, Deadfall.   

As a former editor of a couple of mystery magazines, one of my biggest pet peeves was the story submission that deliberately tried to imitate Chandler’s—or anyone else’s—distinctive style. Unless the author was writing an obvious spoof or one-time tribute, he or she was virtually guaranteed a rejection. I wanted to publish stories in the authors’ own unique styles.

To his credit—and he touches on the matter in an afterword—Nolan, save for maybe three similes, does not write like Chandler writing a Philip Marlowe novel. That’s because Nolan is not writing a Marlowe novel; he’s writing what is intended as a report from Raymond Chandler about events in which he personally played a role.

All things considered, then, The Marble Orchard is a good, if unexceptional, detective story embedded in a lot of entertaining and informative filler, and populated with a variety of colorful characters.

*****

Postscript: In real life, Chandler and Hammett met exactly once, at a dinner for Black Mask writers. In his biography of Chandler, Tom Hiney writes that Gardner and Chandler were friends, but outside of some correspondence they exchanged, I’ve never read anything that indicates they actually spent time in each other’s presence.

Barry Ergang © 2012

The Marble Orchard is one of the many books from his personal collection Barry Ergang has for sale at http://www.barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/. He’ll contribute 20% of the price of the books to our fund, so please have a look at his lists. Some of his fiction is available at Smashwords and Amazon.com, and Amazon also has available a couple of his poetry collections.