Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: Reviewed by Jeanne I’d had this book recommended to me several times but hadn’t gotten around to reading it.   When I ended up w...

The Rap Sheet: Giving Bloggers the Credit They’re Due

Honored and very appreciative of making this list. It means a lot. Especially at a time where I am again questioning whether or not to keep this thing going. 

The Rap Sheet: Giving Bloggers the Credit They’re Due

FFB Review: "FAST ONE" by Paul Cain (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books hosted by Patti Abbott here. Barry is back today with his review of FAST ONE by Paul Cain.

FAST ONE (1933) by Paul Cain
reviewed by Barry Ergang

I can enthusiastically recommend Fast One to any reader who loves the hardboiled school—especially from the pulp era—but don’t ask me for a detailed plot summary. That’s next to impossible. Suffice it to say that a tough character named Gerry Kells, who is visiting L.A. from New York and who seems to know every major racket boss in southern California, is in the first chapter framed for a murder he didn’t commit, and who spends the remainder of the book either dodging or deliberately confronting cops and hoods with words, fists, and firearms. Along the way he considers trying to take over L.A.‘s rackets himself.

It’s an aptly titled book because the story roars along at a hectic pace. The pace is aided in no small measure by Cain's staccato prose style, which almost redefines “lean and mean.” But the pace and the story’s complexity are the book’s undoing because there is no characterization for readers to relate to. Most of the players—including the principal female—are referred to only by their last names. The absence of character definition reduces them to mere names on the page. It’s frequently an effort trying to recall from one chapter to another who's who and who's done what to whom.

Fast One has long been hailed as the ne plus ultra of hardboiled gangster tales by the likes of Bill Pronzini, E.R. Hagemann, and Raymond Chandler. David A. Bowman, in his introductory essay to the 1987 Black Lizard edition I have, writes: “Cain took the hardboiled style as far as anyone would want to. Fast One is the Antarctica of hardboiled writing. There is nowhere else to go.”

Forget about any insights into the human condition or any other sorts of profound meanings. Just buckle up and go along on the wild ride.

For more on this novel or the Golden Age of Detection follow the link to the GA Detection wiki. http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/Fast-One

Barry Ergang © 2007, 2014

Former Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and First Senior Editor of Mysterical-E, Derringer winner Barry Ergang's work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. His website is http://writetrack.yolasite.com/.

Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Rope by Nevada Barr

 The reviewer here liked it. My take was quite the opposite and can be found here.

Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Rope by Nevada Barr: Reviewed by Kristin Anna Pigeon is a national park ranger who Nevada Barr has been writing about since 1993, beginning with Track of...

Gumshoe Review Update

As posted elsewhere earlier today....

Gumshoe Review February 2014 now Online @
http://www.gumshoereview.com


This month's Book Reviews:

The Breakfast Club Murder by Camilla T. Crespi
Concealed in Death by J.D. Robb
Dead Man's Time (Detective Superintendent Roy Grace) by Peter James
Dying For Attention by James T. Shannon
The Funeral Owl (A Philip Dryden Mystery) by Jim Kelly
The Harlot's Tale (Midwife's Mystery) by Samuel Thomas
Shoot the Woman First (Crissa Stone) by Wallace Stroby
Southern Heat by David Burnsworth
They Danced By The Light Of The Moon by Tempa Pagel
Town in a Strawberry Swirl (Candy Holliday) by B.B. Haywood
Whispering Death by Garry Disher

-- Gayle Surrette, Editor@gumshoereview.com
http://gumshoereview.com
Shipping Address:
  Gayle Surrette/Gumshoe Review
  16440 Baden Westwood Road
  Brandywine, MD 20613
Email: davinci@amperzen.com
Blog: http://www.amperzen.com 

The List-- November 2013 Reads and Reviews

In addition to everything else on the blog are the reviews. Below is the complete list of the “November 2013 Reads and Reviews.” My massive thanks to talented Texas authors Earl Staggs and Caroline Clemmons for their contributions this month as well as the continuing contributions from Patrick Ohl.

Monsters I Know by Peter W. Collier

The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald (FFB Review--Patrick Ohl)

The Killer Wore Cranberry: Room For Thirds Editor: J. Alan Hartman

The Rules by Mark Troy (Earl Staggs)

Mind Prison: A Short Story by Dave Zeltserman

One Thousand Dollars A Word by Lawrence Block

When The Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block (FFB Review)

Thuglit 8 Edited by Todd Robinson

The Shamus Sampler Edited by Jochem Vandersteen

Out Of the Night by Geri Foster (Caroline Clemmons)

Genre Shotgun: A Collection Of Short Fiction by Terry W. Ervin II

On Dangerous Ground: Stories Of Western Noir  Edited by Ed Gorman, Dave Zeltserman, and Martin H. Greenberg (FFB Review)

Crochet One-Skein Wonders: 101 Projects From Crocheters Around The World Edited by Judith Durant & Edie Eckman

The Rising of the Moon by Gladys Micthell (FFB Review--Patrick Ohl)

Blade of Dishonor by Thomas Pluck

Thank you for your support of the blog.  I am glad to keep this going as long as I can.

Kevin

Shop Amazon - Cyber Monday Deals Week

What Sells E-Books Today?

That is the question a lot of self published authors, including myself, are asking. We know the gold rush is over and now it is harder than ever to move our books. Dave Zeltserman has a few thoughts here in a piece well worth reading.

One thing really jumped out at me since I do so many reviews. He writes:

"Online book reviews: Web reviews seldom sell more than a couple of books--print or ebook the same."

While I don't think it is the responsibility of a reviewer to sell books (or stop somebody from buying a book either) it is rather depressing to have what amounts to be so little impact.

FFB Review: "Strangers On A Train" by Patricia Highsmith

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books hosted by Patti Abbott here. Last week in this spot there was a double take review on The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars by Patrick and Barry. With Patti declaring this Patricia Highsmith day for FFB, Patrick offered the below review. Clearly, Patrick is far less than impressed…

Strangers on a Train was Patricia Highsmith’s first published novel, and it was a smash hit. So big, in fact, that a film adaptation was quickly made by the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. And the first script was written by Raymond Chandler – although venom-filled “creative differences” ended up getting Chandler dismissed from the project. The final product is one of Hitchcock’s finest thrillers. But how does the novel compare?

Fans of the film are warned that the book is very, very different from the film. I suspect that many of the differences arose thanks to the Hollywood censors, but if that was the case I can only say “Thank God!” In the past, I’ve remarked that Hitchcock could take the silliest stories and turn them into terrific thrillers. Sadly, Strangers on a Train is one of those silly stories, and I have no idea why it has such a high reputation.

Story first: Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno meet on a train. Guy is a promising young architect who is on his way to get a divorce from his wife, who is pregnant with another man’s child. Bruno, meanwhile, is very busy doing nothing whatsoever, and he tells Guy about his father, who controls Bruno’s purse strings and keeps him on a tight leash. Bruno tells Guy that he has an idea for a perfect murder: they will swap murders. There’s no reason to suppose that Guy and Bruno know each other, so there’s no way their murders will be connected. Guy doesn’t take Bruno seriously and is only too glad to leave the train, but Bruno is fascinated with Guy. So Bruno decides to grant Guy a twisted favour: he hunts down Guy’s wife Miriam and murders her at an amusement park.

So far so good. Fortunately for Guy, he has a sturdy alibi, and the police are left puzzled. Guy suspects that Bruno may have had something to do with Miriam’s death, but he doesn’t want to find out. Then, Bruno gets in touch with Guy, admits he’s responsible, and tells Guy it’s his turn to uphold his side of the bargain. Guy refuses. And so Bruno insinuates himself into Guy's life, planning out his father’s death and hounding the architect until finally Guy breaks down and commits the murder.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is where the train is derailed. From this point on, the track lead towards insanity. I’m afraid that I simply have no sympathy for spineless, cowardly idiots, and that’s what we have in this novel. Guy Haines is, to use a childish term, a sissy. Here the moron gets letters from Bruno—handwritten, presumably signed letters, which probably have fingerprints all over the place!!!—which map out the proposed murder, tell Guy what to do, give tips on how to escape the murder scene, etc. Bruno even sends him a gun!!! And what does our hero do, ladies and gentlemen? Surely he would call the police, for presumably, coercion into murder was illegal in the 1950s, even if there were no laws against stalkers? Hell, no! He does the only reasonable thing: destroy the evidence!

No question of it: Guy Haines wins the Darwin Award for 1950. The entire novel is a situation of Guy’s own making. You can make the argument that it makes for a compelling character study, an allegorical novel of the good and evil within each man. I make the argument that Guy is a moron whose own stupidity is his undoing. Here he is with physical proof that Bruno has killed his wife and is trying to get him to commit a murder—he’s in the position of strength! But he destroys the evidence and then whines about how his guilt haunts him. In the Hitchcock film, Guy had a reason for being frightened of Bruno, who threatened to frame Guy by placing false evidence at the crime scene. Furthermore, he left no leverage that Guy might have used against him. The movie Guy is a likeable hero, caught in a perilous situation. The book Guy? I say he can go straight to hell.

And it’s a shame too, because the book does start out quite well. Bruno never makes a good villain — he sounds like a snivelling twelve-year old momma’s boy and I desperately wanted to slap him — but the situation is original and at first quite compelling. Guy ruins everything, but he doesn’t do it singlehanded. In fact, I say he couldn’t have done it without Bruno. Bruno commits the greatest sin a character can commit: he’s annoying.

In the Hitchcock film, Bruno at first seems to be a charming fellow, and his proposed murder scheme sounds like a joke. That’s how Guy and the audience choose to take it at first, and that makes the murder shocking. But in the novel, Bruno is an obvious psychopath—you can spot his insanity at twenty paces. He’s never charming—he’s an annoying little brat. You have no idea why Guy would have a conversation with him in the first place. Not even Guy understands it, although he’s the one who follows Bruno to his compartment in the first place, leading to the novel’s events! When Bruno demands that Guy commit his murder, it isn’t the demand of a dangerous murderer but the petulant tantrum of a spoiled child. I had a hard time finding the suspense that is supposed to permeate this novel.

And the book, incidentally, drags on and on and on!!! The pace is snail-like and things get extremely boring. After the two murders are committed, you simply have no idea why Guy and Bruno would keep seeing each other. No, wait—if they didn’t see each other you couldn’t have any obvious SYMBOLISM!!! The entire novel feels like the author is trying to write Literature with a capital L, but she doesn’t succeed in the slightest. There isn’t a shred of subtlety to be found in this novel—the author has to explain every instance of blatantly-obvious symbolism to you instead of letting you draw your own conclusions. I give you this piece of sparkling, inspired writing:

“Guy felt a boyish, holiday delight in having Bob with him. Bob symbolized Canada and the work there, the project in which Guy felt he had entered another vaster chamber of himself where Bruno could not follow.”

But wait – there’s more! I sure hope you like twisted psycho-sexual character studies! Because in this book, Bruno’s fascination with Guy is given a very unsubtle homoerotic context. This made me uneasy because of its possessive and obsessive nature. But it didn’t make me sympathise with Guy— I stopped rooting for him at page 101. Instead, Strangers on a Train became a nasty story about nasty characters being nasty to each other for no reason other than “the plot says so”. Oh, and Bruno? Not only is he an obsessive homosexual with clear psychological issues, he’s also in love with his mother. (How the hell does that work???)

I didn’t like either of the two male leads, and nobody else is worth talking about. Miriam is a manipulative little pig, an empty-headed bimbo who appears for maybe fifteen pages and makes you want to strangle her for 14 pages before Bruno does it for you on the 15th. Bruno’s father is just there, although the book’s blatantly obvious symbolism is sure to tell you that that’s the whole point. Bruno’s mother is also just there, except because Bruno is in love with her, it makes you want to run away screaming whenever she appears. There’s nothing to distinguish her—she’s another moron who can’t tell that her son is an obvious psychopath. Finally, there’s the love of Guy’s life, Anne… who again, is just there and does nothing! Only an idiot could be this oblivious: but that doesn’t surprise me.

Patricia Highsmith was not a happy person, and it shows in this book. Many people admire her writing, but it personally made me shiver with revulsion. The author comes across as a very miserable, cynical, and unpleasant person, i.e. precisely the kind of person I would avoid in real life. The writing gives you unique insight into the mind of such an unpleasant individual, but for me it was not even remotely interesting, just a nasty experience I wished to put behind me. Briefly put, instead of making me interested in her characters, Highsmith made me want to get them all in a secluded alleyway and open fire on them with a tommy gun.

There’s only one way to sum up my thoughts on Strangers on a Train and Patricia Highsmith in general. In his work Bloody Murder, Julian Symons praises Patricia Highsmith as “the most important crime novelist at present in practice”, who takes a fascinating central idea and “in Highsmith’s hands they are starting points for finely subtle characters studies”. However, Symons also says that she “is an acquired taste, which means a taste that some never acquire”. He goes on to tell readers this story:

When I was reviewing crime fiction regularly, Victor Gollancz used to write to me before going on holiday asking me to recommend the best books of the year published by other firms than his own. … He then bought these books and took them away with him. At my insistence he bought one year The Two Faces of January, which he disliked intensely. To his letter in the following year he added a postscript: ‘Please – no Patricia Highsmith.’

Strangers on a Train is a massive miscalculation which I thoroughly hated, although the beginning is quite strong. It’s a pretentious, annoying little book which is convinced that it is being Real Literature. The characters are either bland or nasty, and Bruno’s twisted psychology and sexuality is seriously alarming. It’s poorly written and full of obvious SYMBOLISM!!! It gives you unique insight into the mind of an author you would probably avoid in real life. And, most annoying of all, the entire book is unnecessary. It’s a situation fabricated by one character being a complete moron. You can perhaps argue that makes the whole thing so much more fascinating, but I concur with Victor Gollancz.

Patrick Ohl ©2013

The nineteen-year-old Patrick Ohl continues to plot to take over the world when he isn’t writing reviews of books he reads on his blog, At the Scene of the Crime. In his spare time he conducts genetic experiments in his top-secret laboratory, hoping to create a creature as terrifying as the Giant Rat of Sumatra in a bid to take over the world. His hobbies include drinking tea and going outside to do a barbecue in -10°C weather.

Guest Reviewer Earl Staggs Reviews: "The Officer's Code" by Lyn Alexander

Please welcome back author Earl Staggs as he reviews The Officer’s Code by Lyn Alexander. Earl just recently released his new novel Justified Action and is back at work crafting a sequel to Memory Of A Murder. Earl will be teaching tomorrow and Saturday at the Northeast Texas Writers’ Organization 27^th annual Spring Conference at the Mount Pleasant Civic Center. Details are here. On Sunday Earl will be in the Lochwood neighborhood of Dallas at LUCKY DOG BOOKS for a book signing with Denise Weeks and Jenny Milchman. The event is scheduled at 1pm and you can read more about it here.

THE OFFICER’S CODE by Lyn Alexander

Reviewed by Earl Staggs

It is Edwardian England in 1912, and eighteen-year-old Eric Foster’s life has been planned out for him by his tyrannical father, a respected lawyer and judge. Eric is expected to graduate at the top of his class at Cambridge and join his father’s law firm. Eric is not sure what he wants to do with his life, but he is certain he does not want to be a lawyer. His grades reflect his lack of interest in his studies, so his father packs him off to a new school in Germany with dire directions to apply himself diligently and achieve the goals dictated for him.

Once in Heidelberg, Eric is an outcast among his peers until he is befriended by Gerdt Von Wittingen, a student his own age from a wealthy German family, and they quickly become best friends and roommates. When Eric visits Gerdt’s family’s mansion in the country, he meets Gerdt’s sister, Brigitte, an exquisitely beautiful girl who is flirtatious, yet seems immature and childlike in many ways. Eric considers her a reckless wildling who enjoys making fools of the many men who pursue her.

Inevitably, Eric and Brigitte fall in love, and their budding romance is written with an engaging hand by the author. When they eventually talk of marriage, major obstacles arise. Eric’s father forbids the marriage and orders his immediate return to England. Brigitte’s parents do not feel Eric has the breeding and background necessary to join a family of their high societal status. Eric’s solution to these problems is radical, drastic, and surprising, but he succeeds in making the marriage possible.

The newlyweds face another major obstacle immediately when World War One erupts in Europe. Now an officer in the German Imperial Cavalry though barely out of his teens, Eric must lead his troop into battle against the Russian Army. At home, Brigitte volunteers at the hospital to assist with the wounded and sees the suffering and atrocities of war for herself. These two young people become different adults during the period of the war, and must face that fact if and when they are able to continue their marriage.

Reading the horrendous details of the war made me wonder if the author had been there when it happened. That’s impossible, of course, so she must have researched it thoroughly. Her descriptions of the fighting and the effects of the war on the people involved will make you think you are there, too. That’s how good her writing is.

I highly recommend this book. The author deftly writes of a lovely romance and a horrific war as she chronicles the lives of two young people wearily suffering through it not by choice but for the sake of their marriage, their honor, their homeland and, for Eric, adherence to his Officer’s Code.

THE OFFICER’S CODE

Trade Paperback  from Storyteller Publishing
October 23, 2012
Available at Amazon Canada, Amazon US , B&N

Get to know Lyn Alexander and read Chapter 1 at: http://www.lynalexander.com

Earl Staggs ©2013

"The Day I Almost Became a Great Writer"

http://www.earlwstaggs.wordpress.com