Saturday, August 09, 2014
Free for Kindle Saturday & Sunday
Adventures In Writing: Free Sat & Sun! Pulpsmith #1. Don't pass it up!
Amazon and Hatchette
If you're interested in the ongoing Amazon/Hatchette imbroglio, you might also be interested in this little essay, written long, long ago, which I think shows a few parallels.
Allan Guthrie's NOIR ORIGINALS: PAPERBACK ORIGINALS by Bill Crider
Allan Guthrie's NOIR ORIGINALS: PAPERBACK ORIGINALS by Bill Crider
Friday, August 08, 2014
Menahem (Menachem) Golan, R. I. P.
Variety: Menachem Golan, the colorful, free-spending Israeli-born producer and director whose Cannon Films yielded hundreds of productions starring the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris before going bust, died Friday in Israel, according to Haaretz. He was 85.
Kayo Purchases
I have The Desperado, but I couldn't pass up a spare copy. Since I have Reform School Girl, I figured I needed House of Fury, too, and the price was right.
Vintage Treasures: Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester
Vintage Treasures: Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester
Key passage that makes me sad: "I know. You’ve never heard of Alfred Bester. Perhaps his greatest novel — The Stars My Destination (1956) — is in print only in an expensive trade paperback edition from a small press, and his classic The Demolished Man (1952), the first novel to win a Hugo Award, is out of print altogether."
Key passage that makes me sad: "I know. You’ve never heard of Alfred Bester. Perhaps his greatest novel — The Stars My Destination (1956) — is in print only in an expensive trade paperback edition from a small press, and his classic The Demolished Man (1952), the first novel to win a Hugo Award, is out of print altogether."
FFB: Shoot the President, Are You Mad? -- Frank McAuliffe
This post appeared in slightly different form back on May 14, 2010.
Frank McAuliffe wrote some of my favorite crime novels, a three-book series featuring Augustus Mandrell, a professional assassin. When I picked up the first book, Of all the Bloody Cheek back in 1965, I don't know what I expected, but it sure wasn't what I got, which was one of the most original crime novels I'd read up to that time. 45 years later, it still is. (See my earlier post here.) Sort of. In 1968 and 1971 McAuliffe published two sequels. But they're not exactly sequels. All three books are made up of a series of linked novellas that play off each other and intertwine in ways that still amaze me after all these years. Taken together, they're really one big, hilarious, incredible book. You should find all three, which besides Of all the Bloody Cheek include Rather a Vicious Gentleman and For Murder I Charge More.
In 1975, McAuliffe submitted another novel to Ballantine books. The Ballantines thought it was too soon after the Kennedy assassination for a comedy crime caper about presidential assassination, and the book was turned down. It took another 35 years for it to appear in print. So it was forgotten for a long, long time.
I'm afraid it might be forgotten again, since it's been published by a small press called The Outfit Now defunct). You can still order the book from Amazon, though.
What you'll get is a book unlike any other you've ever read, unless you've read the earlier three. This one's more conventional than they are. It's not a series of linked novellas, but one caper. It's narrated by Mandrell in his usual style, which, let's say, is a unique form of stream-of-consciousness with snarky asides, comments addressed to the reader, and lots more. It's full of narrow escapes, sometimes one after another, and at times it's almost like watching a Marx Brothers movie. Maybe I'm the only one who likes stuff like this now. Others might not get it at all, but it connects with me just like it did in 1965. It's great to have this book in print. I hope it's not forgotten.
Thursday, August 07, 2014
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
But counter forces are at work. A psychotic gunman known as the Salt Lake City Kid has stolen the Mormon holy golden plates and is leaving a trail of corpses and bullet-ridden artifacts on his way to Leadville. Even worse, Wilde has acquired an enemy not of his choosing. A crude and violent buffalo hunter has taken a dislike to him, and the corrupt law of Leadville appears to be of no help.
Wednesday, August 06, 2014
Marilyn Burns, R. I. P.
CNN.com: (CNN) -- Actress Marilyn Burns, a "scream queen" in the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," died Tuesday, her manager said. She was 64.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
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Tuesday, August 05, 2014
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
Trail Justice (The Westward Tide Book 1) - Kindle edition by Jack Tyree, Wayne D. Dundee, Mel Odom. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: In the spring of 1848, the Culbertson-Barkley company, so named for the Illinois and Missouri counties from which most of its members came, heads out for the promise of new beginnings and new lives in the Oregon Territory. 52 wagons, 233 men, women, and children who have been battered by a seemingly endless string of devastating winters and destructive spring floods. Battered maybe, but not defeated. Instead, toughened and filled with a collective iron resolve to change their fate and their future. But the Oregon Trail is a challenge, even for the toughest and most strong-willed. It starts out hard and gets progressively harder, every inch of the way. It is a foregone conclusion that not everyone who is there at the beginning will make it to the end. It will take men like Wagon Master Eugene Healy, trail scout Basil St. Irons, and former mountain man Elwood Blake to get as many through as possible. And it will take determined women like Ingrid Healy and Evelyn Harmony to nurture and encourage their men in order to help them find the strength and courage to endure. From within and without, they will be tested. By the elements, by the threat of Indians, by betrayal … and by secrets from the past.
James Thompson, R. I. P.
The Rap Sheet: James Thompson, the Kentucky-born crime-fictionist who over the last half-decade composed four novels starring Finnish homicide inspector Kari Vaara (including 2012’s Helsinki Blood), died unexpectedly on August 2 in his hometown of Lahti, Finland. Either 49 or 50 years old (he was born sometime in 1964), Thompson was married and had resided in Finland for about 15 years.
Quake rattles nerves and bottles in Wine Country
Quake rattles nerves and bottles in Wine Country | www.ktvu.com: NAPA, Calif. — A 3.2 magnitude earthquake rattled through California’s Wine Country early Tuesday, jolting residents awake and sending out a loud rumble close to the quake’s epicenter near Napa.
Epicenter was 7 miles from where we are. We didn't wake up, which is just as well.
Epicenter was 7 miles from where we are. We didn't wake up, which is just as well.
Once Again Texas Leads the Way
News - Home: Thief steals nearly $1 million worth of items from Woodlands woman's closet -- Closet is 3 stories, 3,000 square feet
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Overlooked Movies: $
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First, a little personal reminiscence. When Judy and I moved to Brownwood, Texas, for my first teaching gig after grad school, it was quite a culture shock to go from a place like Austin, with lots of movie theaters, to a place that had only one. This explains how we came to see The Legend of Boggy Creek, but that's another story. Not too long after our move, a new duplex theater opened at a little shopping center, and $ was the first film show in one half of the duplex. We were looking forward to the movie, but we didn't see it. The theater flooded. A problem with the air-conditioning, I believe.
That struck me as an interesting coincidence because it was the second time I'd been to opening night when the theater flooded. The first was many years before, when the new theater in my hometown had opened. The a/c was the problem then, too.
And at yet another time I was in a theater that flooded. It was a fairly new one, though I don't believe this was opening night. It was my freshman year in college, and the student union theater flooded because of flash flooding all over the city. What is it with me and flooding in theaters, anyway?
Now to our regularly scheduled feature. You can see the problem with this movie immediately, right? Who names a movie $? Maybe back in the early '70s when this movie came out, the studio thought that a movie starring Goldie Hawn and Warren Beatty didn't even need a title to be a hit. They were wrong, though.
Not that Beatty and Hawn (both with wonderful '70s haircuts) aren't a delight. They are, and so are Scott Brady and Gert Frobe (with lots of little Goldfinger in-jokes). The plot's not bad. It's a caper, with Beatty stealing from criminals, aided by Hawn's hooker with a heart of gold. Naturally the crooks aren't happy, and complications ensue. The film's finale is one really long chase scene, followed by a double twist. Or is it a triple twist? I don't remember.
This is one of those movies that didn't do well at the time, or at least not nearly as well as expected. But it's fun and worth a look if you need some lighthearted entertainment, as who doesn't now and then?
Monday, August 04, 2014
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Sunday, August 03, 2014
First It Was the Thin Mints Melee
Missouri teen faces felony charge after 'covering car in mascara'
Come for the melee, stay for the poorly parked mascara.
Come for the melee, stay for the poorly parked mascara.
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