You want femmes fatales? Charles Williams has you covered. Not all his books feature fatal women, but quite a few of them do. One of those is A Touch of Death, which I believe is the first book of his that I read. I read the second Gold Medal printing, and I was so taken with it that I went out and got all the other Williams titles I could find. And eventually I found several other printings of A Touch of Death, along with the British paperback, which was titled Mix Yourself a Redhead.
I've never understood why Williams never developed the reputation that some of the other GM authors did. He did a lot of things really well, and yet his books never got the acclaim they deserved. He had quite a range, too. He could write comedy as well as tense noir tales, and his sea novels were excellent. I said a few words about some of these things in this blog post for Mystery*File.
But back to the fatal femme of this post. Madelon Butler is her name, and when she encounters down-on-his-luck former pro athlete named Lee Scarborough, little does he know what he's in for. It's a complicated caper, having to do with a dead husband, big bucks, and several other people who want in on the action. Scarborough always thinks he's one step ahead of Butler, who appears to him to be just a drunk and, after all, a woman. He narrates the story in first person, so we discover along with him [SPOILER ALERT] how wrong he is.[END SPOILER ALERT]
We're a bit into James M. Cain territory here, and while I don't want to give away too much of the ending, I'll just say that Scarborough's final words are quite chilling.
This is the novel that Charles Ardai choose to reprint in the Hard Case Crime series, so it's a lot easier to find than it used to be, which is a nice thing for anybody who's interested in femmes fatales.
Borderline is what's being called these days "mid-century erotica," returned to print by Hard Case Crime. It was originally published as Border Lust in 1962 by Don Holliday, one of the pseudonyms that appeared now and then on books published by Nightstand and others of Bill Hamling's imprints. This book is obviously from early in Block's career, but it's so well done that it's likely to make many veteran novelists (or at least one: me) envious.
The new title is perfect for the book, not that the other one didn't fit. It certainly did. But this one is better because the book is about people who are crossing borders. The setting is El Paso and Juarez, which were different cities in 1962 from what they are now. (By coincidence, I just read Sam Hawken's Tequila Sunset, and if you want to see the cities now, check it out.) The reason the new title fits so well is that the borders people cross in this book aren't just the physical one that separates Texas from Mexico. They're crossing them in lots of other ways. '
Meg, recently divorced from a boring husband, crosses the border to Mexico and crosses the border from wanting sex of all kinds to having lots of it. Weaver is a killer. He's killed one girl, and now he's decided that since they can only execute him once, he might as well kill as many has he can before they get him. He crosses the borderline easily, and it's scary how well Block was writing about a serial killer before such killers became a crime fiction cliche. Marty's a gambler who lives an ordered life. He keeps to himself and does things his own way. He meets Meg and crosses the border into irrational behavior. Lily is a runaway. She'll do what she has to as long as it pays. She crosses the border into using whoever is handy. They think they're using Lily, but they're all wrong.
Naturally these four characters are going to come together, and I was reminded of John D. MacDonald's The Damned, which is set farther south in Mexico but which also has a cast of disparate characters. In fact, the opening chapters in both books are quite similar, except in the MacDonald book the point of view is a man's, while in Block's novel it's Lily's.
But Macdonald's novel isn't noir, and Block's certainly is. Things aren't going to end well for Block's characters, not any of them. If you can take graphic sex and even more graphic violence, this one's well worth a look. And there's bonus material as well, two short stories and a novella. Ed London's the narrator of the novella, a nicely done p.i. yarn. The first story's narrated by a rapist. Very violent. Be prepared.
Friends,
Bit by bit, we're getting closer to the re-launch of Hard Case Crime with our new publisher, Titan Books. Our backlist titles are already available for pre-order from bookstores and online booksellers such as Amazon.com and BN.com; copies will start shipping in February. And we've got new books on the way, too -- if you go to our Web site, www.HardCaseCrime.com, you'll find cover art and sample chapters for four upcoming titles, all of them brand new:
* GETTING OFF: A Novel of Sex and Violence by Lawrence Block (writing as Jill Emerson) -- The story of a beautiful young woman who sets off on a mission to kill every man she's ever slept with (and she's slept with quite a few). For this book, Lawrence Block is reviving a pseudonym he hasn't used in almost 40 years, under which he wrote seven particularly sexy books back in the day. When he saw how sexy this new one was coming out, he thought...that's the Jill Emerson in me coming out again...
* THE CONSUMMATA by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins -- In the late 1960s, Mickey Spillane announced he was writing a new novel featuring the star of his bestseller THE DELTA FACTOR, but after writing half the book, he set he manuscript aside. Twenty years later, he handed the unfinished manuscript to his friend Max Allan Collins, suggesting that Max might finish it someday. And twenty-some years after that...it's finally done. It's the story of one thief going after another against the backdrop of Miami's Cuban-American community, and it's classic Spillane. Anyone who misses the Good Old Stuff will find plenty to love here.
* QUARRY'S EX by Max Allan Collins -- This is one I know you've been waiting for a long time, the next story in the saga of the hit man known as Quarry (star of THE LAST QUARRY, THE FIRST QUARRY, and QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE). This time, Quarry sets out to protect a movie director who's been marked for murder...only to discover that the director is married to Quarry's ex-wife, the woman whose infidelity pushed him into a life of crime in the first place.
* CHOKE HOLD by Christa Faust -- Another long-awaited title, this is the follow-up to Christa's Edgar Award-nominated MONEY SHOT. Ex-porn star Angel Dare is back; when a old co-star is gunned down in front of her, it's up to her to get his 18-year-old son, a hotheaded MMA fighter, to Las Vegas in one piece while two separate groups of killers are gunning for them.
Lots to look forward to! Do check out the covers -- and if you're hungry for some great reading now, you can prepare for the new books coming out (which doesn't happen till September/October) by ordering any of the old ones you've missed. If you haven't met Quarry or Angel Dare yet, you're in for a treat -- grab yourself a copy of MONEY SHOT or the earlier Quarry books. For Spillane fans, there's DEAD STREET, Mickey's last novel. And we have five other books by Lawrence Block you can enjoy while waiting for GETTING OFF to come out: GRIFTER'S GAME, THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, LUCKY AT CARDS, A DIET OF TREACLE, and KILLING CASTRO.
Other news...
Things are moving forward on the film adaptation of LITTLE GIRL LOST -- I spent an afternoon with the screenwriter who's penning the adaptation, showing him around some of the real-world locations where scenes from the book take place. (And scenes from its sequel, SONGS OF INNOCENCE. We checked out the tunnels under Columbia University, and the all-night tempura joint on Broadway, and FAO Schwarz...) No guarantee the movie will go before the cameras, but...every step we take makes it that much more likely.
And HAVEN, the TV series based (loosely) on our 13th book, Stephen King's THE COLORADO KID, is gearing up for its second season on SyFy. The writers are working in a white-hot storytelling heat, with filming scheduled to begin in a few months. I'm biased, but I think the show really hit its stride in the second half of the season last year, and there are some great stories coming up. We don't have a premiere date yet for the second season, but I'll let you know as soon as we do.
One final bit of news (if you'll forgive a bit of boasting by a proud father): the Ardai/Novik clan saw an addition in December, a baby girl named Evidence ("Evi" for short).
We'll add a photo of her to the Web site just as soon as she's old enough to wear a fedora.
Best,
Charles
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Charles Ardai
Editor, Hard Case Crime
