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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 2, 2021 17:56:42 GMT -5
 Bullet Proof by Max Allan CollinsCollins returns to Eliot Ness with a fight against crooked labor leaders. The book starts during the "Little Steel" strike of 1937. Ness is trying to prevent a repeat of the 1937 Memorial Day massacre in Chicago. While attempting to keep peace between the union and Republic Steel (and the police), Ness investigates racketeering in a couple of other unions, including one for glaziers. Collins does a good job, and has Ness do a good job, of walking the line between union and business. Ness is pretty clearly pulled by the business interests in Cleveland to act as a de facto strike-breaker. Ness sets out a course to prevent violence from both sides. Collins also walks a decent line with regard to the investigation in to union corruption. It's clear that there were corrupt unions at the time. It's also clear there were unions that weren't corrupt but that were targeted by management and law enforcement anyway. A nice entry in to the Ness series and a good entry point to look at an era of labor relations that has probably been forgotten by the public at large. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 2, 2021 21:50:44 GMT -5
Murder in the Air(Clouds)
by Agatha Christie
I came across a small pile of Agatha Christie novels in a 'take a book' free library, and all were in terrible condition (this one fell apart while I was reading it, and had to be tossed after I was done) but since I had some things to swap, I decide fate was telling me to give Mr. Poirot another chance to impress me.
The story itself was a locked room mystery, and the book consists of Poirot and (separately) his police colleagues going though each passenger in turn to find the culprit. It was an interesting journey as a reader, at first introduction to him, I pegged the culprit, but changed my mind shortly after until the end.
Poirot was a bit more likeable and much more impressive in this one... the clues he used were laid out nicely for the reader and let you follow along, while still showing what I think I like best about Christie's writer, her ability to concoct throughly real, three dimension throw away character that you feel you could read lots more about.
It also made me (not for the first time) to marvel at how easy it must have been to be a con man in the pre-computer age... clearly the most important trait to success back then was self confidence.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 4, 2021 9:51:44 GMT -5
 Flynn by Gregory McDonaldFollowing his "book-stealing" appearance in Confess, Fletch, it clearly made sense for McDonald to spin Boston Police Inspector F.X. Flynn in to his own book. Flynn is an enigma to those around him. A police Inspector on a force that doesn't have that rank. A cop who is reluctant to arrest people and wants to actually know the person is guilty and be able to prove it before he moves. And a secret agent for an unnamed agency who may or may not still be active. After Flynn watches a jet explode minutes after take-off from his back yard, he's called on by the Boston P.D. to act as a liaison with the FBI and the CAB. The feds (the Feebs in particular) are not impressed with Flynn's way of doing business and his perceived lack of assistance. And, of course, Grover (a very by-the-books police Sergeant who acts as Flynn's foil and whipping boy) is back. There are plenty of twists and turns (maybe a few too many to be believable) and we learn a bit more about Flynn's back-story and his family. This is a fun spin-off from Fletch and a nice start for a series about an interesting and eccentric character. While the book would be understandable as a stand-alone, there is a reasonable bit about Flynn's background in Confess, Fletch that the reader would benefit from reading that book first. Also, keep in mind this was published in 1977. Technology has outstripped this book as have societal norms. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2021 15:59:22 GMT -5
Finished the second 87th Precinct Novel, The Mugger by Ed McBain. Another library borrow...  Another solid book, but this one I had the killer pegged about halfway through and was just reading to confirm my guess. That rarely happens with me, but it did this time. Still enjoyed the read though. -M |
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Post by berkley on Nov 6, 2021 0:17:11 GMT -5
I read almost all the Agtha Christies in my childhood and teenage years - so long ago that I recall very few details about most of them so I look forward to reading them all again someday, or at least some of the ones I remember as favourites.
I tried one of Ed McBain's 97th Precinct books in my late teens or early 20s, but it didn't really take: I didn't hate it, but wasn't motivated to look for any more. It's a series I'd consider giving another try, though, as it's such a well-known example of the genre.
I read the first Fletch book back in the early 80s and liked it, but never happened to come across any more at the time, and after a few years it kind of fell off my radar. I don't remember if Flynn appears in that first book or not, but I definitely didn't read any of the Flynn series. I like the sounds of it, though, and I'll be keeping an eye out for both Fletch and Flynn in my rounds of the local used bookstores. It'll be a while before I get to them because my efforts to catch up on some classic crime fiction is still focused on the mid to late 1950s for the time being, and plan to keep going along in chronological order.
My crime fiction reading the last year or two has included:
Ian Fleming's James Bond
Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer
Desmond Cory's Johnny Fedora
Richard Prather's Shell Scott
Stephen Marlowe's Chester Drumm
stand-alones by writers such as Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, Charles Williams
I've been meaning to talk about them here but keep putting it off for no real reason other than laziness, I suppose. I'll get to it, though.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 6, 2021 8:08:21 GMT -5
I read almost all the Agtha Christies in my childhood and teenage years - so long ago that I recall very few details about most of them so I look forward to reading them all again someday, or at least some of the ones I remember as favourites. I tried one of Ed McBain's 97th Precinct books in my late teens or early 20s, but it didn't really take: I didn't hate it, but wasn't motivated to look for any more. It's a series I'd consider giving another try, though, as it's such a well-known example of the genre. I read the first Fletch book back in the early 80s and liked it, but never happened to come across any more at the time, and after a few years it kind of fell off my radar. I don't remember if Flynn appears in that first book or not, but I definitely didn't read any of the Flynn series. I like the sounds of it, though, and I'll be keeping an eye out for both Fletch and Flynn in my rounds of the local used bookstores. It'll be a while before I get to them because my efforts to catch up on some classic crime fiction is still focused on the mid to late 1950s for the time being, and plan to keep going along in chronological order. My crime fiction reading the last year or two has included: Ian Fleming's James Bond Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer Desmond Cory's Johnny Fedora Richard Prather's Shell Scott Stephen Marlowe's Chester Drumm stand-alones by writers such as Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, Charles Williams I've been meaning to talk about them here but keep putting it off for no real reason other than laziness, I suppose. I'll get to it, though. Flynn didn’t appear until the second novel, Confess Fletch. Both Fletch and Flynn are fun and a decent change up to “oh so serious crime or noir.” I was going to move into Lew Archer but instead opted to fill in the gaps of Gardner/Fair’s “Cool & Lam” series. I read about half of the a few years back and now have the rest. So Lew’s on the back-burner for now. I’m a big fan of Thompson and Charles Williams. I need to get to Chester Himes one of these days. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 6, 2021 8:47:59 GMT -5
(...) I need to get to Chester Himes one of these days. I've read all but the last two of his Grave Digger and Coffin Ed novels. Himes had a pretty interesting and unique take on crime/police thrillers - as you can probably imagine in stories featuring two Black detectives working in Harlem in the 1950s. I'd definitely recommend reading them if you get the chance. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 6, 2021 8:51:08 GMT -5
The Walter Mosley Omnibus (Picador, 1995) (collecting: Devil in a Blue Dress, 1990; A Red Death, 1991; White Butterfly, 1992)  Devil in a Blue DressSet in 1948, it introduces the character of Ezekial ‘Easy’ Rawlins, a World War 2 vet originally from Houston, who now lives in LA, where he just lost his job in an aircraft factory. He’s strapped for cash and worried about losing his home if he can’t keep up the mortgage payments. This is what gets the ball rolling: while he’s in a bar, the owner, a friend of his, recommends him to an odd and kind of shady white man named DeWitt Albright, who needs someone to discretely find a white woman who’s recently been seen frequenting bars and nightclubs with mainly Black clientele. Rawlins takes the job, and as he starts poking around, trouble seems to follow him, including a few murders – one of which he briefly gets blamed for by the police. Eventually, Rawlins works things out, due in no small part to help from an old but rather unhinged friend from Houston, Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander, who sort of shows up in town out of the blue. This works mainly as a really good introduction to the Rawlins character – I tended to like the bits about his back story and his life more interesting than the actual mystery/thriller aspects. When it all ends, Rawlins finds that he can make decent extra cash by doing favors for people in the community, mainly detective-type work when they have no one else to turn to. A Red DeathIt’s now 1952 and Rawlins is doing pretty well when the story begins. He’s not only paid off his mortgage and owns his house free and clear – he’s also now the owner of a several rental properties, although virtually nobody else knows this. But then he gets a summons from the IRS. One of its inspectors has some questions about the discrepancy between the income from his apparent job (custodian) and his real estate holdings, so he tells Rawlins he’s looking at a tax evasion charge. Rawlins is then approached by an FBI agent named Craxton, who offers to help him out with his IRS troubles if he agrees to get close to and provide information on a man named Chaim Wenzler, an activist and suspected communist who does volunteer work at the Baptist church in Easy’s neighborhood. Rawlins does so, but in the process finds himself really liking Wenzler. But then some horrible murders then occur in the church and everything sort of goes to hell… This one is better than the first one: the overall story/mystery is more interesting and I had a real ‘wow, didn’t see that coming’ moment near the end. White ButterflyA few years later, in 1956, Rawlins is now married, and he and his wife Nina, a hospital nurse, have a baby girl. Everything seems idyllic, but there’s trouble brewing in his home life. And one day a pair of police detectives come by asking for Easy’s help in finding out the person responsible for a series of murders of young Black women in the neighborhood. It looks like the work of a serial killer, and the heat gets turned up when the most recent victim is a college-age white woman from a rather well-to-do family. After initially refusing to have anything to do with it, Rawlins reluctantly gets involved. The investigation, in which he’s again helped by his unstable yet resourceful friend Mouse, leads him all the way up to Oakland and back, and as usual, he ends up getting in trouble with the law himself for a bit. All three of these are really gritty, noirish novels. Mosley tends to submerge the ‘murder mystery’ aspect of the stories into every other facet of life and the day-to-day hardships in Watts and neighboring communities experienced by Rawlins and its other residents– poverty, racism, police brutality, etc. I’d say one of my main criticisms of these is that the Mouse character almost verges on a deus ex machina in the way he helps Easy get out of jams.
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Post by Calamas on Nov 6, 2021 18:12:47 GMT -5
The Walter Mosley Omnibus (Picador, 1995) (collecting: Devil in a Blue Dress, 1990; A Red Death, 1991; White Butterfly, 1992) Devil in a Blue DressSet in 1948, it introduces the character of Ezekial ‘Easy’ Rawlins, a World War 2 vet originally from Houston, who now lives in LA, where he just lost his job in an aircraft factory. He’s strapped for cash and worried about losing his home if he can’t keep up the mortgage payments. This is what gets the ball rolling: while he’s in a bar, the owner, a friend of his, recommends him to an odd and kind of shady white man named DeWitt Albright, who needs someone to discretely find a white woman who’s recently been seen frequenting bars and nightclubs with mainly Black clientele. Rawlins takes the job, and as he starts poking around, trouble seems to follow him, including a few murders – one of which he briefly gets blamed for by the police. Eventually, Rawlins works things out, due in no small part to help from an old but rather unhinged friend from Houston, Raymond ‘Mouse’ Alexander, who sort of shows up in town out of the blue. This works mainly as a really good introduction to the Rawlins character – I tended to like the bits about his back story and his life more interesting than the actual mystery/thriller aspects. When it all ends, Rawlins finds that he can make decent extra cash by doing favors for people in the community, mainly detective-type work when they have no one else to turn to. A Red DeathIt’s now 1952 and Rawlins is doing pretty well when the story begins. He’s not only paid off his mortgage and owns his house free and clear – he’s also now the owner of a several rental properties, although virtually nobody else knows this. But then he gets a summons from the IRS. One of its inspectors has some questions about the discrepancy between the income from his apparent job (custodian) and his real estate holdings, so he tells Rawlins he’s looking at a tax evasion charge. Rawlins is then approached by an FBI agent named Craxton, who offers to help him out with his IRS troubles if he agrees to get close to and provide information on a man named Chaim Wenzler, an activist and suspected communist who does volunteer work at the Baptist church in Easy’s neighborhood. Rawlins does so, but in the process finds himself really liking Wenzler. But then some horrible murders then occur in the church and everything sort of goes to hell… This one is better than the first one: the overall story/mystery is more interesting and I had a real ‘wow, didn’t see that coming’ moment near the end. White ButterflyA few years later, in 1956, Rawlins is now married, and he and his wife Nina, a hospital nurse, have a baby girl. Everything seems idyllic, but there’s trouble brewing in his home life. And one day a pair of police detectives come by asking for Easy’s help in finding out the person responsible for a series of murders of young Black women in the neighborhood. It looks like the work of a serial killer, and the heat gets turned up when the most recent victim is a college-age white woman from a rather well-to-do family. After initially refusing to have anything to do with it, Rawlins reluctantly gets involved. The investigation, in which he’s again helped by his unstable yet resourceful friend Mouse, leads him all the way up to Oakland and back, and as usual, he ends up getting in trouble with the law himself for a bit. All three of these are really gritty, noirish novels. Mosley tends to submerge the ‘murder mystery’ aspect of the stories into every other facet of life and the day-to-day hardships in Watts and neighboring communities experienced by Rawlins and its other residents– poverty, racism, police brutality, etc. I’d say one of my main criticisms of these is that the Mouse character almost verges on a deus ex machina in the way he helps Easy get out of jams. You are absolutely right regarding Mouse. And yet I had no trouble accepting his role. It had become an expectation of the P.I. genre. The Robert B. Parker effect, if you will. Spenser and Hawk may have been created in the 70s but Parker was still going strong right up until his death in 2010, and he influenced a lot of authors. A tougher, more ruthless colleague who could be counted on for back up often became the norm. In the 80s Elvis Cole had Joe Pike. (In fact those initial books could have been Spenser stories until Crais found his own voice.) In the 90s Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro had Bubba and Charlie Parker had Louis. And Easy had Mouse. It is a tribute to the talents of their respective writers that each is an individual and unique character, but each also--at least in the beginning in some cases--filled the Hawk role. And I had come to expect it. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Nov 9, 2021 9:32:43 GMT -5
Mystery Men (& Women), volume 7 (2021) (featuring stories by Teel James Glenn, Curtis Fernlund, Greg Hatcher, and Harding McFadden & Eleanor Hawkins)  The latest volume of this series was just released a few weeks ago – not long before Greg Hatcher passed away in fact. I’m glad he at least got to see his Doc Fixit character get the cover treatment. As usual with these anthologies, the stories vary in style, themes/characters and quality. In the opening story, “A Walk in the Park,” Teel James Glenn again introduces some new characters and settings, this time a team of super-powered international law enforcement agents called the Exceptionals. It’s set in a dystopian near future which, if I'm being honest, seemed a bit like some right-winger’s fever dream. The story here sees one of the American Exceptionals, code-named Lastshot, go rogue to capture an arms-dealer who killed one of his French comrades in Paris – it leads him to an underworld den of iniquity where he gets captured. The characters and concepts here are pretty solid (it could easily be adapted to comics, movies or TV) and the story is pretty much non-stop action - but little else. The samurai woman ‘Kiri the Mist’ returns for another adventure in late 1930s New York in Curtis Fernlund’s “The Rise of the Bund.” As in the story in the preceding volume, Kiri (real name Suwan Shenobi) confronts Nazi intrigues in the US, and here the focus is more on the movement of Nazi sympathizers in German-American communities. The last story, “The Ghoul Strikes!” by the father/daugther writing team of Harding McFadden and Eleanor Hawkins introduces a more traditional 1930s pulp-type character, the Ghoul (real name Marvin MacCormac). Here he travels to a small, isolated rural town in Pennsylvania to investigate mysterious goings-on and, once there, basically finds himself smack-dab in the middle of what we’d call a zombie apocalypse. This is my least favorite of these, because it really could have used a few revisions to make the narration more clear and the characters not do things that didn’t really make sense even by the story’s own logic. The third story is Greg Hatcher’s second Dr. Fixit story, “Pimpin’ Your Supercar” and it’s easily the best. In this one, Ernie Voskovec, ‘handyman to the supervillains’, recounts the one time he did a job for a superhero instead of a villain. It involved making a very sweet ride for a masked vigilante called the Ghostwalker, who has no superpowers but is highly trained in all forms of physical combat and uses all kinds of gadgets and stage magician tricks to take down small-time criminals – and he’s also a filthy rich guy in real life. Sound familiar? However, all is not on the level with the ‘hero’, as Ernie learns that he’s blackmailing a young acrobatic former catburgler known as Serpentina whom he had befriended a few years earlier while on another job. So he decides to do something to help her out. This is such a fun story, and there’s a line near the end that will make anyone who’s ever watched the 1960s Batman TV giggle with sheer delight. As I noted in my review for the preceding volume, the pdf e-book is available at the publisher’s website, but it’s also availabe in Kindle and hardcopy format at Amazon, etc.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 9, 2021 16:12:14 GMT -5
 The Knife Slipped by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) This is one of the reasons I'm super glad that Hard Case Crime exists. This was the second Cool & Lam novel written by Gardner (as Fair). But it wasn't published until 2016, 76 years after the second second Cool & Lam novel. While we can't be 100% sure why this one was rejected by the publisher...well we can make some good guesses. Gardner introduced Bertha Cool, owner of the B. Cool Detective Agency and her brainy and diminutive operative Donald Lam in 1939s "The Bigger They Come." Donald, a disgraced attorney, used some nifty legal shenanigans to save himself and their client in that novel. This time around, the case starts with a simple case, a woman and her daughter wanting the daughter's husband shadowed to prove he's cheating. And, as will become the norm, the simple case turns nasty and complex. So why was this one rejected? I think it's because Bertha Cool, always a brassy, independent woman was just a little bit too brassy and independent here. The combination of language, upended gender roles and (what were then) overly adult themes were almost certainly too much for publication in 1939-40 in a popular detective novel. So Gardner bit the bullet, put this one in a drawer and "Turn on the Heat" became the second Cool & Lam novel. It's one I've missed so I'll get to it in a bit. But I can safely say that in the books that follow Bertha is a bit more subdued and Donald, though still and inexplicable Lothario, is also a bit more circumspect. One can only wonder where things would have gone had this been published. It think that maybe Cool & Lam would be a bit better remembered today. |
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Post by berkley on Nov 9, 2021 22:39:24 GMT -5
I read the first of Mosely's Easy Easy Rawlins series, Devil in a Blue Dress around the time it came out in paperback: liked it but never carried on with the series. I will, though. The Cool and Lam series I haven't tried yet, and probably I'll wait a while still, though I do want to get into them at some point.
I've read only the first of Himes's Grave Digger and Coffin Ed series, in which they appear only as supporting characters, but I have The Real Cool Killers lined up and should be getting to it in the next few months.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 10, 2021 10:46:03 GMT -5
I read the first two or three Easy Rawlins books quite some time ago (probably 20+ years). I definitely enjoyed them, but never managed to follow up. I'll get back to them at some point.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2021 11:17:38 GMT -5
 Finished slogging through The Horror! The Horror! Comics The Government Didn't Want You to Read by Jim Trombetta. While the topic-pre-code horror comics seems like it would be a fascinating read, Trombetta turns it into a bit of a slog. It is not an overview of pre-code horror, through it is lavishly illustrated with lots of covers and small excerpts from pre-code horror and could function as such in a pinch, the actually book isn't so much about pre-code horror books themselves, but about the pop-psychology mores and taboos that the author (Trombetta) thinks inspired and influenced them and how they might have impacted the readers on a psychological level. Each chapter is an essay on a theme, sometimes about a theme or trope of pre-code horror books, sometimes about some aspect of post-War America, and most of the essays turn into a bit of a slog to read. He discusses a trope then cites several examples form covers or excerpts to demonstrate that trope or theme, but the layout of the book means you have to go searching through the pages of illustrations to find the cover or excerpt referred to see what he is trying to reference in his essays, which makes for a very disjointed reading experience. The early chapters are better than the later ones, as they do in many ways serve as an intro to pre-code horror, but the later chapters get much more esoteric in topic choices and much less coherent in their analysis and attempts to psychoanalyze the intent of the creators of these horror comics and the impact on the imagined readers of these comics at the time they were coming out. There is a school if historical inquiry that was in vogue in the early-mid 20th century that attempted to psychoanalyze historical figures (let's put Martin Luther on the couch to see what actually made him tick for example-one I had to slog through at university) that in hindsight rarely worked and the insights of which revealed more about the author than the subject matter, but I never thought that this approach would be used in comics criticism and history, but that's exactly what Trombetta is trying to do. If you are looking for a lavishly illustrated book about pre-code horror comics, this can serve in a pinch, as the covers it presents are extensive and the half dozen or so full stories and maybe half dozen more page excerpts it includes are an excellent representation of pre-code horror content, but if you are looking for a book to read the actually provides some insight and information about pre-code horror that is more than one person's psychological ramblings about their beliefs about pre-code horror, this isn't the book for you. It might have benefitted form a rethinking of its layout, and placing relevant art and story examples within the essay chapters where they are referenced (or at least the covers they are basing the discussions on) instead of as galleries between chapters requiring the reader to flip through the gallery with every paragraph or so as it tries to analyze different covers and how they expound or explain the theme of the chapter. since whole tracks of conversation are built on a single image or images from covers it becomes necessary to see the cover to follow the conversation, but the reader has to go looking for each cover in question as it is not in proximity to the conversation about it, which makes for a very poor reading experience overall. It's a noble effort, but ultimately fails. Still worth checking out for the visual content alone though. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2021 10:29:06 GMT -5
Has anyone here read Leonard Chang's Allen Choice Trilogy (starting with Over the Shoulder) or Henry Chang's Jack Yu books (starting with Chinatown Beat)? Both got a mention in the back matter of The Good Asian #5 as inspirations for the title character and the book (along with the Charlie Chan stuff, Hammett, Chandler and Walter Mosely), but I am completely unfamiliar with them. A quick check of my public library catalog turned up nothing form either series in their catalog, so the easy cheap way to sample them isn't there, and I was wondering if people here had read them and their reactions to get some input as to whether it is worth tracking these down (either through ILL or searching used bookstores or Amazon).
-M
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