Pulped

What do Mickey Spillane, Richard Thompson, Cornell Woolrich and Philip Glass all have in common? I cite them all in this Q&A with Cullen Gallagher over at his great Pulp Serenade site.

My dinner with the boys

I guest blog at the excellent Mulholland Books site today, talking about my 2008 dinner with some N.J. mobsters, and the genesis of COLD SHOT TO THE HEART.

COLD SHOT weekend

(Click to enlarge)

Are they talking about hot tubs?

Snapped off a coffee shop menu in South Fla.

The sounds of Asbury Park, 1967

The Asbury Park music scene, circa 1967. A summer's worth of shows at Convention Hall.

With a tip of the hat to Stan Goldstein.

NY Times News Service review

Another syndicated review, this one from the New York Times News Service, via the Dayton (Oh.) Daily News.

Some warm words for COLD SHOT

Two new and noteworthy reviews out today. One from the inestimable Oline H. Cogdill, written for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, but syndicated elsewhere as well.
Another very long - and thoughtful - one, from the Chicago Cultural magazine, The Week Behind.

What I'm reading ...

Today, over at Campaign for the American Reader, I get to talk about the new novel by one of my favorite authors, Tom McGuane.

Random Readings, Vol. 10

This installment of Random Readings is a meditation on manhood, from Helen Eustis' 1953 novel THE FOOL KILLER, about a young orphan boy roaming the post-Civil War American South, and the strange companion he picks up along the way. (It was filmed in 1965 with Anthony Perkins and Edward Albert). In this passage, the boy, George Mellish, having witnessed an attempted-murder-turned-suicide, gets some post-traumatic-stress counseling from a benevolent father figure who's taken him in:

"Well, George," says he, "looks like here's a case where they ain't nothing for it but to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and start in to be a man ...

"I don't reckon nobody could give you an exact recipe, but I'll tell you the best I know. Seems to me like you got to look at the facts and look at em straight, but not go play-acting off in this direction and that, making out things is worse than they are when they're bad enough to begin with. You seen some dreadful things happen ... Ain't no wonder if you don't know what to make of em ... Only this much I do know: ain't no use laying here turning yourself inside out over your fault, his fault, t'other one's fault; and it ain't no use brooding over dreadfulness, neither. You got to think of them good times ... and try your level best to put the awful ones out of your mind. Enjoy the good and stand up to the bad - that's the best I can tell you how to be a man."

– From THE FOOL KILLER

by Helen Eustis (1953)

Tuning up THE MECHANIC

More memories of my misspent '70s youth: I play film critic over at the Rap Sheet today, with a look at the new version of the 1972 Charles Bronson film THE MECHANIC. It goes well with a splash or two - or ten - of Mandom.

Meanwhile, on Page 69 ...

COLD SHOT TO THE HEART undergoes the Page 69 test over at Campaign for the American Reader.

Random Readings, Vol. 9

"But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes."

– Robert Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time"

COLD SHOT ARC giveaway & Stark contest

Trent Reynolds is giving away an Advance Reading Copy of COLD SHOT TO THE HEART over at his Violent World of Parker site. All you have to do is e-mail him at the site address (available on the contest page) with the subject “Cold Shot giveaway.” He'll pick a winner at random.

He's also offering a signed first edition of the long out-of-print hardback of my first novel, THE BARBED-WIRE KISS, for sharp-eyed readers of COLD SHOT (and fans of Richard Stark). Contest details on the same page.