Coming this August to The Showroom Theatre in Asbury Park. I'll be hosting, with special guests. Film titles to be announced soon.

Letter from Guadalcanal

(Click for larger image)

A few years back, my cousin found this letter in a box in my late grandmother's basement, where it had sat undisturbed for more than 65 years. It was written by my father, William Wallace Stroby, in November 1942, shortly after his destroyer, the USS Cushing, was attacked and sunk by the Japanese in a major sea battle off Savo Island, in the South Pacific. Half the crew was killed. My father and his surviving shipmates were rescued at sea and taken to nearby Guadalcanal, where he quickly penned this V-Mail letter to his mother. He was 20 years old.



The letter reads:



Dear Mom, Just have time and paper for a few lines letting you know I am well and safe. Right now I am on Guadalcanal, Solomons. You will probably see by the papers why. Hope to be off in the near future, and maybe this time I will be able to come home for a few days. This is not such a bad place considering what it was a few months ago. Please don’t worry about me. I am well and safe. Not even wounded.

God bless you.

Love, Wally

The Golden Age of Movie Tie-Ins. Pt. 5

Clint Eastwood edition:

Where nothing is forgotten or forgiven

(The following is an abridged and edited version of an essay I wrote in 2009, reprinted here in advance of this weekend's Asbury Park Bookfest, where Dennis Tafoya and I will host a screening of the classic 1945 film noir DETOUR.)


It may seem a stretch to equate noir master Cornell Woolrich's doom-laden novels and stories with the music of Bruce Springsteen, but they share a lot of common ground.


Woolrich was, as his biographer termed him, "The Poe of the 20th century and the poet of its shadows." The dozens of novels and short stories he wrote over four decades, many of which were filmed, were almost always set in urban nightscapes, and shared a pervasive feeling of dread. His characters were often pursued for crimes of passion they didn't commit – or maybe they did. The titles alone set the mood – NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES, THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, WALTZ INTO DARKNESS, RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK, all evocative of the noirest of noir sensibilities. Woolrich's protagonists were haunted and hunted, tripped by fate and trapped by the night.


Along with their fondness for nocturnal imagery, the best of Springsteen's earlier songs often shared that haunted – and haunting – quality found in Woolrich's work. The narrator of Springsteen's "Stolen Car" (from 1980's "The River") is an archetypal Woolrich character, mourning a lost love while driving a stolen car "through a pitch-black night," wracked by guilt and fear that "in this darkness, I will disappear."


Many Springsteen songs could easily have been Woolrich titles – "Darkness on the Edge of Town," "Downbound Train," "Point Blank" "Because the Night," "New York City Serenade" (Woolrich had his own "Manhattan Love Song"). And years before Springsteen came along, Woolrich found his own muse in Asbury Park, setting several stories in that once-glamorous but forever-fading seaside resort. The best-known of these is probably 1935's "Boy With Body," which was reprinted as "The Corpse and the Kid" in the 1988 Woolrich collection DARKNESS AT DAWN.


One of the most Woolrich-esque Springsteen titles is "Something in the Night," from his 1978 album "Darkness on the Edge of Town." It's one of the great but lesser-known Springsteen songs, filled with evocative lyrics and existential angst. It's also one of his most geographically specific songs, set on Asbury Park's Kingsley Street, which at one time formed a oval with Ocean Avenue known as "The Circuit," where aimless teenagers cruised on hot summer nights. The Circuit is also mentioned in that other Springsteen song with a quintessentially noir title, "Night," from 1975's "Born to Run."


While listening to some archival Springsteen shows, I came upon the first-ever version of "Something in the Night," from a concert at the Monmouth Arts Center (now the Count Basie Theatre) in Red Bank, N.J., on Aug. 1, 1976. Springsteen and his E Street Band were performing a six-night stretch there, debuting new material while an ongoing lawsuit kept them from recording (other songs premiered that week included the equally haunting "The Promise.")


This earliest version of "Something in the Night" is even starker than the one on the album. Slowed down, with only a simple keyboard accompaniment, the Red Bank version is radically different from what was released, with bleak impressionistic lyrics and references to a night when the devil "will walk these streets like a man."


Springsteen refined the song further through the years, leading up to the "Darkness" version, which is the one he currently performs, albeit infrequently. The various live versions also offer an insight into his songwriting process, as he gradually reshaped both the lyrics and mood of the song. By the time of a widely-bootlegged performance at New York's Palladium in November 1976, Springsteen had added a mournful trumpet to the arrangement, along with a new final verse. The album track lyrics can be found here. The Aug. 1, 1976 Red Bank version follows.


Well, I'm riding down Kingsley figuring I'll get a drink
I turn the radio way up loud so I don't have to think
And I ease down on the gas, looking for a moment when the world seems right
And I go tearing into the heart of something in the night

I picked this chick up hitch-hiking, she just hung her head out the window and she screamed
Said she was looking for someplace to go, to die or be redeemed
Well, you can ride this road 'til dawn, without another human being in sight
'Cause baby, everybody's gone looking for something in the night

And me I gotta stop running, I gotta stop my fooling around
Well, I got this stuff running around my head, I can't live with or live down
She wants me to push this machine until the whole world disappears out of sight
And just me and you baby, we'll surrender to the kindness of something in the night

Now tonight no sins are forgotten, no sins are forgiven
And when I look out on these streets sometimes I can't tell the dead from the living
Just winners and losers, mumbling about some vague wrong and right
And kids like us, rumbling over something in the night

And now you people out on the island, lock your doors and take your children by the hand
Put on your black dress, baby, because tonight the devil will walk these streets like a man
I don't know about you, but I'm gonna bring along my switchblade, in case that fool wants to fight
If he wants me I'll be running down the highway, chasing something in the night.


Audio of the Palladium version below.

(TOP: Artist Larry Schwinger's cover painting for the 1982 Ballantine Books edition of Cornell Woolrich's THE BLACK CURTAIN.)


Below: Singer-songwriter Matthew Ryan's version:

Asbury Park BookFest, April 19-22

(Click on image to enlarge.)

THE BARBED-WIRE KISS: First novel, First draft, First page

From the vaults: The first (typewritten) manuscript page of the first draft of THE BARBED-WIRE KISS, along with the final published page as it appeared (click on images for larger size) .

DETOUR in Asbury Park 4/19/13

Get ready for a bracing dose of tough dames, cheap booze and bad luck when Dennis Tafoya and I host a screening of Edgar G. Ulmer's classic 1945 fim noir DETOUR at the Showroom Theater in downtown Asbury Park, N.J., April 19 at 7:30 p.m., with fun stuff to follow. The event kicks off the first-ever Asbury Park BookFest, which runs April 19-22. More details here. You can buy advance tickets online here.

F. Paul Wilson's review of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

Back (way back) when I was the books page editor at The Asbury Park Press, I recruited best-selling novelist (and fellow Jersey Shore resident) F. Paul Wilson to write a couple reviews for the paper (I'm pretty sure I paid him, but that was a long time ago). One of those reviews was of Thomas Harris's SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. These are scans of Wilson's original typewritten pages of his review, which was published in the Press in 1988 (click on individual pages for a larger, more readable view).

The Five Best Crime Films You've Never Seen

Over at Australian author Andrew Nette's website, Pulp Curry, my picks for The Five Best Crime Films You've Never Seen.

"Five Things That Changed My Life"

Crimespree Magazine quizzed me about five albums/books/movies/etc. that changed my life. You can read my answers here.

Joseph's Reviews on KINGS OF MIDNIGHT

"Edgy and fast-paced ... intense plot immersion, and a strong sense of urgency." Read the full review here.

LOVERS IN THE COLD on Kindle, Nook

My Christmas-set, Springsteen-inspired short story "Lovers in the Cold," is again available for download via Kindle and Nook.

An earlier version of the story first appeared in Jessica Kaye and Richard Brewer's 2005 anthology "MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER: Stories Inspired by the Haunting Bruce Springsteen Song." Kaye and Brewer asked a number of crime novelists, including C.J. Box, Eddie Muller and David Corbett, to submit short stories using the song, which appears on Springsteen's 1975 album "Born to Run," as a springboard. The New York Times wrote about the collection in 2005, and Publishers Weekly reviewed the audio edition.

"Lovers" is set in Bradley Beach, N.J., and N.Y.C. in 1974, and finds two Jersey Shore guys caught between friendship and fate, and in way over the heads in the city across the river. The title comes from an early Springsteen song recorded for "Born to Run" but never released.

Season's Greetings 2012

An Xmas song for always

One of the great modern Christmas songs, from Steve Earle. Been thinking about this song a lot lately, especially after the events of the last couple weeks.

Rutgers Alum-Knights profile (click on image to enlarge)

A new profile in Alumni-Knights, the alumni newspaper of Rutgers University, proving, possibly, that my six undergraduate years there weren't a waste.

UPDATE: The on-line version of the story is now available here.

GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER audiobook on iTunes

The unabridged audiobook version of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER, wonderfully read by actress Karen White, is now available for instant download on iTunes, as are the e-book editions of NOVEMBER, KINGS OF MIDNIGHT, COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, THE HEARTBREAK LOUNGE and THE BARBED-WIRE KISS. Links for all can be found here.

MysteryPeople's 10 Best Books of 2012

MysteryPeople, the crime-centric store-within-a-store at Austin's great indie BookPeople, picks KINGS OF MIDNIGHT as one of the Best Books of 2012. You can find the full list here.

Marilyn's Mystery Reads on KINGS OF MIDNIGHT

"Wallace Stroby has written a thriller that has you cheering for the 'bad guys' ... It’s a tightrope act for an author, but Stroby handles it perfectly." Read the full review here.

KINGS OF MIDNIGHT on Kirkus' Best of 2012

KINGS OF MIDNIGHT finds itself in some excellent company on Kirkus Reviews' year-end list of the Best Books of 2012. You can find the complete Fiction list here.

The Next Big Thing: Alison Gaylin

(NOTE: Last week, I tagged Alison Gaylin as part of this week's NEXT BIG THING blogathon – a blog-hopping collection of writers answering questions about their latest works, or works in progress. As Alison is currently blogless, I'm hosting her here. - W.).



I was thrilled to be tagged for this by the wonderful and very talented Wallace Stroby for THE NEXT BIG THING – along with great writers Andrew Nette and Scott Adlerberg, and great writer/fellow true crime enthusiast Dennis Tafoya! The one problem is, uh ... I'm between blogs at the moment. So Wallace – whose books are fantastic and should be read repeatedly – agreed to post my responses. (Right, Wallace?)



Here goes:



1.) What’s the title or working title of your new/next book?

The new book is called INTO THE DARK. The sequel to AND SHE WAS, it’s the second book in the Brenna Spector series and it’s out Jan. 29!



2.) Where did the idea for the book come from?

The idea for the whole series came from an article I read about hyperthymestic syndrome – perfect autobiographical memory. To me the most fascinating aspect of this disorder wasn’t so much the ability to remember everything, but the inability to forget. I think forgetting is one of our most important survival mechanisms. So I decided to create Brenna Spector – a detective afflicted with this syndrome that may improve her performance on the job, but wreak hell on her personal life.

The idea for this book – about Brenna’s search for a missing “performance artist”/webcam girl who talks about memories only she or her missing sister could know about – comes from a whole bunch of ideas about memories and intimacy and guilt and obsession and, uh, porn.



3.) What genre is your book?

Crime fiction. Suspense. Whatever you want to call it.



4.) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition? Or TV series?

I think Rashida Jones has the right look and sensibility to play Brenna. My 11-year-old daughter says Brenna’s brilliant young douchebag assistant Trent should be played by Adam Levine – which I think is a fantastic idea. There are many other characters – and I’m open to any and all casting suggestions. (I love hearing from readers about this.)



5.) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Brenna Spector’s quest for a missing webcam girl brings her closer than ever to her long-lost sister – as she uncovers a decades-old web of deception, sex, guilt and murder. (Okay, I have to take a breath now.)



6.) Is/will your book be self-published or traditionally published?

INTO THE DARK is my sixth traditionally published book – and my second for HarperCollins.



7.) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

About five months.



8.) What other books within the genre would you compare this story to?

Hmm… Got me there. I do love what Laura Lippman has done in many of her books with the idea of memory, and if this comes remotely close, I would be honored.



10.) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

There is a long arc story to this series about Brenna’s missing sister, which this book focuses more on than the previous. Like AND SHE WAS, the plot is pretty intricate with, I hope, a lot of surprises. And there’s guilt and murder and sex in it too.