What I did on my birthday ...

... well, slightly earlier than my birthday, which hasn't happened yet.

Above is a 1940s-era AT-6 Texan dual-cockpit aircraft used to train pilots during World War II. More than 15,000 were built from the 1930s on, and apparently a lot of them are still flying, under private ownership. A couple weekends back I paid to fly in one for a half hour out of the Robert Miller Airpark in Berkeley Township, N.J., in the middle of the Pine Barrens. Though I'm not a pilot, I've always had a fascination with WWII aviation, so I figured this was a chance to get a taste of what it was like (without someone shooting at you).

The Texan is a big, loud, powerful machine. The student sits in the front cockpit, with the teacher/pilot (in this case, owner/operator Ott Clermont) in the back. The one I flew in was built in 1943 and the front cockpit looked like this:

Once we were airborne and clear of the field, with the Pine Barrens a safe 2,000-feet below us, Ott let me take the stick. It was a beautiful day with no clouds or wind, so it was pretty smooth flying. I was able to bank left, straighten out and fly toward the ocean, then bank left again and fly north along the beach. It was relatively simple, especially since all I had to worry about was the stick, as opposed to rudder, ailerons, trimtabs, etc. I was able to fly along like that for a good 15 minutes, slightly amazed at how that huge piece of machinery responded to even the slightest pressure on the stick.

I turned back toward the airport then and Ott took over the controls once more and led us through a pair of rolls and finally a complete loop. It was my first time ever flying under these conditions, and, I have to say, there's a huge difference between reading about "pullings Gs" and actually pulling them. For both the rolls and loop, the plane has to dive first to pick up speed, and then, when the maneuver begins, the G-forces pin you back in your seat. This is especially true of the loop, where you're flying vertically and then suddenly upside down and weightless at the apex, before coming back down the other side. My breakfast stayed down, but my legs were a little spongy for a couple hours afterward.

Ott brought us in for a beautiful landing and the whole thing was over before I knew it. I was a little drymouthed, but it was a lot of fun. Next time though, I want to do an Immelman.

****
Out of town with little internet access for the next two weeks, so no blogging until I get back. Some people have been asking me about the ongoing situation at The Star-Ledger, but I've been trying to avoid getting into too much of that here, especially since there isn't much in the way of further news. More when I get back though.

Somewhere in the swamps of Jersey

 A dark day in the newsroom this week, but I'm not going to dwell on that. Some additional thoughts on it from Editor & Publisher here.

This week also brought three Springsteen shows at Giants Stadium, two of which I got to attend. They'll likely be the last ones at the venue as well, since it's scheduled to be demolished in 2010. Rumor is the Meadowlands arena - currently dubbed the Izod Center - is on the hit list as well.

Thursday's show was delayed for an hour by what, in retrospect, was a very Jersey event - a propane tanker overturned that afternoon on the N.J. Turnpike, on the exit ramp that led to the Meadowlands. Traffic was backed up for miles and diverted to neighboring roads which also quickly backed up as well. The concert started at 9:30 and ended at an amazing 12:40 a.m., non-stop with no intermission.

A great show, with some real surprises ("Light of Day," Pretty Flamingo"), but the Ledger's Jay Lustig sums it all up better than I. You can find his reviews here, as well as interviews he did with various E Street Band members here.

Even better are these videos from NJ.com, which came directly from the concert video feed Thursday:





More can be found here.

And in case you've ever wondered why so many of the best seats to in-demand shows never make it to the public but end up on StubHub and eBay at 5 to 10 times their face value, some clues can be found here. But hey, it's Jersey, folks.

We have a winner ...

... as of 10:19 E.T. tonight (7/23). Congrats to James Cubby of Fair Lawn, N.J., who was the first to message me with all 14 correct answers. He walks away with these prizes.

And now, the answers:

14: This celebrated sessionplayer and Warren Zevon compatriot can be seen going down with the ship in the original THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. Name the performer.
Robert "Waddy" Wachtel. In addition to being Zevon's long-time guitarist, he plays a member of the band performing on the S.S. Poseidon during its ill-fated final cruise.

13: When it was released in the United States, this British film was retitled to make it seem as if it were based on a work by Edgar Allan Poe, with a new voiceover by its star to cement the connection. Name the film’s original title.
WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968). When it was released in the U.S., it was retitled THE CONQUEROR WORM, after the Poe poem, which star Vincent Price reads over the credits.

12: In 1977’s NEW YORK, NEW YORK, Jimmy Doyle and Francine Evans first meet during a performance by what band?
The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. In the film, Dorsey is played by real-life trombonist and bandleader William Tole.

11: Though he went on to star in other films for director Akira Kurosawa – sometimes in lead roles – this actor has only the briefest walk-on in the director’s 1954 classic SEVEN SAMURAI. Name the actor.
Tatsuya Nakadai. He appears briefly in the scene in which the searchers are sizing up passing samurai as possible hires. Reportedly, he and Kurosawa spent five hours on the scene, because the director didn't feel his walk was natural enough.

10: How old is Travis Bickle at the beginning of TAXI DRIVER?
26. He gives his age while he's applying at the cab company.

9: How many men are left behind to fight the rearguard action in Sam Fuller’s FIXED BAYONETS?
48. One of the easier questions, but taken from an excellent low-budget film set during the Korean War, while the war was still going on.

8: In the words of Warner Oland, this plant “is the only known cure for werewolfery.” Name the plant.
The mariphasa, as avowed by Dr. Yogami (Oland) in 1935's WEREWOLF OF LONDON.

7: Quentin Tarantino named a now-defunct distribution company after this violent 1970s B-film. Name the film.
ROLLING THUNDER (1977). Scripted by TAXI DRIVER writer Paul Schrader and directed by John Flynn, it was about a Vietnam vet (William Devane) who turns vigilante after his family is brutally attacked. An early (and great) co-starring role for Tommy Lee Jones.

6: This Hong Kong action classic makes use of a Lionel Richie song as a musical code among undercover police. Name the film.
HARD-BOILED (1992). This John Woo-directed action epic even has star Chow Yun-Fat singing lines from Richie's hit song "Hello."

5: In Steven Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, government forces mobilize using trucks bearing the logo of this real-life supermarket chain. Name the chain.
Piggly Wiggly, the nation's "first true self-service grocery store." It operates mainly in the South and Midwest.

4: In the circus soap opera CARNIVAL STORY (1954), a stunt diver (Lyle Bettger) and his wife (Anne Baxter) are featured in a photo spread in a real-life magazine. Name the magazine and the person on its cover.
Life Magazine, featuring then vice president Richard Nixon on its cover.

3: What iconic image – a fixture of almost every werewolf film – does *not* appear in the 1940 classic THE WOLF MAN?
The full moon. It's never shown in the film.

2: Before helming a science fiction blockbuster, this writer/director helped create a popular TV show and co-wrote and co-produced an acclaimed crime drama from 2000. Who was it?
Matt Reeves. The CLOVERFIELD director co-created TV's "Felicity" with J.J. Abrams, and co-wrote and co-produced the crime drama THE YARDS with his film school classmate James Gray.

And finally ...

1: Who are Charles Rains, Joseph Scilose and John Doe and in what Best Picture nominee are they characters?
They're the three men Travis Bickle kills at the climax of TAXI DRIVER. Their names aren't mentioned in the film or in the credits, but they're visible in the newspaper accounts of the shooting that adorn Travis' wall at the end of the film (though winner Cubby correctly notes that it should be "Anthony Scilose" instead of "Joseph"). Rains (or alternately "Rain") is Harvey Keitel's character, though he's referred to as both "Matthew" and "Sport" in the course of the film. (screenwriter Schrader reused the name "Charlie Rane" for the hero of ROLLING THUNDER, played by Willian Devane, see above). Scilose is the mafioso played by Bob Maroff, and the John Doe is Iris' timekeeper, played by Murray Moston, who loses his right hand to Travis' .44 Magnum.

However, it might well be that Cubby had an inside line on that final answer, being that he hails from Fair Lawn, which, as everyone knows, is also home to Henry Krinkle.

And that, folks, is the end of The Ultimate Post-Internet Movie Trivia Contest, now and forevermore.

I'm going to leave these questions and answers up for about a week and then delete them from the blog for space reasons. Hope someone had some fun with them along the way.

"Generation Kill"

I've now seen all seven episodes of the new HBO miniseries GENERATION KILL, which premieres tonight, and I have to say it's like nothing I've ever seen on television before. Taken from Evan Wright's book, drawn from his time embedded with a Marine Recon unit in Iraq in 2003, the series feels more like journalism than drama. It's a straightforward you-are-there narrative told from the point of view of the boots on the ground, with little or no time spared for big-picture perspective or pondering what it all means. It's brutally realistic, profanely funny and often disorienting. It's been brought to the screen by David Simon and Ed Burns, creators of THE WIRE, and, like that show, it never stops to fill you in or explain what's happening or who's who. It drops you into the midst of the chaos and trusts you'll figure it out along the way.

Because of that, like THE WIRE, GENERATION KILL may end up playing better on DVD than weekly television. Even watching the early screeners pretty much in a row I had to backtrack to pick up story elements or key points of dialogue I missed the first time. And it's so filled with military terminology and jargon that it can be hard to parse what exactly's being said, much less who's who in the chain of command.

I showed the screeners to a friend who spent four years in the 82nd Airborne (albeit 25 years ago) and he was over the roof about the show's verisimilitude and tone. Even though many of the details were Marine Corps-specific, he immediately recognized character types and parallel situations to the ones he'd experienced back in the day. And he gave high marks to the humor, which he found to be dead-on and precise. The show was "a lot like Shakespeare," he wrote me. " You don't need to know everything about it to get it."

Star-Ledger TV critic Alan Sepinwall has more on the show today, including interviews with Simon and Wright.

Random Readings, Vol. 5

This installment of Random Readings is from Lorrie Moore's 1986 novel ANAGRAMS. Some thoughts on growing older and new experiences ...


The teacher took a walk before her afternoon class. Near the campus were several old houses rented by some of FVCC's full-time students and from them blared radio jabber and stereo music. That is the difference between the young and the not-so-young, she thought. The young keep their windows open so that the world can fly in and out. By the time you hit your thirties, you're less hospitable; you start closing up the windows. You've had enough of the world; you have, you think, everything you need for the wintry rest of life. You can't let anything else in, for you will never understand it. And the nightmare, of course, is that as you slowly start shuttering up your house, you turn and suddenly see, with a gasp, that you are the only thing in it.


- From "Anagrams," copyright 1986 by Lorrie Moore

Rock & roll tours of the Jersey Shore

Well, I ain't giving them, but there are people who do, and you can find out about them here. In the meantime, the next best thing is the third edition of their book ROCK AND ROLL TOUR OF THE JERSEY SHORE, which has just been released. Stan and Jean are long-time locals, and this is one of the few books of its type not plagued with factual and geographic inaccuracies (another is Daniel Wolff's great 4TH OF JULY, ASBURY PARK: A HISTORY OF THE PROMISED LAND, which I wrote about at length when it came out back in 2005).


ROCK AND ROLL TOUR is both a great reference book and an evocative time capsule, tracing the glory days of the Asbury Park/Jersey Shore music scene past, present and (hopefully) future. Full disclosure: The book features two anecdotes penned by me - one about a chance 3 a.m. encounter in Asbury Park back in 1984, and the other about a confrontation with an angry and tired Clarence Clemons a year later, when I was a young reporter for The Asbury Park Press and subject to the stupid ideas and humiliating assignments thought up by senior editors.

More trivia and prizes later this week. Also, possibly, a small announcement about something people have been asking me about for awhile.

Thought for the day ...

... or maybe the decade.

"Perseverance is where the gods dwell."

- Director Werner Herzog, quoting a Peruvian saying.

More Stark raving

I've received a couple e-mails since last week, bemoaning the fact that my Forgotten Book Fridays choice - the 1967 Donald E. Westlake/Richard Stark novel THE RARE COIN SCORE - is not only out of print, but pretty much unavailable from used book vendors
for less than $30, and often closer to $100. Unfortunately, it's the same way with many of the later Stark books, especially from 1966's THE SEVENTH (aka "The Split") through 1974's BUTCHER'S MOON, which may be the rarest of them all (at right is the original Fawcett Gold Medal edition of 1969's THE SOUR LEMON SCORE).

Coincidentally, just this week comes news (to me at least) that the University of Chicago Press, of all people, plans to reprint all the Parker novels in chronological order, beginning in September with THE HUNTER (aka "Point Blank," aka "Payback"), THE MAN WITH THE GETAWAY FACE and THE OUTFIT. Not since the 1985 Avon paperback editions has someone actually pulled this off. In the early 1980s, Gregg Press published a handful of the early ones in limited edition hardcovers, and on the heels of the 1999 Mel Gibson film PAYBACK, Mysterious Press/Warner Books reprinted some of the earlier novels along with the most recent (with somewhat generic covers). Now even those are out of print. Here's hoping U of C stays the course.

Forgotten Book Friday

... in which I pick up Patti Abbott's tag-team effort of assembling a list of books which, in her words, "we love but might have forgotten over the years."

I've done this sort of thing on the blog before, with "One Book and Beyond," an extension of The Rap Sheet's One Book Project from last year. I've previously written about Leonard Gardner's FAT CITY, Jonathan Valin's EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES, Lawrence Block's THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD and Anthony Lee's MARTIN QUINN.



This time, though, I want to go back even farther, to 1967's THE RARE COIN SCORE, Donald E. Westlake's ninth "Richard Stark" novel about a hardcore professional thief named Parker. Parker needs no introduction, but unfortunately THE RARE COIN SCORE has been effectively out of print since the 1985 Avon paperback edition. That's too bad, because in my mind it's the quintessential Parker novel, the uberStark.

It was first published as a paperback original (cover above) by Fawcett Gold Medal, under the editorship of the legendary Knox Burger, and adorned with a classic Robert McGinnis cover. Despite its almost generic title (when the series moved from Pocket Books to Fawcett, the first four books used the word "Score" in their titles), RARE COIN SCORE is a landmark book in the series. It was a revamped Parker with a new publisher and a major new character, Claire, who would become Parker's regular woman for the rest of the series (she figures prominently in the latest, this year's DIRTY MONEY).

SCORE also has maybe the greatest opening line in Starkdom:

Parker spent two weeks on the white sand beach at Biloxi, and on a white sandy bitch named Belle, but he was restless, and one day without thinking about it he checked out and sent a forwarding address to Handy McKay and moved on to New Orleans.

The second sentence is just as good:

He took a room in a downtown motel and connected with a girl folk singer the first night, but all she did was complain how her manager was lousing up her career, so three days later he ditched her and took up with a Bourbon Street stripper instead.

(The previous eight Parker books had all begun with the word "When," a device that returned in 1997's COMEBACK and continues to this day.)

Revolving around the robbery of the bourse room at a coin show in Indianapolis, SCORE is Parker at his leanest and meanest, both in terms of character and prose (the original Gold Medal edition runs only 160 pages). It also contains scenes in which the writing is so simple and direct - yet evocative - that they've stuck with me ever since I first read them. Here's one, the beginning of Part One, Chapter Eight:

"I must be a masochist," Claire said. She was sitting up in the bed, knees up, arms wrapped around her legs.

Parker, lying beside her, said "I hadn't noticed."

She gave him a quick smile, then looked away again, saying, "I'm always attracted to men who are about to get killed."

"Not always," said Parker. "Light me a cigarette."

"What, not you? You're the worst of them all." She took the cigarette and matches from the night table, lit two cigarettes and gave him one. "The first boy I ever - ever went around with, drove in stock car races every weekend. His left leg was all scars from an accident."

Parker said, "Ashtray."

This is also the only Stark novel I remember in which Parker shoots a relative innocent, gunning down a Pinkerton guard who draws on him during the course of the robbery. And in her first appearance, Claire is more the classic noir femme fatale, stringing along an amateur named Billy Lebatard until he gets the job in motion, then switching her allegiance to Parker, setting off a triangle that almost sours the whole plan. Think Marie Windsor in Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING.

THE RARE COIN SCORE is existential crime fiction at its best. It's also a master class in terse, effective writing. The fact that it - and so many of the other Stark novels - remains out of print is a crime.


(For my thoughts on Brian Helgeland's restored Parker adaptation PAYBACK: STRAIGHT UP - THE DIRECTOR'S CUT, see here. .)

"On the Outs"

As any honest media person will tell you, one of the great perks of being in the business is free stuff. Lots of it. Books, CDs, DVDs and more pour in unsolicited, their makers hoping to get even the slightest mention of their work in print or on air, anything to help it stand out from the thousands of other releases out there.

The down side? Lots of free stuff. More than one person could ever conceivably read or watch or listen to. It piles up in the mail like some great always-growing beast. The sheer volume of material keeps you from getting to most of it. You put things aside for further consideration and sometimes you get back to them. More often than not, you don't.

In 2006, Warner Home Video sent me a DVD of the independent film ON THE OUTS, which had gotten a brief theatrical release the previous year. I was intrigued enough by the box copy and review blurbs to add it to the To Be Watched pile. There it languished, constantly superseded by newer releases, until last week.

My loss. ON THE OUTS is an absolutely stunning first feature by co-directors Lori Silverbush and Michael Skolnick. Filmed on location in Jersey City, N.J., it follows the intersecting stories of three troubled teenage girls. At 15, Suzette (Anny Mariano) has been sheltered from the streets by her hardworking mother - until she falls under the spell of a charming 25-year-old thug. Marisol (co-creator Paola Mendoza) is a 17-year-old single mom trying to raise her two-year-old daughter and battling a drug addiction. And Oz (Judy Marte, above, left, in an extraordinary performance) is a teenage crack dealer, struggling to care for her mentally retarded brother and hold her own fragile family together.

Silverbush and Skolnick based their film on real cases and people they encountered while taking part in a three-month workshop at the Hudson County Juvenile Detention Center in Secaucus, N.J. And it shows. Nearly every second of ON THE OUTS crackles with authenticity. It carries the same charge as Martin Scorsese's MEAN STREETS, but without that film's bravura theatricality. For much of its length, ON THE OUTS feels like a documentary, an intimate look into the lives of everyday people struggling to survive, but gradually being pulled down by the environment around them.

Not that there isn't hope to be found here. At the end of their respective storylines, all three girls encounter traumatic events that make them reassess their lives. Will they escape from the cycles that have so limited them? ON THE OUTS leaves that question unanswered. But you'll be thinking about those girls - and this film - for a long time to come.

Slight return

Apologies for the lack of posts - and to anyone who e-mailed me in the last three weeks - but an unexpected illness sidelined me for awhile. Should be back to normal posting by next week.

In the interim, congrats to Megan Abbott, the winner of this year's Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original for her great retro-noir QUEENPIN. I missed the ceremony, unfortunately, but was happy to see her well-deserved win.

And finally, after seven weeks and many incorrect responses, we have a winner of sorts for the fifth trivia question. See the update here.

Danny Federici: 1950-2008

Farewell to The Phantom. "4th of July, Asbury Park" will never sound the same again.


Or this ....

Farewell to THE WIRE

And if there was ever a more emotional moment in television history than Bubs' ascension up the stairs to his family's dinner table, I don't know what it is ...

Over at The House Next Door, I've offered my own brief contribution to their ongoing and stellar WIRE coverage, a reading list for those feeling the first pangs of withdrawal. There's also lots of great stuff to be found here, including an exclusive post-finale Q&A with David Simon.

It was a great run. I'm gonna miss it.

Why I love Lorrie Moore

Well, one of many reasons ...

In addition to being one of America's greatest short story writers (though she hasn't had a book out since 1998's BIRDS OF AMERICA), she is also an unparalleled master of the opening line.

Witness this, from her 1986 novel ANAGRAMS:

Gerard Maines lived across the hall from a woman named Benna, who four minutes into any conversation always managed to say the word "penis." He was not a prude, but, nonetheless, it made him wince.

The great lost movie trivia contest mystery

As many of you know, for the last seven years I've written something called the Ultimate Post-Internet Movie Trivia Contest for The Star-Ledger of Newark. It was a series of alternating simple/difficult - sometimes *very* difficult - movie trivia questions (79 last year), with the grand prize being an all-expenses-paid four-day trip for two to Hollywood.

And, as many of you also heard, this year's quiz fell victim to space and budget cutbacks. It is, as they say, kaput. However, it was about halfway written when the plug was pulled (it was to contain 80 questions, to commemorate the 80th year of the Oscars) and some of the questions are just too good to never see the light of day.

So, over the next few weeks, I'm going to occasionally post some of the unpublished questions here - one at a time - and the first person who messages me at my site with the correct answer will win something. No trips, unfortunately - more like CDs, DVDS and books - but there will always be an item or two to make it interesting. Be warned though, the questions will be on the *difficult* side of the scale - no easy giveaways here (and, of course, The Star-Ledger is in no way, shape or form affiliated with or responsible for ... etc etc).

I'll post the first question - and information about the prize - here Sunday afternoon, Feb. 24, 2008 - Oscar night - at around 4 p.m. ET. See you then.

****
And, in the meantime, enjoy this inspirational trailer .

Roy Scheider 1932-2008

Many years ago, I read an interview with author Richard Matheson in which he discussed the film versions of his apocalyptic vampire novel I AM LEGEND (at that point, there were only two, 1964's THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, starring Vincent Price, and 1971's THE OMEGA MAN, with Charlton Heston). Matheson hadn't been happy with either film - or actor - and told the interviewer he always felt the perfect choice to play Robert Neville would be Roy Scheider, because he personified the normal, non-heroic guy forced to cope with extreme circumstances.

Matheson's description nails it. Scheider was a '70s icon to be sure, but he was also the Everyman hero, the audience surrogate in such high-intensity films as JAWS and THE FRENCH CONNECTION, the self-doubter who nonetheless manages to muster the courage and wherewithal to do what has to be done.

A Jersey guy who (like me) attended Rutgers University, Scheider earned his movie star looks the hard way. His famous broken nose was a reminder of his boxing years (months?), when he fought in the N.J. Diamond Gloves Competition. His Everyday Guy presence grounded - and validated - almost everything he appeared in. THE SEVEN-UPS, Philip D'Antoni's follow-up to THE FRENCH CONNECTION, is an evocative 1970s New York time capsule, but it's not a great movie, except when Scheider's on screen - fortunately most of the time - as the head of an elite police unit (in CONNECTION, his character is named "Buddy Russo." In SEVEN-UPS, it's "Buddy Manucci"). He makes all that follows instantly believable.

He does the same for the character of Harry Mitchell in John Frankenheimer's 1986 52 PICK-UP (one of the best Elmore Leonard adaptations, aside from its logic-free ending, changed from the book), as a philandering - but still loving - husband, who's forced to face up to his own transgressions and extricate himself from a bind involving some very tough people, turning the tables on them in a surprising, but believable, way.

Back in April 1998, I attended the dedication of the Elaine Steinbeck Stage at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, N.Y. The widow of John Steinbeck, Elaine was one of the first female Broadway stage managers, having worked on productions such as OKLAHOMA!, OTHELLO and others. It was a small theatre - less than 300 seats - but it was packed with celebrities who'd come to honor Steinbeck (who was in the audience) and perform on the newly renamed stage. Bruce Springsteen opened the evening with an acoustic version of OKLAHOMA!'s "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" (I've waited years for a tape of that to surface, still haven't found one) and closed it with a moving rendition of "The Ghost of Tom Joad." In between, there were dramatic readings from Roddy MacDowell and Gary Sinise, a performance from Betty Comden and Adolph Green and testimonials frorm Edward Albee, Terrence McNally, E.L. Doctorow and others. It was quite the night.

But I think I was most starstruck to see Scheider - sitting about three rows from the back, low-key as ever, looking dapper but slightly frail. As the evening ended and the mingling began, I considered making my way through the crowd to tell him how much I enjoyed his films, for the same reasons I mentioned above. By the time I gathered my courage, he was gone. And that I regret.

Heroin chic

When it comes to putting true-life stories on screen, Hollywood likes to embellish. That's no surprise. However, in the case of Ridley Scott's AMERICAN GANGSTER, there may actually be more embellishment than fact, as the Associated Press has reported. In addition, some DEA agents were so angry with the way they were presented in the film that they sued. Also unhappy were the three undercover Newark police officers who actually did the street work that brought down Frank Lucas' empire. Lucas, played by Denzel Washington in the film, was already in custody by the time prosecutor Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) was brought in to help build an indictment against him.

But Hollywood is Hollywood, and if you want a more accurate look at that era and the Harlem heroin empire, check out Marc Levin's excellent documentary MR. UNTOUCHABLE, just out on DVD. It's the story of Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, the *real* heroin kingpin of Harlem in the 1970s. Like Lucas, Barnes eventually turned state's evidence and testified against his former partners, leading to dozens - if not hundreds - of convictions.

Barnes is now in the Witness Protection Program, but Levin and co-producer Mary-Jane Robinson tracked him down and got him to agree to sit for a series of interviews (his face is concealed and his voice slightly distorted when he's on screen). It's buttressed with a series of extensive interviews with former Barnes colleagues and the law enforcement officers who eventually brought him down and got him to turn. All point to Barnes' appearance on the cover of the New York Times Magazine in 1977 (above right) as the act that precipitated his downfall. Worried that the Times would use a mugshot of him (above left) to illustrate the story, Barnes agreed to pose for a Times photographer. When President Jimmy Carter saw the story that Sunday, he placed a call to U.S. Attorney General Griffen Bell. At 8 a.m. the next morning Bell informed the New York Attorney General's Office that Barnes had just become their No. 1 priority.

Also worth checking out are the DVD's many supplementary interviews and features, including a videotaped conference call - from Levin's office - between Barnes and Lucas.

Stars in the night

I'm a little late in getting around to posting this, but I did attend the 73rd annual New York Film Critics Circle awards at Spotlight in Times Square Jan 6., which was much fun but slightly surreal. Kyle Smith of the New York Post wrote a snarky, but fairly dead-on, synopsis of the night.

Other quick impressions:

- I've always admired Sarah Polley's aloof, slightly otherworldly screen presence - she'd be great in a remake of Park Chan-wook's LADY VENGEANCE. But in person (I physically bumped into her at one point as she was racing across the floor to see someone) she's actually very young, cheerful and girly.

- Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem are both tall, and appear to have the same chin.

- Steve Buscemi gave the speech of the night, presenting the Coen Bros with their best director award. It was drink-spilling funny, though the Bros. - or at least Joel - seemed vaguely irritated through most of the evening.

- Ellen Barkin's dress was ... well, have a look yourself.

- Patricia Clarkson, whom I've loved from afar ever since I saw her in THE DEAD POOL, looked terrific and radiated such an aura of general niceness that she fairly glowed.

- In the Embarassing Moment Department, I approached and struck up a conversation with director Michael Almereyda, certain that I knew him from somewhere else. However, not only was I unable to establish where that might have been, but as he ran through his very substantial list of credits, I realized I hadn't seen any of his films. I *had* seen a great episode of DEADWOOD he directed, but by the time we got to that point, the conversation was in the last throes of a slow, painful death. Sorry about that, Michael.

The irony is, that particular episode contains the quintessential DEADWOOD speech, courtesy of Al Swearengen, which I can reel off the top of my head whenever my DW fan credentials are questioned:

"Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man… and give some back.”

That night, thankfully, I kept it to myself.

Nightmare logic

Back at Rutgers University in the 1980s, I took a film criticism seminar with the great film critic (and, at that time, Penthouse columnist) Roger Greenspun. One of the dozen or so films we watched that semester was Francois Truffaut's MISSISSIPPI MERMAID, based on Cornell Woolrich's 1947 novel WALTZ INTO DARKNESS. Greenspun loved the film but dismissed the source material - and all of Woolrich's books - as "unreadable," a statement which drew laughter from the class.

I took exception - and offense. I was on a serious Woolrich kick at the time, having discovered him through the paperback reissues Ballantine Books had just done of his major novels, most of which were graced with moodily beautiful cover paintings by Larry Schwinger. I don't think I'd ever heard of Woolrich before I bought RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK, solely on the basis of the cover art. In the year or so that followed, I read all the Ballantine reprints and went looking for more Woolrich. What Greenspun found unreadable, I found irresistible. I loved the mood, the ambiance, the urban nightscapes (New York, more often than not), and the pervasive atmosphere of dread, even if the plots didn't always make much, uh, sense. This was noir so strong it warped reality. The stories unfolded with the logic - and inevitability - of a nightmare.

I haven't seen - or heard of - Greenspun in years (he was a brilliant critic and an excellent teacher, despite his anti-Woolrich bias), but his words came back to me last week while reading Hard Case Crime's" reissue of Woolrich's 1950 novel FRIGHT. The jacket copy says it's the book's first reprinting in more than 50 years. Halfway into the novel, it was easy to see why. Some passages are literally unreadable - and yet there are others that are sheer noir poetry.


The plot is pure Woolrich. In the heat of anger, a man commits a horrible crime hours before his wedding, then skips town (New York, again) with his bride to start a new life elsewhere. But as his past - and his guilt - catches up with him, he ends up committing a series of crimes in order to cover up the first one, while his long-suffering - but not terribly bright - wife begins to realize he's not quite the happy-go-lucky guy she once thought him to be.

Here's part of the poetry, a shorthand description of a man on a bender in Manhattan, getting progressively drunker as he stumbles from bar to bar:

All at once there was a woman with him. She'd been with him for just a few minutes, she'd been with him for long, endless nights at a time. She kept changing her dress at intervals. And even her hair and face to go with it. First she was in pink, then suddenly she was in light green. As though a gelatin slide had revolved and cast a different tint over her... The bars were very unreliable tonight. They looked nice and steady, but he'd lean on them too heavily, or something. They'd tilt way up on one side, and slope all the way down on the other... The bars gave place to a sidewalk. A sidewalk that was straight up and down in front of his face.

And here's the, um, other part:

The night was like purple ink. And it was as though the bottle that had held the ink had been smashed against the sky by some insurgent celestial accountant. For heaven was pitted with its tiny, twinkling particles of broken glass. And there seemed to be no one up there to sweep them up. God's office was closed for the night.

Though it's set in 1915 (in his mind, Woolrich might well have romanticized that era, the way we now romanticize the New York of the 1930s and '40s), FRIGHT is classic Woolrich - evocative, unsettling and often downright loopy. It's not one of his great novels, by any means, but it's Woolrich through and through, from the comma splices to the over-the-top descriptive passages to the omnipresent feeling of guilt and undercurrent of sexual shame. And - most Woolrichian of all - the Doom that watches over us always, waiting for its moment to arrive.

Happy Holidays!

Val Lewton: Art vs. life

“Life isn’t a support-system for art,” Stephen King writes in his wonderful book “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft." “It’s the other way around.”

Those words came back to me this week while watching the fascinating and sobering new documentary “Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows," produced and narrated by Martin Scorsese and premiering on TMC Jan. 14, with a DVD release to follow.

In the 1940s, Lewton was the unquestioned master of the American horror film. Tapped by RKO to produce a series of thrillers to compete with Universal - home to Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man - Lewton took a more subtle approach. Beginning with 1942's CAT PEOPLE and through the Boris Karloff-starring BEDLAM four years later, Lewton's films were moody, evocative, sensual, surprising and often disturbing. They included I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (loosely based on JANE EYRE), THE BODY SNATCHER (Karloff's greatest performance) and THE SEVENTH VICTIM, a deadly serious drama about a devil-worshiping cult in Greenwich Village that's a spiritual predecessor to ROSEMARY'S BABY. Lewton's films were the cinematic equivalent of the dark and haunted novels of Cornell Woolrich. He even adapted Woolrich's novel BLACK ALIBI into the classic 1943 film THE LEOPARD MAN.

Overseeing every aspect of the productions personally, from costumes to script rewrites, Lewton was a true auteur, even though he worked with - and mentored - a stable of talented directors, including Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise and Mark Robson. Despite the constraints of both the censors and RKO's B-picture budgets, Lewton produced an unprecedented number of quality films in a short period. However, as Scorsese says in his narration, "He was always at war with his bosses, and he was never satisfied with his achievements."

When CAT PEOPLE became a surprise hit, it turned RKO's fortunes around. But Lewton was still bound to a contract and salary he referred to as "almost picayune." However, he refused to go along with the standard Hollywood practice of letting his agent break the contract and renegotiate. "I can't quite reconcile myself to that," he wrote at the time. "It's a great problem with me, self-interest against self-respect."

Instead, Lewton soldiered on, sometimes with less than a month between wrapping one film and beginning another. He produced four films in 1943 alone. Though his work was already being acclaimed by critics such as James Agee, to RKO Lewton was just another workhorse contract producer. Plagued by insomnia, Lewton soon found himself exhausted. "There's hardly a night ... that I got home before midnight," he wrote. "For the first time in my life, I am really tired."

The pace took its toll. He suffered his first heart attack in 1946 at age 42. After recovering, he eventually made his way to other studios, including Universal, where he produced only one film, the Western APACHE DRUMS. He had just signed on to work on an independent unit with up-and-coming producer Stanley Kramer when he suffered another - fatal - heart attack in 1951. He was 46.


TCM will follow MAN IN THE SHADOWS with a marathon of eight Lewton films. The documentary will also be available as a bonus disc on the revamped VAL LEWTON HORROR COLLECTION due out Jan. 29.

Tough chicks and the men who love them

This Thursday (12/6/2007),I'll be joining Megan Abbott, S.J. Rozan, Jonathan Santlofer, Alison Gaylin, Jason Starr, Reed Farrel Coleman and others (including Star-Ledger film critic and current New York Film Critics' Circle chairman Stephen Whitty) for a group signing at Partners & Crime in New York's Greenwich Village to celebrate the new Abbott-edited A HELL OF A WOMAN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FEMALE NOIR, from Busted Flush Press.

The book collects 24 original stories by the likes of Sara Gran, Vicki Hendricks, Donna Moore, Vin Packer, S. J. and others. And although the stories are predominantly by women, a few token males round out the collection, including Ken Bruen, Eddie Muller and Daniel Woodrell.

The book also contains more than two dozen appreciations of "Favorite Women of Noir" by a wide selection of writers, of which I am one. Peter Spiegelman chose to write about Ella Raines, star of the classic PHANTOM LADY. Jason Starr muses on Carmela Soprano - you get the idea. I chose Gloria-Ann Cooper, the razor-wielding protagonist of Bob Ottum's once-bestselling-but-now-almost-forgotten 1977 novel THE TUESDAY BLADE.

Random Readings, Vol. 4

This installment of Random Readings is from Clive Barker's new novel MISTER B. GONE. Truer words ...

It was love that moved all things. Or rather, it was love and its theft, its demise, its silence, that moved all things. From a great fullness - a sense that all was well with things, and could be kept so, with just a little love - to an emptiness so profound that your bones whined when the wind blew through them: the coming and going between these states was the engine of all things.

Pontificating about Page 99

Out of town the next two weeks, with only intermittent internet access, so blogging will be minimal. However, in the meantime, the very busy Marshal Zeringue asked me to submit THE HEARTBREAK LOUNGE to his patented Page 99 test (not to be confused with his Page 69 test). The results can be found here. It also also gave me a chance to go public about my hitherto-unspoken debt to writer/director James Gray's haunting LITTLE ODESSA.

Norman Mailer 1923-2007

"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."

And I think that says it all.

However, if you want more on Mailer (with whom I share a hometown, Long Branch, N.J.) be sure to visit here, which has maybe the best collection of links on the net, including this one, to a great Entertainment Weekly interview that was one of the last Mailer gave. We'll never see his like again.

'Torch' passing & 'Deadly Secrets' giveaway

This week I was invited to participate in a collaborative web-only "serial short story" over at Barnes and Noble's Crime Club. Conceived by Edgar-winning author and Hard Case Crime mastermind Charles Ardai (aka Richard Aleas), the story is titled, fittingly, "Passing the Torch." Charles kicked it off with the first installment Oct. 26, and succeeding chapters have been written by the likes of Jason Starr, Ken Bruen, Karen Olson, J.D. Rhoades and others, each picking up where the other left off.

+ Also, as mentioned in an earlier post, The Star-Ledger's three-CD set of its "Deadly Secrets" podcast - narrated by me - is now available. It collects all 15 chapters of the paper's groundbreaking series about Robert Zarinsky, a convicted killer serving time for murder who has since been linked to a series of unsolved slayings of young girls in Central New Jersey. The series was written and reported by Star-Ledger staffers Robin Gaby Fisher and Judith Lucas, who conducted more than 100 interviews between them. The story continues to unfold, and details can be found here.

The CDs and reprints of the series can be ordered here, but in the meantime, I'll send a free copy of the CD set to the first four people who message me at my site. It's true crime writing at its best.

One book and beyond ... Vol. 4

Continuing my personal list - inspired by The Rap Sheet's One Book Project - of crime, mystery and thriller novels that were “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.”

Only two people I know have actually read this book – myself and Joe Guglielmelli of the late, lamented Black Orchid Bookshop in New York. And that, folks, is a crime.

MARTIN QUINN was Anthony Lee's first novel and, as far as I know, his only one so far. Published in 2003, it's the story of a tough Irish kid who's adopted - Tom Hagen-style - by a Russian mob family in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. There's a romantic triangle, various whackings, a betrayal and a reckoning when Martin has to decide whether to turn state's evidence and testify against his fellow gangsters. Pretty standard stuff, you might think, like a compact but literate New York crime movie from the likes of James Gray or Sidney Lumet. But what sets MARTIN QUINN apart is the writing. The story is told in a spare but vivid third-person style that's so full of emotion and detail it might as well be first-person. It's finely nuanced, and makes even familiar settings and scenes seem fresh, infused with a vibrant life and energy that almost leap off the page. It hooks right from the opening paragraph:

He thought, again, You're not going to kill him. It was an awakening, the idea. It was like emerging from the woods into a dusk-lit clearing in your head. It was peace coming down.

I first learned of this book when Amazon paired it with my novel, THE BARBED-WIRE KISS, which came out at the same time, as one of its "Better Together" promotions. The connection, I guess, was the boardwalk setting in both novels - Brooklyn in his, the Jersey Shore in mine. I ordered it for that reason, without having seen it in a store or read a single review of it. The book's New York atmosphere was so strong you could just about smell it, and as unlikeable - and unredeemable - as most of the characters were, the writing put you right into their hearts and minds. It made me jealous.

The novel was supposed to be the first of a two-book deal, but if the second ever surfaced, I'm not aware of it. MARTIN QUINN was eventually reprinted in trade paperback, with the generic title THE FIX, and seems to have vanished just as quickly as the hardcover. That's a shame, as is the fact we've yet to see another book from this ferociously talented writer. Anthony Lee, come back.

Loose Ends Pt. 2

Bearing down on the new book this week, with hopes of having it finished before the next millennium, so blogging will be sparse for awhile (or should I say even *more* sparse?), except for another One Book and Beyond entry which I intend to post later this week.

Some other odds and ends:

+ Paul Guyot messaged me earlier this week to ask why I didn't acknowledge Bruce Springsteen's 58th birthday (Sept. 23) on the blog that Sunday. I guess I figured anyone who cared already knew, and those that didn't know didn't care. However, on Monday I did attend the first of two rehearsal shows for Springsteen and band's "Magic" tour at the beautiful, historic (but non-air conditioned) Convention Hall on the boardwalk in Asbury Park.

Springsteen has held rehearsal shows for most of his recent tours at the venue (or in the adjoining Paramount Theatre, both built in the 1920s), and it's always a special experience. In addition to being walking distance from my front door, Convention Hall is also a fairly intimate venue for a rock show. Seating only about 3,000 (fewer for the Springsteen shows), it's a lot smaller than the arenas he generally plays, and is roughly equivalent to a high school gymnasium. Reportedly, only 1,500 tickets were sold for each night, making the occasion even more intimate.

However, despite its rich history, CH is essentially just a big concrete box. As a result, the sound has never been good there, and Monday's rehearsal show was no different. Springsteen brought a full arena stage and sound system and it was almost too much for the venue. I was shoving bits of tissue paper into my ears seconds into the opening song, "Radio Nowhere." The combination of the sound coming from the stage and then bouncing off the wall directly behind me was physically painful - and I have been to a *lot* of shows.

Performance-wise, the show and setlist were a little rocky too, but the new songs are terrific and it's always a wonderful thing seeing Springsteen at CH. Some of my favorite concertgoing experiences have been at the venue, especially the truly great series of charity holiday shows Springsteen and the Max Weinberg Seven performed there in December 2001. After the events of the previous months, those shows felt like a collective tension release. And never has "My City of Ruins " - which he performed each night - seemed so heartbreaking.

+ For those interested, the podcast of "Deadly Secrets" that I narrated for The Star-Ledger is now available - for free - as a 3-CD set. The 15-part series - tracing the life and crimes of suspected serial killer Robert Zarinsky - is also available as a tabloid-sized reprint. You can find information on both here.

_____
Above, from left, Danny Federici, Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen on stage at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, Sept, 24, 2007. Associated Press photo.

The definition of Soul

A lot of activity this week, so I've been remiss with blogging, but a quick interim posting here:

I don't think I've heard a more affecting piece of music lately than N.J. soul singer Bettye LaVette's version of Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia," recorded for a new three-CD compilation called "Song of America" (31 Tigers/Split Rock Records) just out this month. The anthology is a collection of folk and contemporary songs that offer a musical history of America, featuring artists such as John Mellencamp, the Mavericks and others (it features a second Springsteen track as well, Matthew Ryan's minimalist electronica take on "Youngstown"). But LaVette's "Streets" is the gem of the bunch. A Detroit native, LaVette was a popular soul singer in the 1960s and '70s whose career went awry. At the age of 60 (and now living in N.J.), she's staging a comeback of sorts, releasing a new album, "The Scene of the Crime" (backed by the Drive-By Truckers) this month, and scheduling some performances as well.

I've heard a lot of different versions of "Streets," including a duet Springsteen and Elton John performed at Carnegie Hall in 1995. But none of those - including Springsteen's original - come close to LaVette's. She nails the song so perfectly it's almost frightening, not unlike what Johnny Cash did with Trent Reznor's "Hurt." iTunes has the track available as a download, so give it a listen. It's the real thing.

Loose Ends

Been off the radar a bit lately, finishing up with the Star-Ledger's "Deadly Secrets," series and the accompanying podcast, as well as work on the new book. But there are few things worth noting that have arisen in the meantime.

First, if you haven't already heard "Radio Nowhere," the first single from the new album by that band pictured above, it's still available for a limited time as a free download from iTunes. I first heard a leaked mp3 version of it about three weeks ago and liked it a lot, though on those first few listens, I kept hearing Tommy Tutone's "867-5309," mixed in with a little bit of BOC's "Don't Fear the Reaper" (which reminded me of the first time I heard "Dancing in the Dark" and thought it sounded *exactly* like Rod Stewart's "Young Turks").

However, if you really want to get a taste of the album, due out Oct. 2, stop by here, which has a 30-second snippet from each of the songs, linked together into a single file. Or at least it will until someone pulls it.

After watching and enjoying - but not being overwhelmed by - AMC's MAD MEN pilot, I did finally catch up with the first four episodes this weekend and I'm beginning to think it's quite brilliant. Hard to believe HBO let this one get away. For an in-depth discussion of each new episode as it airs, knock on this door. That's also where you'll find a well-considered and cogent argument about why THE FRENCH CONNECTION isn't such a great movie after all, though I'm not sure I agree.

And finally, Paul Guyot, guest blogging over at Murderati, has written a real keeper about navigating the television pitch process. It's the first of a series and a near-perfect blend of humor and solid information.

'Deadly Secrets'

Today begins Part One of "Deadly Secrets," a 15-part series in the Newark Star-Ledger about Robert Zarinsky, the imprisoned New Jersey killer who was convicted of the brutal murder of a 17-year-old girl and remains the chief suspect in a long string of unsolved homicides in the state. It was written by two-time Pulitzer finalist Robin Gaby Fisher, based on more than a year of reporting by her and fellow Ledger staffer Judith Lucas. The Ledger asked me to narrate the daily podcast version of the series and I was happy to oblige. It's a powerful - and sometimes almost unbelievable - story about how a killer eluded justice for years and left a long trail of death and ruined lives behind him. And why he just might go free before long.


If the name sounds familiar, it's because Zarinsky's been in the news again lately. In 1999, he was charged with the murder of a Rahway police officer during a botched robbery in 1958, a case that had gone unsolved for more than 40 years. Though Zarinsky's own sister testified against him, he was ultimately acquitted. According to the jury foreman, the jurors believed Zarinsky had done it, but that prosecutors, hampered by the passage of time since the crime, hadn't adequately proven their case. The officer's wife - Elizabeth Bernoskie - sued Zarinsky for wrongful death and was awarded $9.5 million in 2003, though she only collected $150,000, via a mutual fund Zarinsky had inherited. Bernoskie, now 76, used the money to pay legal fees and then split the rest amongst her six children. But Zarinsky sued back and, last month, an appellate court sided with him and ordered Bernoskie to repay the $150,000 - money she no longer has - to Zarinsky. She's now in danger of having to forfeit her house in order to meet the judgment.

It's quite a story, and quite a series.

One book and beyond ... Vol. 3

Continuing my personal list - inspired by The Rap Sheet's One Book Project - of crime, mystery and thriller novels that were “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.”


Jonathan Valin's 1989 novel EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES would be another candidate for the short list of the ten best private eye novels ever written. It was Valin's eighth novel about Cincinnati private detective Harry Stoner - and the most uncompromising.

It starts off in fairly standard PI fashion. Stoner is hired to find Ira Lessing, a prominent businessman and philanthropist who's gone missing in Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River. When his bloodstained BMW is found abandoned, everyone fears the worst - and with good reason. Stoner soon discovers Lessing had a secret life neither his family nor his business partner ever suspected. The investigation leads him into Kentucky's seamy riverside red-light districts, and a world of teenage hustlers, prostitutes and junkies. Stoner has a hard time letting go of the case, even after Lessing's badly beaten body turns up, and a teenage boy confesses to the murder. Stoner suspects the real killer is still out there, a theory confirmed by a subsequent blackmail attempt and threats to destroy the dead man's reputation by revealing the lurid details of his other life.

It's become a cliche in modern detective fiction to give the hero a dangerous, more physical sidekick, who can carry out acts of violence and vengeance that the hero would like to but can't, without becoming less sympathetic in the eyes of the average reader. This device allows the hero to keep the moral high ground while at the same time offering readers the satisfaction of a violent demise for the villains. It's a useful plot device, which is why so many use it, but it's also a cop-out. The heroes don't have to take the responsibility for - or face the repercussions of - the violent acts they've benefited from. That's why it's called fiction.

In CIRCUMSTANCES, on the other hand, Valin effectively shows these devices for the contrivances they are. He gives neither Stoner nor the reader an easy way out. The book does offer a sense of catharsis and closure, but only after Stoner commits an act in the final pages that few writers would be brave enough to let their heroes do. It's shocking and surprising and at the same time makes perfect sense. And it feels like real life.

However, it also brought the series to a level of intensity that might have made it difficult to go back to business as usual. The next Stoner book, 1991's SECOND CHANCE, seemed tame in comparison, and the one after that, THE MUSIC LOVERS, was an intentionally lightweight lark. The 11th in the series, 1995's MISSING, revisited some of the same themes as CIRCUMSTANCES, but it sometimes seemed like Stoner had shot his bolt in the final scenes of that earlier book. And Valin may have felt the same way. There has yet to be another Stoner novel - or a book of any type - from him to date.

Sad news from the book world

As many of you already know, Bonnie and Joe at New York's Black Orchid Bookshop have decided to close their doors this September after 13 years in business.

In addition to being one of the best independent stores in the country (for which they won a well-deserved Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America last year, and got a standing ovation at the Edgars banquet), Black Orchid also served as a gathering place and nexus for dozens of writer. As the site of their annual pre-Edgar and mid-summer parties, the store often hosted an amazing collection of disparate authors, who could often be found milling about on the sidewalk outside. I made many friends there, not the least of whom were Bonnie and Joe themselves, who were always warm and welcoming (on only my second visit to the store - and my first time meeting Bonnie - she lent me $20 so I could get dinner nearby without having to go to a cash machine first).

And boy, if they liked your books, you were in clover. Their love of the genre made them the ideal booksellers, and their enthusiasm - and dedicated clientele - formed the essence of what's commonly known as "handselling." I can't count the number of times I've heard from people who first became aware of my books via a recommendation from Joe and Bonnie.

Black Orchid will always have a special significance for me personally as well. It was the first bookstore I ever walked into as an author. In February 2003, the week THE BARBED-WIRE KISS was released, St. Martins had me hit all the N.Y. stores one day to sign stock and meet the various booksellers (accompanied by the lovely and talented Rachel Ekstrom, then a publicist for SMP). Our first stop was at Black Orchid, and although Joe wasn't expecting us that day, when I walked in the door, Bruce Springsteen's THE RISING was playing over the in-store speakers (the exact song was "Mary's Place" if I remember correctly). And I knew there couldn't have been a more auspicious omen than that.

I've been back to the store dozens of times since, sometimes as a customer, but that February day will always be locked into my memory. Because while I was talking to Joe and signing books - with Springsteen singing in the background - it was the first time I actually *felt* like a writer. And the Black Orchid felt like home.

More on the store, and Bonnie and Joe in the future. In the meantime, it's good to know they're still having their annual party Aug. 16, which will not only commemorate the anniversary of the store, but also Joe's (and my) birthday two days previous. This will be a sad one though, and it'll be tough to walk away from that place for the last time.

So if you have a chance, come by Aug. 16 (81st St. betw. First and Second), say hello, buy some books. Cliche or not, there's no other way to put it - it's the end of an era.


*********

And finally, it's hard to believe that today is 30 years to the day since these events took place. It's a strange world, and it moves much too fast.

One Book and beyond: Vol. 2

It may seem odd to qualify any of Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder novels as overlooked or underappreciated, considering the amount of attention he generally gets, but his 1993 novel THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD has never been granted the status I think it deserves. It is, in my mind, the ne plus ultra of the Scudder books and maybe one of the ten best private eye novels ever.

It starts with Scudder investigating a seemingly random street killing - a man shot dead at a payphone - and ultimately turns into a meditation on death, friendship, infidelity and New York itself. As Scudder tries to uncover the motive for the murder, his own personal life is in upheaval. And though his relationship with his ex-hooker girlfriend Elaine is deepening, he finds himself inevitably drawn to the murdered man's young widow. At the same time, an old lover of Scudder's has discovered she's terminally ill and makes a final request of him - get her a gun so that she can end it herself when the pain becomes too much to take.

Storywise, as far as the Scudder novels go, DEVIL is relatively low-key. It has none of the violent intensity of the two books that preceded it - A DANCE AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE and A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES - or the intricate plotting of some that followed. And though on the surface the subject matter may seem grim, in the end the book is oddly life-affirming. We're all looking for comfort in the night, Block seems to be saying, and we should take it where we find it, because the whole carnival might just end at any minute, and more than likely before we're ready.

The climax of DEVIL is a quiet one - there's no action, no last-minute danger Scudder has to think or fight his way out of. And the resolution of the mystery is simpler than we ever expected it to be. But at the same time, in its closing pages, the novel attains a sense of almost cathartic release. And along the way Block gives us - as usual - some of the best dialogue anyone's ever written anywhere. This one's a keeper.

One Book and beyond ...

Back in May, the Rap Sheet launched its One Book Project, soliciting more than 100 novelists, critics, and fans to choose one crime/mystery/thriller novel that was “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years.” My choice was David Bottoms’ terrific 1987 novel ANY COLD JORDAN (one of only two he wrote, the second being EASTER WEEKEND, which is just as good. These days, Bottoms is better known as Georgia’s poet laureate).

ANY COLD JORDAN wasn’t a difficult choice. It’s beautifully written and all too well fits the definition of “unjustly overlooked.” But it also started me thinking about the other books that would have made my shortlist. So over the next few weeks, I’m going to sing the praises of a few of them. Some are in print, some aren’t, but all are great in their own way and worth seeking out.

Leonard’s Gardner’s 1969 novel FAT CITY would have been my first choice for the One Book Project, except it’s not really a crime novel. What it is is a beautifully etched portrait of the underside of American life, as told through the stories of two men in Stockton, Calif., in the late 1950s. Billy Tully is a punch-drunk fighter who fears his career and his life are over – at age 29. Ernie Munger is an 18-year-old service station attendant with a pregnant girlfriend and not much of a future. He’s a fighter too, an up and comer with some skill, who nonetheless soon discovers he’s in way over his head.

Billy and Ernie meet in the first chapter – during an impromptu sparring bout at a YMCA – and then go their separate ways for much of the novel. Gardner follows their painful arcs through alcoholism, domestic strife and just pure bad luck. It’s not even that they’re trying to escape their grim existence – it’s almost as if they’re denying to themselves that any other way of life exists. The novel is populated by those who were once full of promise, people who keep making bad decisions and then punish themselves – sometimes brutally – for making them. But they just can’t seem to stop.

Gardner, a Stockton native, fills the novel with sparse but evocative descriptions of his hometown, and the bleak vista that awaits those who live there. At times, it’s like a Tom Waits song come to life, vivid and almost lyrical in its bluntness. And every sentence is just about perfect.

Here’s Gardner’s description of Tully’s transient hotel room, from the very first page of the novel:

“His shade was tattered, his light bulb dim, and his neighbors all seemed to have lung trouble.”

Seventeen words and you’re there, in that room, in that world. By the time this short novel comes to a close, nothing earthshaking has happened to its protagonists, no sudden glimpses of clarity or last-chance shots at redemption. Instead, they just keep on keeping on. When we last see Tully, he’s in yet another hotel, finally surrendering the little ambition he has left, until “hearing the sounds of the street, he drifted in the darkness with his loss.”

FAT CITY is maybe best known for the excellent 1972 film John Huston made from it, starring Stacy Keach as Tully and Jeff Bridges as Ernie, with a screenplay by Gardner. It’s been in and out of print over the years and is currently available as part of the University of California Press’ “California Fiction” series (which also includes the late A.I. Bezzerides’ THIEVES MARKET, which became the Jules Dassin film THIEVES HIGHWAY). FAT CITY may not be a crime novel, but it’s as noir as they come.