Rudy Van Gelder: 1924-2016

You may not know the name, but you know the music. Rudy Van Gelder, who died Aug. 25 at age 91, recorded some of the greatest names in jazz at his Hackensack and Englewood Cliffs, N.J., studios, including Miles Davis, John Coltrane ("A Love Supreme" was recorded in Englewood), Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Wayne Shorter and many, many others. If you have a classic Blue Note LP, he probably recorded it.

Here's the njonline version of the obituary.

Van Gelder is famous for working with Coltrane, but he also recorded maybe my favorite jazz saxophonist, Newark's own Ike Quebec.

COLD SHOT TO THE HEART unabridged audio on sale thru 7/4/16

The unabridged Blackstone Audio edition of COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, the first Crissa Stone novel, is on sale at Downpour.com through July 4 ($4.99, as opposed to the regular price of $19.95.) It's read by the Audie Award-winning Coleen Marlo, who's voiced Crissa in the Blackstone editions of all four books in the series. You can find the link to the download here.

A conversation with Donald E. Westlake July 1986 – Part Three: The outtakes

Posting the interview last week I did with Donald E. Westlake for The Asbury Park Press back in July 1986 (you can read Part One HERE, and Part Two HERE) brought to mind some other highlights of the conversation that didn't make it into the final version for space or contextual reasons. Here are a few:

– In the mid-1970s, pre-production began on a film adaptation of the 13th Parker novel, 1971's DEADLY EDGE, to be directed by Peter Yates (BULLITT, ROBBERY, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE). Yates had previously directed the film version of Westlake's first Dortmunder novel THE HOT ROCK. Westlake told me he and Yates spent a day driving around northwestern New Jersey scouting locations for the lake house where Parker and Claire live in the novel. The project was eventually abandoned.

– Bill Cosby optioned Westlake's Edgar-winning 1967 novel GOD SAVE THE MARK with the intention of producing and starring. He later dropped the project after deciding he would only "make films for posterity." Westlake wouldn't name Cosby when he told me the story, but there were clues aplenty. When I asked if the unnamed actor currently had a hit show on NBC, he laughed and said, "How'd you get there from that?" He later named Cosby in other interviews.

– His 1962 novel 361 (reprinted by Hard Case Crime in 2011) was directly influenced by the work of Dashiell Hammett."I was interested in the way he conveyed emotions strictly through action," Westlake told me. "Instead of explaining how someone was feeling, he'd just say,'He gripped the chair'."

– When I asked him who was the current mystery/suspense novelist more people should be reading, he enthusiastically sang the praises of Lawrence Block, and said he had recently introduced Stephen King to Block's work.

– I mentioned that it always seemed to me his 1968 Parker novel THE BLACK ICE SCORE and his 1970 Dortmunder novel THE HOT ROCK were two sides of the same coin, both involving diamonds being stolen from a New York museum for an African diplomat. "Huh" he said, perhaps a touch disingenuously. "Never thought of that."

– The tough-talking and larcenous businesswoman Josephine Carol "J.C." Taylor, introduced in the 1986 Dortmunder novel GOOD BEHAVIOR, was originally conceived as a foil for Parker in a "Richard Stark" novel that was never completed.

– The working title of his 1975 novel BROTHERS KEEPERS was THE FELONIOUS MONKS.

A conversation with Donald E. Westlake July 1986 - Part One

The following story first appeared in The Asbury Park Press, July 27,1986. It was based on two phone interviews I did with Westlake from his NYC home earlier that month, shortly after the release of his Dortmunder novel GOOD BEHAVIOR.


Forget what your parents and grade school teachers told you.

Crime pays.

Just ask Donald E. Westlake. With more than 60 books to his credit. Westlake has proven that crime, or at least crime-writing, can be a profitable business.

One of the most prolific authors in the mystery/suspense genre for more than a quarter of a century, Westlake is perhaps best known as the originator and chief practitioner of the comic crime novel – a genre he created in 1964 with THE FUGITIVE PIGEON and which he has nearly perfected in his six novels about not-so-professional thief John Archibald Dortmunder. Dortmunder’s latest adventure, GOOD BEHAVIOR, has just been published by The Mysterious Press, and HIGH ADVENTURE, a novel about artifact smuggling in Central America, has recently been released in paperback by Tor Books.

In addition, about 12 of Westlake’s books (that’s right, 12) have already found their way to the screen in such films as THE HOT ROCK, with Robert Redford as Dortmunder in 1972; COPS AND ROBBERS in 1973; and, in a more serious vein, POINT BLANK in 1967.

But how can someone write so gleefully and entertainingly about characters who rob and steal as a profession?

“You have to keep a certain level of unreality to it,” Westlake says. “I write these types of books because these are the types of books I enjoy writing. I know I can have fun with them. That’s all there is to it.”

Westlake has apparently had a lot of fun over the years. Although he never graduated form college, in the 26 years he’s been a full-time writer, Westlake has written more books than half a dozen other authors combined, (“More than 60 at least. It’s hard to keep track of them, because the number’s always changing”) as well as a slew of short stories, a handful of screenplays and even a children’s book.

On top of that, his short stories appear frequently in Playboy and his prolific pace hasn’t slackened at all since his first novel, THE MERCENARIES, was published in 1960. Throughout it all, with some notable exceptions, his forte has been crime and criminals: all seen through an incisive, perceptive and sometimes very funny eye.

“Crime novels are one of the basic story forms. Always have been,” Westlake says. “The genre gives you the framework, and the plot gives you the thread, the sequence of events for the characters to operate with. The theme itself is just a skeleton to hang the characters on; they’re always more important than what’s going on with the plot. The crime thing is just a device I use. If I didn’t use it, then I’d just have to think of something else.”

The crime genre has indeed proved to be fertile ground for Westlake. In THE HOT ROCK, one of Westlake’s most popular books, Dortmunder and his band of misfit felons steal a priceless diamond for the leader of an African country and then lose it, a cycle which repeats itself throughout the novel as Dortmunder and crew are forced to re-steal the diamond from a variety of increasingly bizarre places, including a museum, an insane asylum and a New York City police station.

In THE HUNTER, written under the pseudonym “Richard Stark,” a cool, ruthless professional thief cuts a bloody swathe through the New York organized crime world, seeking revenge on a former partner who double-crossed him and left him for dead. Although the tone and style of the two books have little in common, both are graced with an eye for the details of everyday life and a narrative momentum that never sacrifices characterization or logic, yet is as quick and compelling as anything being written in the mystery/suspense field today.

But as to why his caper novels are so popular, the man who has made a career out of chronicling the larceny inside us all is not altogether sure.

“Guessing why other people like what they like is a tricky business,” he says. "I think one of the basic interests is in watching machinery at work; things like wind-up dolls and mechanical clocks. The crime novel, specifically the caper novel, is a lot like that. The crime itself is the machinery and the plot combines that machinery with puzzle and human movement all at once. There’s a certain amount of escapism involved for the reader as well. We all like to think we can get away with the crime, whatever it is.”

For someone who turns out as much material as he does, Westlake says his writing schedule is actually far from disciplined. Although he tries to write every day, he will sometimes work for no more than an hour, “just to keep the characters alive in my head.”

His actual writing times have also fluctuated greatly. One of his most recent novels, KAHAWA, about a plot to hijack a train load of coffee in a remote African nation, took 13 months to write, “the longest I’ve ever spent on a book.” On the other hand, PITY HIM AFTERWARDS, a suspense novel Westlake wrote earlier in his career, was finished in a record 11 days (“The title was appropriate," he says).

(PART TWO: Westlake on movies, television and killing Parker).

– Top photo credit: The Associated Press

A conversation with Donald E. Westlake July 1986 - Part Two

This is Part Two of my profile of Donald E. Westlake that first appeared in The Asbury Park Press, July 27,1986, shortly after the release of his Dortmunder novel GOOD BEHAVIOR. You can find Part One here.

Like many of his characters, Westlake has been known to operate under a variety of aliases. He has written nearly 30 of his books under assorted pen names, including a series of hard-boiled crime novels about a professional thief known only as Parker, written under the pseudonym "Richard Stark."

Inspired by the tough, terse detective novels of Dashiell (THE MALTESE FALCON) Hammett, the Parker books themselves have gone on to inspire a whole generation of suspense and crime fiction, as well as spawn half a dozen film adaptations – including the aforementioned POINT BLANK starring Lee Marvin, THE SPLIT (1968) with Jim Brown and THE OUTFIT starring Robert Duvall in 1973. One of the most recent was 1983’s SLAYGROUND, loosely based on Westlake’s 1971 Parker novel of the same name.

All 16 of the Parker books, written between 1961 and 1973, were reissued in paperback last year by Avon Books, and although the actual writing of them is now ancient history to Westlake, he says he’s “delighted” by the continuing interest in them.

“I’ve had a standing offer from a couple of publishers who said they’ll give me a contract if I write another one,” Westlake says. “But I just haven’t been able to. I’m not exactly sure what happened, he just sort of faded away for me as a character.”

In fact, Westlake says, portions of the plot and several characters from his newest novel, GOOD BEHAVIOR, are taken from an unfinished Parker novel that never saw the light of day.

“I’d made several attempts after the last of the Parker books (BUTCHER’S MOON in 1973) to write another one, but nothing ever came of them,” Westlake says. “I think that by cannibalizing one of the unfinished novels and adding humor to it, I was acknowledging the fact that there weren’t going to be any more. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again.”

Perhaps the final nail in Parker’s coffin is the dedication at the beginning of GOOD BEHAVIOR, which reads “In Memoriam: P., 1961-1973.”

The winner of an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his comic novel GOD SAVE THE MARK, Westlake also shares the dubious honor of having one of his novels (the Dortmunder novel JIMMY THE KID) become a film vehicle for Gary Coleman. Westlake admits to never having seen the film and harboring no desire to do so in the near future.

“The films (of my books) cover a wide area from pretty good to terrible,” Westlake says. “The best of them is probably POINT BLANK (based on THE HUNTER) and the worst – well, usually I’m warned away from them beforehand by people I know. Most times, after hearing about them from someone else, I have no desire to see them, because I know they’ll only make me angry.”

Westlake is currently adapting two of his own novels for film, WHY ME?, a Dortmunder novel scheduled to begin shooting in New York next year, and A LIKELY STORY, a tale of a struggling writer who is drawn closer to his estranged family while working on an anthology of Christmas stories. No crimes and no capers this time; maybe, one wonders, even a touch of sentimentality?

“I like it,” Westlake says. “It’s as different from some of my other stuff as you can get, so I expected to have some problems adapting it. But so far it’s going pretty smoothly. I’m really enjoying it.”

Westlake is also working on an original screenplay for an upcoming television film. Although he won’t reveal much of the plot, he describes it as “another comic caper,” this time written expressly for the small screen. Although he has written for television in the past, Westlake says the inherent limitations of the medium have kept him from doing much work there.

“The best thing you can say about working for television is that’s good money for easy work,” he says. “When you’re writing a novel you’re deeply involved; you’re part of it. When you’re writing for the movies on the other hand, it’s more like you’re working on the surface. With television, that’s even more so, except that it’s a false surface. The books are the real love. That’s where my heart is.”

But after 26 years and more than 60 novels, could Westlake stop writing tomorrow and still be happy?”

“No way,” he says. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

NOTE: Parker did return, of course, in Westlake's appropriately titled 1997 novel COMEBACK. He went on to appear in seven more novels before Westlake's death in 2008.

Part Three: The Outtakes

THE HIGHWAY KIND anthology

My short story "Night Run" will appear in this upcoming anthology from Mulholland Books, due out in October. It's expertly edited by Patrick Millikin of the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Ariz., who was a real pleasure to work with. Other contributors to the anthology include Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Diana Gabaldon, Ace Atkins, James Sallis, Gary Phillips, C.J. Box, Joe R. Lansdale, Sara Gran, Luis Alberto Urrea and others.
You can preorder online here.

New MYSTERY SCENE interview

The new issue of MYSTERY SCENE magazine (#144, Spring 2016) includes an interview with me conducted by the legendary Ed Gorman, in which I talk about creating Crissa Stone, current works in progress and some favorite forgotten authors.

(Click on images below to enlarge)

George Clayton Johnson: 1929-2015

George Clayton Johnson, the last surviving member of the murderers row of The Twilight Zone writers of the early '60s (which included Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling himself), passed away today (Dec. 25) at age 86. Some of the classic TZ episodes he wrote included "Kick the Can," "The Four of Us Are Dying" and - appropriately -"Nothing in the Dark" (that's him with star Robert Redford on the set of that 1962 ep). He also wrote the first STAR TREK episode "The Man Trap," co-wrote the novel and film LOGAN'S RUN, the original story behind OCEANS 11, episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, KUNG FU and much more.

Here's the VARIETY obituary.

Below is a clip from an amazing five-hour interview Johnson did with the Archive OF AMERICAN TELEVISION site about THE TWILIGHT ZONE and his television work.

A very Dali Christmas

You may think you have the Christmas spirit, but you don't have Salvador-Dali-at-a-booksigning-in-a-Santa-suit-eating-caviar Christmas spirit... .

Dali and his wife, Gala, signing books at Manhattan's Doubleday Bookstore, 1954. Photo by Philippe Halsman. Dali and Halsman's collaboration, DALI'S MUSTACHE (Simon and Schuster), had just been published.

There are 8 million Santas in the Naked City ...

... and here are two of them.

Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig) was probably on his way to photograph the aftermath of a mob rubout when he spotted these two sidewalk Santas coming out of the subway at Manhattan's West Fourth Street station. The photo appeared in the Dec. 27, 1954 issue of LIFE magazine with the following caption:

"The spirit of Christmas sometimes produces disquieting moments. In New York the Volunteers of America Inc. hires more than 50 men a day to dress up as Santa Claus and go out to the street corners around town soliciting contributions for the poor.

When their posts are in the same vicinity, the men often travel together. Emerging through the sidewalk exits, they give New Yorkers the shattering, if brief, illusion that Santa Claus not only comes in pairs but comes on a crowded 15¢ subway ride at that."

Happy holidays!

My Favorite Neo-Noir: Michael Mann's THIEF

“Keep in mind, kid, until your dying day, the only crime anywhere in the world is being broke.“
– “Oklahoma” Smith, as quoted by Frank Hohimer, in THE HOME INVADERS: CONFESSIONS OF A CAT BURGLER (1975)

“I am the last guy in the world that you want to fuck with.”
– “Frank,” as played by James Caan in THIEF (1981)

Michael Mann’s THIEF is the rarest of creations, an almost-perfect marriage of character, narrative and action. It gave James Caan what is probably the best role of his career. And, as Mann’s directorial debut, it announced his presence in the feature film world with authority.

THIEF centers around the single-named “Frank,” a Chicago jewel thief and safecracker who reluctantly agrees to take down some high-end scores for a mob fence and loan shark named Leo (Robert Prosky in his screen debut). Frank hopes this last string of lucrative robberies will help him create the life he aspires to, with a wife, Jessie (played by a weathered-but-still-luminous Tuesday Weld), an adopted child and an extended family that includes his mentor-in-crime, the imprisoned “Okla” (Willie Nelson in one of his first film roles).

Frank, who’s spent nearly half his life in prison, sees no reason why he can’t have these things, or why committing serial felonies isn’t the road to Happily Ever After. He wants to assemble his life the same way he organizes a heist, and he carries the blueprint around with him in the form of a childlike collage of Polaroids and pictures cut from magazines.

That new life is easier envisioned than realized though. As the stakes get higher and both the mob and crooked cops close in on him, Frank finally explodes, and embraces the nihilism he adopted in prison (what Mann calls his “Darwinian adaptation”). It’s his armor against a brutal world where, as Bruce Springsteen sings in “Something in the Night,” “As soon as you’ve got something/They send someone to try and take it away.”

THIEF is based on the book THE HOME INVADERS, a 1975 memoir by Francis Leroy Hohimer (left), a career criminal and burglar from Chicago who wrote the original manuscript while still in prison. It was eventually published by the indie Chicago Review Press, and soon optioned by Chicago native Mann for his feature debut. Mann had previous experience with the subject matter, having directed the acclaimed ABC-TV movie THE JERICHO MILE (1979), starring Peter Strauss and filmed at California’s Folsom Prison.

In commentary and interviews – most recently on the Criterion Blu-Ray of THIEF released in 2014 – Mann says after optioning THE HOME INVADERS he “threw the book out” and wrote the screenplay from scratch. However, significant parallels remain between the two. Both Franks own car dealerships and nightclubs, and have a mentor in prison (the character of Oklahoma Smith is carried over from book to film, as is much of the wisdom he imparts to Frank). Both are vocational criminals whose young adulthood was spent behind bars, and both work for brutal mob figures who eventually turn on them.

The differences, though, are major. The real Hohimer was primarily a cat burglar who, as the title of his book suggests, specialized in home invasions, targeting wealthy families. The film’s Frank excels in high-tech safecracking and sophisticated industrial robberies (depicted in rich detail by Mann, informed by a crew of Chicago “advisors”). Frank utilizes burning bars, magnetic drills and electronic countermeasures to commit his crimes. Hohimer’s method of opening a safe was to have the owner do it, on pain of injury or death. And most of Hohimer’s entries were by key, not by force, those keys having been provided to him by the notorious Chicago fence and mobster Leo Rugendorf. In THIEF, Caan’s Frank makes the distinction clear when he tells the film’s Leo what he will and won’t do. “No cowboy shit.” he says. “No home invasions.”

(Wikipedia and IMDB entries for both the film and Hohimer himself incorrectly state that “Frank Hohimer” was a pen name used by another convict named John Seybold. That’s untrue. As many sources have confirmed, Seybold and Hohimer were two different men).

Despite its urban nightscapes, rain-swept streets and atmosphere of claustrophobia and impending doom, THIEF is not a film noir, according to its director. In an interview taped for the Blu-Ray, Mann describes Frank as “a rat in a maze, the three-dimensional maze of the city,” but asserts that “I wasn’t thinking consciously about film noir at all. I think in true film noir there’s a sense of hopelessness, a sense of ennui ... that’s not THIEF.”

One might argue that THIEF certainly *looks* like a film noir. The art direction and cinematography, by Mary Dodson and Donald E. Thorin, respectively, lovingly depict a city gleaming with reflected neon, where shiny dark cars prowl wet streets, all of it set to an otherworldly electronic score by the German band Tangerine Dream.

With its glowing neon palette (including title credits that Nicolas Refn Winding obviously paid homage to in 2011’s DRIVE), THIEF does feel dated in a certain ‘80s way, but only in its stylistic tics. In one sense, it’s a throwback to American cinema of the 1970s, when even crime and action films tended to be character-driven. Caan’s Frank is fully realized, a man with a past, if not much of a future. He’s charming, but dangerous when cornered. On one level he’s a classic existential noir hero, yearning for things he can never have, and eventually dragged down into a hell of his own making.

When his partner Barry (played by Jim Belushi, in a role that seemed to promise a better film career than he actually had) is killed, and Leo threatens everything he loves, Frank again becomes the caged animal he knows he is at heart. He casts off his connections to the civilian world, and reverts to his prison mindset in order to become a man with nothing to lose, who can wreak vengeance without concern for its consequences. He tells Jessie that, in prison, “You gotta forget time. You gotta not give a fuck if you live or die.”

Leo begs to differ. “You one of those burned-out, demolished whackos in the joint?” he says. “Don’t come at me now with your jailhouse bullshit, because you are not that guy. ... You got a home, car, businesses, family, and I own the paper on your whole fucking life.”

But Leo’s wrong. As Frank proves at the end of the film, he *is* that guy. When he eventually takes down his tormentors in a brutally efficient gun battle at a suburban Chicago home, there’s nothing triumphant about it. His victory is both cathartic and tragic. Frank surrenders his hard-won humanity and post-prison achievements in order to survive. This rat escapes by blowing up the maze.

(Continue reading PART TWO here.)

(An earlier version of this essay appeared in the Film Noir Foundation's NOIR CITY magazine as part of its "My Favorite Neo-Noir" series.)

My Favorite Neo-Noir: Michael Mann's THIEF (Part Two)

(This is Part Two of an essay that originally appeared in an earlier form in the Film Noir Foundation's NOIR CITY magazine.) You can find Part One here.

Though a centerpiece heist takes place in Los Angeles, THIEF is very much a Chicago film, shot mostly on location and steeped in local history. In addition to being Mann’s feature debut, it’s also full of local actors he’d use again. The late Dennis Farina, a former Chicago cop, plays one of Leo’s henchman. William Petersen (who starred with Farina in Mann’s MANHUNTER four years later) has a bit role as a nightclub bouncer. The leader of the corrupt cops is played by John Santucci, a real Chicago jewel thief who lent the production both his expertise and his burglary tools. Busy character actor Ted Levine (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, MONK, THE BRIDGE) plays one of his partners. Another real-life Chicago cop, Chuck Adamson, is seen as one of the officers who give Frank a station house beating in an attempt to shake him down.

Farina, Santucci and Levine would go on to star – and Adamson write and produce – Mann’s TV series CRIME STORY in 1986, a period piece set in Chicago in the early -60s that eventually migrated – as did the Chicago Outfit itself – to Las Vegas (in the series, Levine played a career criminal named “Frank Holman,” perhaps an homage to the author of THE HOME INVADERS). Other THIEF actors, such as Tom Signorelli and Nick Nickeas, eventually appeared in other Mann projects, including his breakthrough show, MIAMI VICE. Prosky, here alternately avuncular and terrifying (he smoothes the way for Frank and Jessie to adopt a baby, then threatens to kill all three of them), went on to a long career in film and TV.

Mann would revisit the world of professional thieves in his 1995 film HEAT, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, based on a 1989 TV movie he’d written and directed called L.A. TAKEDOWN. One thing all three films have in common is a long dialogue scene set in a coffee shop, in which the characters explain their philosophies, what’s important to them, and how far they’ll go to protect it.

Of the three, THIEF’s version is far and away the best, as Frank tells Jessie about his wasted prison years, and his hopes for the new life he plans to build piece by piece. She’s intrigued, and a little freaked out, but she’s had a rough time with men up until now, and though Frank is no prince himself, she’s ultimately won over by

his sincerity. He tells her about his first year in Joliet Prison, after being convicted on a $40 theft charge, and how he survived the abuse of guards and cons alike – though fighting back cost him another eight years behind bars. Caan and Weld are in top form here, and he brings it all home by giving us a glimpse of a “state-raised” kid who caught one bad break after another. It might be his finest moment on screen.

Unlike Caan’s character, the real Frank Hohimer eventually turned and became a government witness in 1974, after being prosecuted by a federal organized crime strike force in Chicago. He was being groomed by the Justice Department to testify against Rugendorf, who died before he could go to trial. His later years found Hohimer in and out of prison on a variety of charges. He died in 2003.

In retrospect, THIEF may or may not, as its director contends, be a film noir. But there’s no question it’s one of the most vivid cinematic renderings ever of the criminal life – and one of the best films of the decade.

Talking with Germany's Polar Noir magazine (Part Two)

Part Two of an indepth interview with Sonja Hartl from the German crime fiction magazine/website Polar Noir, tied to the release of the first Crissa Stone novel KALTER SCHUSS INS HERZ (aka COLD SHOT TO THE HEART) in a German translation from Pendragon Verlag.
The German translation of the interview can be found here.
Part One of the original English version is here.


SONJA HARTL: You have worked as a journalist – does this experience help you?

WALLACE STROBY: Yes. It’s no coincidence that a lot of crime fiction’s most successful authors – Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, John Sandford, Gene Kerrigan, etc. – are former journalists. Working in journalism teaches you how to write under deadline pressure, how to organize information properly and also how to handle the editing process – you build up a very thick skin working in journalism. You also look at the writing as a product of effort, rather than strictly inspiration. You often find that, even on what seems like uninspired days, if you just do the work – one foot in front of the other – the inspiration will come. But sometimes it doesn’t, and you just have to deal with that as well.
In the end though, all writing routines, systems, etc. are about the same thing – the illusion of control. As Stephen King says, there are only two pieces of advice to give to aspiring writers – read a lot and write a lot. That’s it.

SH: When you started writing novels, why did you choose to write a crime novel at all?

WS: I think what you write chooses you more than you choose it. When I was younger I read a little bit of everything – fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc. But in my later teen years, I found crime fiction was something that seemed to speak to me more, especially once I discovered the work of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain and others. Those books felt like real life.

SH: In your blog "Live at the Heartbreak Lounge“ you write a lot about noir in literature and film. What is noir for you?

WS: I like to go with James Ellroy’s (possibly apocryphal) definition: “Everybody’s fucked – and then it gets worse.”

SH: A lot crime fiction aficionados (among them myself) like to say, that a crime novel is the best way to describe and analyse our society. What do you think about this?

WS: Crime stories have been around as long as there have been stories, beginning with Cain and Abel. So yes, I think they do give you a handle on addressing certain societal issues. Greed, corruption, jealousy and violence are the darker parts of human nature, but they’re always there, always have been and always will be. In traditional crime and detective fiction, order is restored out of chaos. In noir, chaos is the norm.

SH: Which noir writers have influenced you? (Please tell me something about them and how they have influenced you.)

WS: A long list. As I said above, Hammett and Cain at first, then Chandler to a certain extent, mainly for the way he evoked time and place. I loved – and still love – the dark prose-poem novels of Cornell Woolrich. Later I discovered more contemporary writers, such as John D. MacDonald, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake and others, who all seemed to come from that tradition, but were taking it in new directions. Then George V. Higgins’ THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE ushered in an ultra-realistic style of crime fiction, which influenced a whole generation, from Elmore Leonard to George Pelecanos.

I’ve also been influenced by many non-crime writers. For story, I always go back to Rafael Sabatini (CAPTAIN BLOOD, SCARAMOUCHE, etc)., who was a master at combining character and action. The opening line of SCARAMOUCHE – “He was born with a gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.” – tells you almost all you need to know about the main character.

SH: In most articles about your novels, Richard Stark and Garry Disher are mentioned. What do you think about this reference?

WS: Both are excellent writers. Westlake’s “Richard Stark“ books are master-classes in terse writing and narrative drive. I reread them often. They were out of print in the U.S. for many years, so I always kept a lookout for them in used book stores. I wasn’t able to read the complete series until years after they were first published.
I enjoyed Garry Disher’s Wyatt books very much in the 1990s, during that long break when Westlake had retired his Richard Stark persona. I’ve read all of them, and originally acquired them on-line as imports in the early days of internet shopping. Most of them are out of print now, and quite valuable apparently.

SH: Do films influence your writing? (If yes, how?)

WS: To a certain extent, yes. More for visuals than for story. Certainly anyone who’s written crime fiction since the 1930s has been influenced by the hundreds of crime films that have been made since. The visual component of modern crime writing is strong, and I think that’s the direct influence of films. For a lot of authors working today (myself included), one of the biggest influences are probably the character-driven crime films of the 1970s, such as THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE GETAWAY, SERPICO, etc.

But I’m also a huge fan of the westerns of Sergio Leone, and the films of Jean-Pierre Melville, as well Vittorio DeSica’s neo-realist dramas, and almost anything by Samuel Fuller. Among current directors, Martin Scorsese, of course, as well as James Gray, Johnnie To and many others.

SH: Which are your favourite film noirs? 

WS: From the classic period – say 1940 to 1958 –- one of my favorites is a low-budget film called ARMORED CAR ROBBERY from 1950, which packs a great story, characters and action into 67 minutes. Also from that period, Robert Aldrich’s KISS ME DEADLY (1955), Stanley Kubrick’s THE KILLING (1956), and Robert Wise’s THE SET-UP (1949) and ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959).
From the ‘70s and ‘80s – what you might call the “neo-noir” period – I’d list TAXI DRIVER, CHINATOWN, THIEF, MANHUNTER and others.

SH: And are there any plans to adapt the Crissa Stone novels into a film? 

WS: Showtime Networks optioned the character for a possible series in 2012, and Ted Tally, who won an Oscar for adapting SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, wrote a pilot script. Like the majority of cable projects in development, however, it never went to pilot, and the rights reverted back to me last year. There has been a lot of interest since, but no commitments.

(In the interim, Pendragon Verlag created this full-cast trailer for KALTER SCHUSS ENS HERZ).

SH: My last question: Who are in your opinion the “unsung heroes” of noir?

WS: So many! I’ll stick with those who are no longer with us though, so as not to leave out any of my contemporaries.

Foremost, I’d say Malcolm Braly, who was probably America’s greatest prison novelist. His 1967 novel ON THE YARD is a masterpiece. In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Eugene Izzi wrote a great series of crime novels set in Chicago, which are sadly out of print now. And although he’s best known for THEY SHOOT HORSES DON’T THEY?, Horace McCoy’s KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE (1948) is a brilliant noir novel, told in first person by a psychopathic career criminal. W. L. Heath’s trio of long out-of-print crime novels – VIOLENT SATURDAY, ILL WIND and BLOOD ON THE RIVER – are also forgotten classics. As far as one-offs, Dan J. Marlowe’s THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH is hard to beat for sheer cold-bloodedness.

I’ll mention one author who is still alive, though not writing and publishing fiction anymore. Poet and educator David Bottoms – once Georgia’s poet laureate – wrote two excellent crime novels in the late ‘80s, set in the rural South, ANY COLD JORDAN and EASTER WEEKEND. Both are beautifully written, but his only forays (so far) into fiction.

Talking with Germany's Polar Noir magazine (Part One)

Sonja Hartl from the German crime fiction magazine/website Polar Noir interviewed me indepth recently on a whole array of topics, tied to the release of the first Crissa Stone novel KALTER SCHUSS INS HERZ (aka COLD SHOT TO THE HEART) in a German translation from Pendragon Verlag.
The German translation of the interview can be found here. What follows is the original English version.


SONJA HARTL: How did you develop the idea for COLD SHOT TO THE HEART? Why is your protagonist female?

WALLACE STROBY: I’d always wanted to write an entire novel from the point of view of a career criminal, but someone with whom the reader might have a certain amount of sympathy. Part of my third novel, GONE ‘TIL NOVEMBER, was written from the perspective of an aging black hitman, while the rest was from the point-of-view of a female sheriff’s deputy and single mom in a rural Florida town, the only woman in an otherwise all-male department.
With COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, I wanted to combine those two ideas, and have my criminal also be a woman in an overwhelmingly male environment. That raised all kinds of interesting possibilities.

SH.: I have to admit that I am a little skeptical when male crime authors have female protagonists. Was it difficult for you to write a crime novel with a woman as a main character?

WS: Actually, I found it freeing in some ways, because a woman in that position would handle things differently than the traditional lone wolf male protagonist. She’d make alliances, would have relationships, and would refrain from violence unless absolutely necessary. I’m neither a woman nor a professional criminal, but I did find common ground with her nonetheless. She’s careful, hyper-alert and painstaking to a fault, but at the same time capable of bursts of near-recklessness.
On the more practical side, my first reader, my agent and my editor were all women – and single moms at the time as well – so they were able to supply some guidance when needed.

SH: I like Crissa a lot because she is a woman in a very natural way and does not have to emphasize her “femaleness.“ How would you describe Crissa Stone? And how would you describe the role her mentor and lover Wayne has in her life?

WS: She’s a self-made woman to a certain extent. She had a rough upbringing in a small Texas town, was involved with drugs and petty crime, and thanks to Wayne was able to leave all that, and in the process become part of his world of high-level professional thieves. In COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, all Crissa’s actions revolve around trying to get Wayne out of prison. By the second book, KINGS OF MIDNIGHT, she’s starting to realize that isn’t going to happen. So I think in the four books it’s been a process of her accepting that she’s on her own now. In the most recent one, THE DEVIL’S SHARE, she’s ostensibly become Wayne, setting up the heist herself, recruiting a team to carry it out, etc.

SH: And what about her daughter's role in her life?

WS: Her daughter Maddie is a reminder of what might have been. Part of Crissa’s income goes to her cousin, Leah, who’s raising Maddie as her own. Through much of COLD SHOT, Crissa’s aspiring to a semi-normal life, imagining Wayne out of prison and the two of them raising Maddie. By the end of that book, she realizes the life choices she’s made will never allow that.

SH: In many heist books (or films) the big robbery is in the center of the story. But COLD SHOT TO THE HEART is more like a novel about a certain time in Crissa’s life. Why did you choose this style?

WS: Reading about heists – or watching them on film – can be fun, because it’s like watching machinery at work. At the same time, personally I’m much more interested in the people involved, the run-up to the crime and the aftermath. I'm less interested in the heist itself than the conversations between the thieves immediately before and afterward.

SH: In one dialogue, the importance of paying taxes for thieves is emphasized. What is the background of this?

WS: The classic example is the prosecution of gangster Al Capone in the 1930s. He was one of the nation’s largest bootleggers and mob bosses, who had orchestrated countless murders, but prosecutors could never win a case against him. That was until the Internal Revenue Service was able to prove that he hadn’t paid sufficient taxes on any of his income – legal and illegal – in years. That eventually earned him a long prison sentence.

SH: The first lines are – in my opinion – very important for a book. Why did you choose this particular opening?

WS: I’m very big on opening lines, and I spend a lot of time on them. I worked on this one until it felt right. I wanted something straightforward and direct, but which also raised questions – who is this woman, what is she doing, why is she armed? At the same time, it drops the reader right into Crissa’s world, in the middle of a robbery.

SH: I would like to know something about your writing process: When you write novels, do you develop the plot in advance? What does your writing routine look like?

WS: I don’t plot in advance, because that takes a lot of the energy and fun out of it for me. I think it’s just a question of what works best for your process – there’s no hard and fast rule. With me, I find if I know who the main characters are and what the story is, I can start writing. Then, as I go along, other things – specific scenes, etc. – will present themselves. Sometimes, when the story is complex, I have to work out plot points in the middle of the writing process, but I generally never do that beforehand.

As far as my routine, I try to write every day – if only for an hour – but don’t always succeed. Life sometimes intervenes. I almost always write at night though – usually ten p.m. to two a.m. or thereabouts. Fewer distractions then.

(CONTINUED IN PART TWO)

Ennio Morricone's pure pop gem

Friends know my obsession with the music of composer Ennio Morricone, who turned 87 November 10. This is a pop song he wrote in 1966 for the Italian singer Mina, with lyrics by Maurizio Costanzo and Ghigo De Chiara. A hit in Italy again this year in this version by Nek, who goes big without ever going over the top. Still a great song, and it doesn't hurt that just about everyone in the video is beautiful. Here's a brief synopsis of how the song came to be.. And here's a version with different lyrics that was a hit for French singer Francoise Hardy.

German book trailer for COLD SHOT TO THE HEART

Crissa Stone on film for the first time (sort of).

My German publisher, Pendragon Verlag, launched their translated edition of the first Crissa Stone novel, COLD SHOT TO THE HEART (aka KALTER SCHUSS INS HERZ) at the Frankfurt Book Fair earlier this month.

As part of the rollout they commissioned a full-cast book trailer that can be found here.

Not sure who the actress is playing Crissa - and not quite the way I described her - but she still looks the part.

Answering some Bloody Questions from Germany

The German crime fiction website Krimi-Welt interviewed me as part of their "Bloody Questions/The Crime Questionnaire" series of Q&As with authors (the first Crissa Stone novel, COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, has just been reissued in a German-language edition from Pendragon Verlag publishers as KALTER SCHUSS INS HERZ). The German version of the interview is here. I won't attempt to translate interviewer Marcus Müntefering's introduction, but here's the interview below, in the original English:

1: Have you ever thought about committing a crime/committed a crime?

As far as the act, nothing significant, fortunately. In regards to the thought, who hasn’t? The question is why some people follow through on it and others don’t. Is it conscience, fear, upbringing? All good questions for crime fiction.



2: Who is the worst villain of the history of (crime) literature?
A great crime novel – or any novel for that matter – will create a certain amount of sympathy for even its worst villains. That’s what gives the stories resonance (Thomas Harris’ RED DRAGON is a perfect example). Who’s the most unsympathetic villain in crime fiction? I’m not sure, maybe Anton Chigurh in Cormac McCarthy’s NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. He’s certainly one of the most enigmatic.

 

3: Do you remember the first person you ever killed in your novels?
Yes, a major character toward the end of my first novel, THE BARBED-WIRE KISS. I was surprised at the sense of loss I felt. That scene was difficult to write.

4: The Beatles or Stones question: Chandler or Hammett?
Both great writers, but I will always prefer Hammett. Discovering his books in my teenage years changed my life. His novels felt like they were set in the real world, one I recognized. THE GLASS KEY will always stay with me. I think it’s his masterpiece, even more so than THE MALTESE FALCON. 

5: Have you ever seen a dead body? And how did it affect your life?
Everyone has. If nothing else, it reminds you that time is finite and the carnival always ends, usually before you’re ready.

6: Have you ever witnessed a crime?
 Yes, and we’ll leave it at that.

7: Is there anybody in the world you’d rather see dead?
No, but there are quite a few people who have passed on that I wish were still alive.

8: How did you make a living before you became a success as a writer?
I worked in daily newspapers for 23 years as a reporter and editor. I still freelance for magazines and newspapers when possible. 

9: If you wouldn’t write crime novels – what would you (like to) do?
Direct films. But in one sense that’s what I’m already doing with the novels, except I have an unlimited budget and no one to second-guess me. 

10: Do you listen to music when you are writing? And if this is a yes: What music? 
Off and on. I did a CD playlist for my third novel GONE ‘TIL NOVEMBER which included some of the music I listened to while I wrote it, mainly old-school soul and R&B, which figured into the plot. But I wrote the first three Crissa Stone novels listening exclusively to the music of American minimalist composers Philip Glass and John Adams. I found their work beautiful and hypnotic in a way that seemed to aid the writing process.

11: Do you prefer to write at day or at night? At your desk at home or everywhere you go?
I write at night, usually from ten p.m. on. I have to write at my desk at home, or someplace similar. I have a laptop but don’t really do much first-draft writing on it because it feels a little awkward. I can’t work in public – coffee shops, libraries, etc. – at all. Too many distractions. I know several excellent writers who do though.

12: Are the any days where you can’t write a word? What do you do then?
Collate and recopy notes, look up visual references, handle correspondence. Those days come more often than you’d think. A lot of times it’s fatigue-related though, and in those cases short naps seem to help. 

13: What happens after death? And: What should happen after death?
I like to think we go back into the universal soup we came from and are reunited with everything that is, ever was, and ever will be. 

14: Crime and Punishment: What do you think of capitol punishment?
I’m generally opposed to it, although it can be hard to make that argument when the crimes are as horrific as they sometimes are.  But it’s never been applied fairly in terms of class, and the astonishing number of Death Row inmates who have been freed and exonerated based on new evidence indicates the process is far from foolproof. But it is final.

15: What do you make of Bert Brecht’s statement: What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?“
As James Lee Burke has answered eloquently in his "Bloody Questions" interview, banks helped create the middle class by granting access to money to those who didn’t have it. However, that concept of banking – and the IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE version of the “good ol’ Savings and Loan” – is a far cry from the current monolithic financial institutions whose greed and recklessness sent the world’s economy into a downward spiral that will be felt for generations. 

16: What should be written on your tombstone?
“Wow, he was old.”

My Audrey Totter tribute

Audrey Totter, one of the great Hollywood femme fatales (as well as one of the last of Eddie Muller's "Dark City Dames"), passed away in Dec. 2013, at age 95, while I was writing THE DEVIL'S SHARE, and I was inclined to pay a little homage to her in a scene in the book. Few people have noticed it - it's around page 70 in the hardcover edition - but I'm happy to have gotten it in there, a little tribute from one tough fictional dame to another. The clip I referenced wasn't on YouTube, so I went ahead and uploaded it myself. It's from one of my favorite movies of hers, 1949's TENSION.

"Born to Run" at 40

It's hard to explain what it was like - 40 years ago - to first hear the songs from Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" on the radio (WNEW-FM!) while growing up in Long Branch, N.J., next to Asbury Park. Those songs invested the places I knew so well - Palace Amusements, The Circuit and more - with an almost mystical presence, and elevated them from the prosaic to the poetic. Forty years - and more than 100 shows - later, I'm still along for the ride.

Here's one of my favorite outtakes from the album, an early acoustic version of "Thunder Road."