If someone offered me the choice between taking a long road trip with a couple of kids or being murdered by the mob, I’d have to really think it over.If someone offered me the choice between taking a long road trip with a couple of kids or being murdered by the mob, I’d have to really think it over.
It’s November 1963, and Frank Guidry is living well in New Orleans thanks to his top position with Carlos Marcello’s mob outfit. However, one of Frank’s recent chores was leaving a car in a parking garage in Dallas very near the spot where President Kennedy would be assassinated just days later. It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection especially when several other people on Carlos’ payroll start turning up dead. Frank just became a loose end, and he flees west with lethal hit man Paul Barone hot on his trail.
Meanwhile, Charlotte Roy has been trying to raise her two daughters in a small Oklahoma town which isn’t easy thanks to her drunken loser of a husband. When Charlotte has enough she takes the girls and starts heading to California, but she’s consumed by guilt and uncertain if she's done the right thing. After Frank meets Charlotte at a motel he realizes that traveling with a lady and two kids would make him a lot less conspicuous so he engineers circumstances so that they all go together. Frank is surprised when what started as a con to help him get away begins to turn into a real relationship with Charlotte and the kids. But that pesky hit man is still right behind them…
I read Berney’s The Long and Faraway Gone earlier this year and enjoyed it quite a bit. Then I heard a tremendous amount of good buzz about this one before it released, and I’m pleased to report that it lives up to the hype.
In the wrong hands this concept could be just some cheesy tale about a ‘bad man’ who sees the error of his ways after becoming part of a family, but the strong character work done with Frank, Charlotte, and deadly Paul Barone is where this really shines. You thoroughly understand all of them, and despite the historical backdrop it all feels grounded and realistic with Frank and Charlotte struggling to deal with how their lives have been forever changed while Barone has to deal with a variety of setbacks as he just tries to complete his mission.
I particularly liked how Berney used the JFK assassination as the jumping off point, not the center of the story. It’s obviously the thing driving the plot, but what’s presented comes across as a believable scheme by one pissed off mobster instead of some vast shadowy tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory. So we’re not dragged into some Oliver Stone style fever dream.
The work done on the settings and time is top notch, too. We get an authentic sense of the places like New Orleans, Las Vegas, crappy motels, and roadside tourist traps. It all builds the mood of what it must have been like back then. There’s nice touches of how the mob operated at the time, too.
It’s a damn fine piece of crime fiction, and I’ll be tracking down more of Berney’s work....more
If you’re ever in my part of the world you can go to Union Station and see the holes on its exterior that legend says are from some of the bullets firIf you’re ever in my part of the world you can go to Union Station and see the holes on its exterior that legend says are from some of the bullets fired during the Kansas City Massacre. As always, science has to ruin everything and modern tests have called that claim into question. That’s actually fitting because the origin of those holes is now as murky as almost everything else that happened that day.
What is known is that on June 17, 1933, a federal prisoner named Frank Nash was being transported to Leavenworth through Union station by federal agents and KC police officers. A gunfight broke out just outside the station that left several of the cops and Nash himself dead. The federal investigation claimed that gangsters Pretty Boy Floyd, Adam Richetti, and Vernon Miller were the gunmen who tried to free Nash. In the aftermath J. Edgar Hoover used the incident to help build up the power of his small United States Bureau of Investigation into what we now know as the FBI. However, there’s been a lot of questions raised about who actually did the shooting and what really happened that day.
Comic book artist and KC native Ande Park wrote this, and the results are interesting if you’re into the true crime stories of this era. He obviously researched the subject and his notes at the end where he explains the hows and whys of what he depicted, including changes to known facts, are a nice touch. I particularly like the way that the casual corruption of KC at the time is part of the story. The art by Eduardo Barreto has a clean style that fits the time period it was depicting.
Unfortunately, the story of the KC Massacre is a big complicated mess, and it’s not a natural fit for a fairly short graphic novel. It’d probably need to be something comparable to Alan Moore’s take on Jack the Ripper in From Hell to really do it right, and while it gets the point across it seems a little quick and confusing.
Still, I’m a KC guy with an interest in history like this so it was well worth a read. And if you’re looking for a deeper dive into how Hoover used the Deperession crime wave to boost himself into a seat of real power I’d also highly recommend Public Enemies. ...more
We’ve all heard of the Good-Cop/Bad-Cop routine, but when you read a James Ellroy novel it’s more like Bad-Cop/Worse-Cop/Crimes-Against-Humanity-Cop.
TWe’ve all heard of the Good-Cop/Bad-Cop routine, but when you read a James Ellroy novel it’s more like Bad-Cop/Worse-Cop/Crimes-Against-Humanity-Cop.
This third installment in the L.A. Quartet introduces us to another trio of police officers who wouldn't last ten minutes on the job if there were smart phones in the 1950s which could have recorded their many misdeeds. Ed Exley is a brilliant detective, but his physical cowardice is exceeded only by his ruthless ambition. Bud White is a thug who never met a suspect he couldn’t beat into talking, and he’s got a special hatred reserved for men who hurt women. Jack Vincennes has gone Hollywood with a side gig as the technical advisor for a TV cop show, and his reputation as a relentless narco officer is mainly due to him taking payoffs from a scandal rag to arrest movie stars to create juicy stories.
The three cops end up involved in a police brutality scandal dubbed Bloody Christmas which leads to drastic changes of fortune for each of them. Then a shocking mass murder in a coffee shop in an apparent robbery gone wrong draws all of them into the orbit of the investigation. Driven by their obsessions and haunted by secrets all of them will follow separate trails through a tangled web of pornography, drugs, prostitution, rape, and murder.
Ellroy had used similar elements of historical fiction that combines the seedy history of L.A. with his own epic crime stories in previous books, but I think this is where he perfected the idea and really soared with it. It’s the first time he fully deployed a unique style that is essentially a stream of consciousness that shifts among the three leads that uses clipped sentences to form a patter that makes everything feel more as if it’s being experienced instead of a narrative you’re reading.
The main appeal for me is the three main characters. These are not nice guys. They are utterly amoral and unrepentant racists who cause an enormous amount of damage in pursuit of their own agendas. What saves them (And this is what usually redeems Ellroy’s characters.) is their ultimate realizations that they’re pawns being used by a system that is far more criminal and corrupt than anything they’ve done, and that they’re willing to destroy themselves and everything around them in bids for redemption.
This is a brutal, vicious crime novel filled with shocking acts of violence and offensive language. It’s also an extremely complex and dense book with multiple confusing sub-plots spinning off the main Nite Owl story. I’ve read it multiple times, and I’d still be hard pressed to explain everything that happens and why. Despite all of that it remains among my favorite novels because it is such a bold attempt to do something different that is mostly successful.
I also credit the movie as being one of the best adaptations of a book I’ve seen. There’s only about 40% of the plot from the page on the screen, but they did a masterful job of combining and condensing elements while preserving the essential feel of the book and smartly keeping the focus on its three flawed main characters....more
I received a free ARC from NetGalley of this for review.
A book with the word Girl in the title? I’ve never seen that before….*cough*
In the last days oI received a free ARC from NetGalley of this for review.
A book with the word Girl in the title? I’ve never seen that before….*cough*
In the last days of World War II in Europe an Italian fisherman named Cenzo hauls in what he thinks is the body of a dead young woman. Only she’s just playing possum, and Cenzo quickly finds out that Giulia is Jewish and on the run from Nazis who just killed her family.
Cenzo hides Giulia, but it turns out that she has a secret that someone is desperate to cover up by killing her. Things get more complicated when his estranged brother who has been doing propaganda films for Mussolini’s government shows up, and Cenzo finds himself drawn into the circle of once powerful people who are now looking for the exits as the Allies approach.
I’ve been a longtime fan of Martin Cruz Smith, particularly his series about Russian detective, Arkady Renko. Like Renko and many of his other characters, Cenzo is a smart guy who generally wants nothing to do with the schemes of the corrupt people above him in society, and yet he’s also incapable of just letting an obvious injustice happen. It’s another Smith staple that many around Cenzo see him as a pawn to use for their own purposes, but he’s got a knack for turning the tables on them while he pursues his own agenda. Smith is also great at setting stories in historically interesting places and periods, and he makes the most out of this one.
This isn’t an action thriller, and it’s also not a straight up whodunit historical fiction. It kind of falls into the category of character drama with some of those elements. Overall it’s Smith doing his usual thing, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
Ah, the post-war years. America’s golden age when things were so much better than they are today. When no injustice ever occurred, and no one was unfaAh, the post-war years. America’s golden age when things were so much better than they are today. When no injustice ever occurred, and no one was unfairly treated. Every pay check was a fortune, every meal a banquet, and the worst crime was the odd rapscallion stealing a pie off a window sill. Or maybe sometimes the bisected body of a woman who had been brutally tortured would be left in an empty lot which would put a wildly corrupt police force in a frenzied media spotlight as the cops fruitlessly tried to solve the murder.
It really was a simpler time…
This was the book where James Ellroy stepped his game up from promising mystery writer to a creator of epic historical fiction by mixing a famous unsolved murder with seedy LA history via flawed fictional characters. Our narrator is Dwight ‘Bucky’ Bleichart, a former boxer turned LAPD officer just after World War II. Bucky agrees to fight another cop named Lee Blanchard as part of a departmental publicity stunt. The boxing match makes them partners, but it’s Lee’s girlfriend Kay who unites all three of them into a family. It’s a dead woman that eventually starts to tear them all to pieces.
In reality Elizabeth Short was just another young woman who came to LA with stars in her eyes, but her unsolved murder became one of those crimes that stuck in the public consciousness. Ellroy has talked and written a great deal about how he poured a lot of his unresolved feelings about his mother’s unsolved murder into the Dahlia case, and if there’s one thing you’re sure of by the time you’re done reading it’s that he knows what it’s like to be obsessed and haunted by dead women.
Ellroy is also fascinated by the shady history of LA and its police department, and he uses that knowledge to craft a fantastically violent and corrupt world where the cops are often worse than the criminals they’re arresting. Almost everyone involved the investigation has their own agendas, and the methods used to get what they want are brutal. Nobody gets out clean when it comes to the Dahlia, least of all those who give the most while trying to learn who killed her.
This is a great crime story with a hard boiled edge that was one of the books that made me a huge fan of James Ellroy....more
”To understand the gunfight in Tombstone, stop — now — and watch a clock for thirty seconds. Listen to it tick while you try to imagine one half of a ”To understand the gunfight in Tombstone, stop — now — and watch a clock for thirty seconds. Listen to it tick while you try to imagine one half of a single minute so terrible it will pursue you all your life and far beyond the grave."
One of the things I find fascinating about the ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral'* is how the same set of facts can be presented to show one side or the other as the ‘good guys’ or the ‘bad guys’. Were the Earps and Doc Holliday heroes who fearlessly faced down some dastardly cattle rustlers and thieves, or were they corrupt opportunists who essentially murdered some innocent ranchers as part of their efforts to take over the town of Tombstone?
As with most things the reality probably lies somewhere in the middle, and what Mary Doria Russell has done so brilliantly with this historical fiction is to show us a version that feels a lot more true than many of the non-fiction accounts that ascribe some kind of agenda to the actions of those involved. Her depiction here shows all the participants not as mythical incorruptible Western lawmen nor mustache twirling villains. Instead, she tells a story in which they are just flawed people who found themselves at a nasty intersection of local politics, business, and crime that led to series of events that eventually found a group of men trading bullets in a vacant lot that was unfortunately just the beginning of even more violence that would cost them dearly.
The previous Russell book Doc focused on John Henry Holliday and his friendship with the Earps through their days in Dodge City. This one puts Wyatt in the forefront, but like Doc we get the viewpoints of many characters. For example, a lot of the story comes to us via Josie Marcus, the woman who left Sheriff John Behan for his political rival Wyatt which was another key factor in escalating the tensions in Tombstone.
The first part of the book that details the events leading up to the infamous gunfight is a stew of conflicting agendas enhanced by post-Civil War grudges and shady political moves that combine until even the most frantic stirring couldn’t keep that particular pot from boiling over. A lot of this reminded me of HBO’s Deadwood in the way that various schemes play out. There’s also distinct parallels to American society today like the town’s two competing newspapers choosing sides and trying to spin events like a cable news network.
Another interesting aspect is how much time is spent on what happened after the gunfight, and unlike some versions such as the film Tombstone which glamorized the ‘vendetta ride of Wyatt Earp’ this story dwells instead on the immense price that everyone involved paid in one way or another. The book pretty much destroys the romanticized myth of the Old West in which disputes can be permanently settled by showdowns at high noon, and instead presents the much messier reality in which violence kicks off revenge cycles when there’s no strong authority around to put a stop to the whole mess.
Although the Earps and Doc Holliday are definitely the heroes of this story Russell deglamorizes them as legends. Instead she skillfully and compassionately shows how their complicated lives and a variety of good and bad decisions led them to that pivotal thirty seconds, and how those moments haunted and defined their reputations forever afterwards.
* - It’s common knowledge that the shooting didn’t actually happen at the OK Corral, but as Russell writes, “…..it took too long to set the type for 'Gunfight in the Vacant Lot Behind Camillus Fly’s Photography Studio Near Fremont Street.'”...more
Even in a fictional book in which he’s supposed to be the hero Richard Nixon can't help but be an asshole.
The concept here is that when Nixon was an uEven in a fictional book in which he’s supposed to be the hero Richard Nixon can't help but be an asshole.
The concept here is that when Nixon was an underhanded congressman trying to prove that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy he inadvertently stumbled across a hidden occult world of Lovecratfian style horrors. This discovery and his ambition paves the way for him to become a reluctant KGB spy which in turn helps him become vice-president. He then learns that President Eisenhower has control of vast magical powers that he is using as part of a secret supernatural front of the Cold War as the Soviets try to harness these horrors to gain strategic advantages for themselves. As he moves through Eisenhower's administration to his own presidency Nixon becomes a pivotal figure in this underground war.
This book surprised me because I was thinking that it would be done in a tongue-in-cheek way that played off the idea of Richard Nixon being a hero after all, but in fact it’s the exact opposite. The portrayal of him here is still that of an insecure and bitter guy who seemed to lack the charisma and charm of a used car salesmen, but whose relentless drive and willingness to fight dirty enabled him to rise to power. This is more of a character study that just puts a supernatural coat of paint on the man rather than try to shine him up into something he wasn’t.
That’s an interesting way to go, to use this kind of a book to not tell us that what we knew about Nixon wasn’t wrong, it’s just that we didn’t know all of the story. Grossman is a good writer who actually manages to generate sympathy for Tricky Dick as he acknowledges his faults in his first person narration.
But that leaves me not sure what exactly the point of all this was. The idea that all these weird occult happenings have links embedded in the foundation of American government was interesting, and it seems like there was the potential for a good story there. However, we see this through Nixon’s eyes, and he doesn’t really know the full scope of what’s going on until late in the game. Since this is an outsider trying to look in telling us the story it seems like we’re only getting a glimpse of a secret history although some of the historical incidents have an interesting twist on them like the moon landing. It also feels like we don’t know the rules here because none of it is explained in detail as to what’s possible, and most of the book is spent with a confused Nixon trying to figure out what’s happening and never getting a great handle on it.
Essentially it just feels like the whole book was done to give us a supernatural excuse for the reasons behind Watergate. That might have made for an interesting short story, but by writing Nixon as Nixon with a few more secrets and not giving us a deep dive into the occult side of stuff, the book ends up feeling generally unsatisfying....more
This book certainly isn’t abominable, but it doesn’t exactly soar to the height of the peak of Mount Everest either.
In 1925 young Jake Perry is an AmeThis book certainly isn’t abominable, but it doesn’t exactly soar to the height of the peak of Mount Everest either.
In 1925 young Jake Perry is an American mountain climber who has been knocking around the Alps with his new friends, Richard Davis Deacon and Jean-Claude Clairoux. Deacon is a veteran English climber who had been on a previous expedition to scale Mount Everest. After the men hear about the deaths of several people attempting to summit Everest, Deacon comes up with a plan to get funding for another Everest expedition by telling the mother of a young English lord that they will try to find and recover his remains
With Deacon’s experience and several new climbing innovations, the three men hope to become the first to climb Everest, but the addition of a new member to their party is just one of many surprises they’ll get as they try overcome all the obstacles that come with a high altitude climb.
Dan Simmons threw me for a bit of a loop by starting with an introduction in which he describes how he met Jake Perry as an old dying man who inadvertently inspires his Arctic horror story The Terror. This is supposedly an account that Perry wrote that Simmons received after his death and arranged to have a published. The inclusion of Simmons into his own story made me think for a minute that Perry was real until a bit of research showed that Simmons was doing his historical fiction thing again like The Terror, Black Hills, and The Crook Factory.
If you’ve read any of those books and you know that a big chunk of this is about trying to climb Mt. Everest in the ‘20s then you might guess that there’s going to be a massive amount of detail about mountain climbing techniques and equipment from that era. And you’d be absolutely right!
Some people would probably be bored to tears by this, but most who have read any of those other books by Simmons probably had a pretty good idea that there would be long explanations of the terrain, food, clothing, equipment, etc. etc. The question for many readers will be is if the detail helps sell the experience of the book or if they think that it just turns into Simmons showing off his research skills.
The problem for me wasn’t so much the infodumps. I’m a Simmons veteran so I knew what I was getting into, and I knew that I’d be getting an education in mountain climbing by reading this. It was that not only did Simmons give you that much detail, he’s awfully damn repetitive about it. For example, Simmons writes that Deacon has come up with a new kind of rope and exactly how it’s breaking strength is superior to the other ropes of the time. OK, so they’ve got better rope. Easy enough to understand. Yet Simmons feels the need to repeatedly remind us every time a hunk of rope is used that the Deacon’s ‘miracle rope’ is much better the old ‘clothes line’ rope. I got it after the first 20 times, Dan Simmons. You didn’t need to keep telling me.
And it isn’t just the rope. Perry’s team has acute future vision because they manage to use groundbreaking new ice climbing methods as well as improved equipment in every phase of their expedition. Even their tents and clothing are such a quantum leap above the gear of the day that I was wondering why they bothered trying to climb Mount Everest when they could have just founded North Face and made a fortune instead.
Maybe this wouldn’t have been quite such an irritation to me if the main part of the story would have kicked in a little earlier and been a bit more believable. I was invested in finding out if they were going to be able to summit Everest when Phase Two begins late in the book, and everything goes in another direction. (view spoiler)[There’s a lot of teasing all the yeti stuff, and since this is a book by the guy who wrote The Terror it certainly seemed like some abominable snowmen would be making an appearance so it turning out to be Nazis seems to come out of left field despite the earlier scenes in Germany.
Also, after so much detail about how exhausting it is to be in the death zone, the plot of being chased by Nazis up the mountain seems completely unrealistic. Plus, the idea that all of this was because of pictures showing that Adolf Hitler was a pedophile doesn’t really work for me either. If the British really had blackmail material like that, wouldn’t they have used it to derail Hitler’s career earlier when he was becoming a threat or avert the war when he started invading other countries? I just don’t buy that they’d wait to play that card until England was about to be invaded rather than much earlier. (hide spoiler)]
Still, for all the excess detail and slow pace, I did very much enjoy some aspects of this. Simmons is a writer who can really make you feel what it’d be like to climb the highest mountain on the world, and he provides some very gory details to make you appreciate the peril. I had never thought about what would happen to human bodies that go tumbling down mountain faces, and now I have those mental pictures in my head thanks to this book. So that’s another one I owe Dan Simmons…...more
“Mr. Kemper, I hear that you are somewhat familiar with me?”
“I am.”
“Please tell me what you know. Be succinct.”
“You are haunted by“Hello, Mr. Ellroy.”
“Mr. Kemper, I hear that you are somewhat familiar with me?”
“I am.”
“Please tell me what you know. Be succinct.”
“You are haunted by the unsolved murder of your mother which occurred when you were a child and led you to become obsessed with crime and women. You frequently dreamed of scenarios in which you could save damsels in distress. You let your rich fantasy life rule you and with no ambition or discipline you became a homeless drunk and drug addict in your teens. You eventually hit bottom and got sober. You became a writer and used your fascination with true crime and post-war Los Angeles to create what you called the L.A. Quartet. You started with a fictionalized version of the Black Dahlia case, and one of the books, L.A. Confidential, became an acclaimed movie. You wrote a trilogy called Underworld USA that followed bad men doing bad things in the shadows of recent American history. You investigated the death of your mother with an ex-cop and published the results as a memoir. You wrote a second autobiography in which you admitted that much of what you wrote about your state of mind in the first book wasn’t true. You recently published a new novel called Perfidia that you state is the start of a new Second L.A. Quartet.
“What are your impressions of Perfidia? Please be brief.”
“Perfidia begins the day before Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese. Many of the characters are ones you used in other books like Dudley Smith, a corrupt police officer who was a large part of the L.A. Quartet, and Kay Lake from The Black Dahlia. Others are based on real life people like William ‘Whiskey Bill’ Parker, another LAPD officer who would go on to become the chief of police. A new addition is a brilliant police crime scene technician, Hideo Ashida, of Japanese descent. The murder of a Japanese family coincides with the news of the attack, and the investigation takes place as L.A. is consumed by a mixture of patriotism and paranoia. Corruption enters the scene immediately with many people scheming on ways to profit from the war even as the ships are still burning at Pearl Harbor.”
“That’s a summary. I asked for your impressions.”
“There is a lot here to appeal to your fans. The wartime setting with a mystery that blends fiction with history against a L.A. that is completely corrupt is something that you know how to utilize to provide a gritty noir atmosphere. Your plotting with the characters aligning and betraying each other almost at whim is as dense and intricate as ever. Your style of short sentences in a stream of consciousness patter as the perspective shifts from character to character is still sharp, and you retain the knack of writing scenes of brutal violence that seem to pass in moments yet leave lasting effects.”
“That’s the positive side. Please tell me where you think the book was lacking.”
“While some longtime fans will be delighted at the way you’ve incorporated so many characters from your other books, it also brings some of the problems inherent to prequels into the mix.”
“Explain.”
“If you know that a character is alive and has a career with the police department in a book set after Perfidia, then I know that they will not die or lose their job in this book despite anything that may occur. This naturally removes some of the drama.”
“Naturally. Please continue.”
“If not done well, the characters may act in ways or accumulate knowledge that seems at odds with the other incarnation. For example,(view spoiler)[ the idea that Dudley Smith is the father of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, is something that is pretty shocking and wasn’t even hinted at that I can recall in his previous appearances. (hide spoiler)]
“I understand the point. Move on."
“Usually your books take place over a period of months or years. This allows for on-going events and new information to change the perspectives and motives of characters. Since this novel occurs entirely in the weeks immediately after Pearl Harbor, the time frame is greatly condensed from your usual work yet you incorporate as many betrayals, shocking revelations and changes of allegiances as your other books. This makes all of the characters seem rushed and erratic. Plus, everyone in the book seems to have an amazing ability to look into the future. None of the major players seem that concerned about the war with the Japanese. All of them somehow immediately know that the war will be won and that there will future tension between America and Russia.”
“Are there any other things you consider shortcomings of the book you would like to share?
“You also use some of the same phrases and tricks here that seem in danger of becoming tropes of your work.”
“State some examples.”
“Using short sentences to indicate a series of actions. For example, ‘Dudley winked. Dudley scratched. Dudley howled….’“
“And?”
“And characters making instant judgments and psychoanalysis of each other that is 100% accurate.”
“And?”
“And repeatedly using the word ‘and’ as a way of continuing the flow of information.”
“Very droll, Mr. Kemper. And?”
“And you really got into this thing where a lot of the dialogue is someone demanding information in a blunt and condescending fashion. You used to save that for when one had a definite edge on another, like J. Edgar Hoover interrogating an underling, but it seemed like it happened on almost every page in this book. These conversations also frequently have one person delivering a set of orders.”
“You have communicated your viewpoint, Mr. Kemper. You will write up a review on Perfidia. You will give it no less than three stars. You may bring up the points you have outlined here, but you will still credit my work as still being an enjoyable read. You will also praise my ability to create damaged characters operating in amoral ways for selfish reasons at a street level and use them to illustrate broader themes on subjects like the effect of History on the individual. Once you have completed this review, you will post it on Goodreads. If you don’t do this, I’ll engage in another trope of mine, and have you shot in the face repeatedly. Do you agree, Mr. Kemper?”
“One three star review of Perfidia coming right up!”
(I received an ARC of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
Back before digital technology and the internet made sending video easy by clic(I received an ARC of this from NetGalley in exchange for this review.)
Back before digital technology and the internet made sending video easy by clicking a mouse, the network news had to use cruder methods for their evening broadcasts like handing the film off to a motorcycle courier to race it back to the station to be developed and eventually put on the air. Hell, they might as well have been making finger paintings on a cave wall...
It’s 1972 in Washington DC , and the Watergate investigation has begun to throw a cloud over Nixon’s upcoming second inauguration. Rick Putnam is a Vietnam veteran still struggling to get over the physical and psychological toll the war took on him, and his favorite kind of therapy is riding a motorcycle at daredevil speeds through the crowded and dangerous streets to deliver the film generated by TV news reporters all over town. As Rick makes a routine run he’s almost killed by a reckless driver, and he’s later shocked to learn that the reporters who gave him the film died in a car wreck. Rick soon finds himself targeted by people determined to murder him.
I had very high hopes for this since the premise of a guy being the target of a conspiracy in the DC of the early ‘70s seemed like it could have a paranoid conspiracy thriller of that era like Three Days of the Condor. A disaffected motorcycle courier racing through the streets with Watergate as the political backdrop could have been great. Unfortunately, this settles for just being entertaining.
The first problem I had is with Rick Putnam. He's a vet who had to endure months of painful therapy from his war wounds as well as post-traumatic stress that leaves him only able to sleep for a few nightmare ridden hours every night. You would think that would make him a bitter mess, but instead when not having flashbacks he seems like a cheerful and good natured guy who just likes riding his motorcycle really fast. Which is good for him because he gets chased an awful lot in this book.
The second problem is that instead of taking advantage of the ‘70s setting to evoke a grim urban environment populated by a bunch of sleazy assholes in bad sport coats (And isn’t that what we all want from a conspiracy story in the ‘70s?) , we get anachronistic attitudes that reflect modern sensibilities. Like a couple of gay characters make a few comments about having to stay in the closet, but the reaction of everyone in the book seem extremely progressive for the time. And did we really need the lecture about how the Washington Redskins name is racist and offensive to Native Americans? It is, but was anybody talking about that in 1972? And why is it in a conspiracy thriller?
While there’s some interesting stuff about how the whole film to TV process works, we’re almost immediately introduced to more supporting characters in the form of Rick’s housemates who just happen to be early hackers and show him how these miraculous ‘modems’ can be used to get information from computers. These guys are also hard core science nerds who become Rick’s personal crime lab. So instead of Rick maybe running around and talking to people to get things done, he has the 1972 version of Google in the form of these guys in his house.
It’s also a little unsatisfying because Rick ends up mainly just standing around in between motorcycle chases while everyone else does all the work and explains the conspiracy to him. (view spoiler)[Not only is Rick lucky enough to live with three hackers who can whip up high explosives and rig a way to develop film, his other roommate just happens to be a politically connected accountant who can not only decipher the crucial evidence, he also knows exactly how to use it. Oh, and he’s a martial arts expert which comes in handy! (hide spoiler)]
Despite my disappointment that the book settles for being a light weight thriller that doesn’t take full advantage of its setting, I still enjoyed it. The motorcycle chase sequences are exciting, and even though I didn’t entirely buy Rick as a damaged vet, I did end up liking him for his earnest sincerity.
This is probably suffering from my expectations. Going back to the cinema comparison, I was thinking this would be The Conversation on a motorcycle, but it’s more like an action exploitation film in which The Man can be taken down by a biker/Vietnam vet and his eccentric pals. Thinking about it in those terms makes it seem a lot more successful. ...more
New York City Police Department Application - 1845
1) Can you walk?
2) Are you a Democrat?
If you answered ‘Yes’ to both of these questions: CongratulatiNew York City Police Department Application - 1845
1) Can you walk?
2) Are you a Democrat?
If you answered ‘Yes’ to both of these questions: Congratulations! You are now a police officer for the city of New York.
Timothy Wilde was a bartender who was doing well by the standards of 1845. He had saved some money which he planned on using for his dream of purchasing a ferry boat and asking the woman he was in love with to marry him. However, a devastating fire leaves him homeless, unemployed, penniless and disfigured.
Tim’s brother, Valentine, is a politically connected fire captain who gets them both jobs on the newly formed New York police department. Since Tim hates his brother for his corrupt ways as well as his other various other sins like his morphine habit, he doesn’t really want the job, but with no other options, Tim signs on. After almost a full day of training which consists of mainly being told to drag criminals to jail but to ignore the prostitutes, Tim receives a ‘copper star’ which is also the slang name of the new policemen.
With New York filled with anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments after the influx of immigrants due to the potato famine as well as half the population thinking that a police force is un-American, Tim and his fellow officers have their work cut out for them. After Tim comes across a female child prostitute (Or a kinchen-maab in the lingo of the day.) covered in blood, it leads to the discovery of 19 dead children who seem to have been murdered with cross-like wounds ripped into them. Tim and the fledgling police force will have to quickly solve the crime before the bloody deaths are used as propaganda that could tear New York apart.
I liked the early parts of this book with its depiction of the early days of the New York police department, but once it turned into a murder mystery, it lost a lot of its charm. Part of this is due to the protagonist. Timothy is kind of a self-righteous prude in a lot of ways, and frankly I kept finding myself wishing that his wicked brother Valentine was the main character. Val may be a morphine junkie and a willing part of the corrupt Democratic political machine, but he was entertaining.
The whole book suffers a bit by being a historical fiction but having a hero who is too modern despite his seemingly straight arrow outlook of the time. It may make for a more likeable character, but I just can’t picture a white bartender in New York circa 1845 being so open-minded as to defend a black man against a mob as well as find himself admiring a homosexual. It’s pretty to think it could have been like that, but it just seems too politically correct to be believable.
However, the book deserves a lot of credit for some of the major twists it delivers in the resolution of the murder plot as well as developing the female character of Mercy Underhill. I thought I had a good idea of where all of this was going, but there were a lot of surprises, and the outcome of that did improve my opinion of Tim a lot. ...more
Max Allan Collins has provided some wish fulfillment for fan boys via historical revision by killing off one the great villains in comic book history,Max Allan Collins has provided some wish fulfillment for fan boys via historical revision by killing off one the great villains in comic book history, Dr. Fredric Wertham. Well, I mean, he kinda sorta kills him off.
In 1954 the comic book business is getting a black eye from public minded do-gooders who claim that the lurid funny books are warping the minds of children and turning them into juvenile delinquents. A noted psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Frederick, is leading the charge as his book Ravage of the Lambs is about to be released. Public hearings by Congress are further turning the public against comics.
Jack Starr is a private detective who acts as a troubleshooter for the syndicate he co-owns with his step-mother Maggie that distributes comics and comic strips. They have a plan to muzzle Dr. Frederick by offering him a well-paying gig as an advice columnist, but he gets killed before they can close the deal. If Frederick was murdered by someone in the industry, the public outrage could shut the comic business down for good so Jack starts trying to quickly find the killer to minimize any bad press.
Overall this one is fairly entertaining. Collins uses stand-ins for real historical personalities like subbing his creation Frederick for d-bag Wertham . He also rewrites history while mirroring real events like the disastrous testimony in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency by EC Comic’s head Bill Gaines. However, if you don’t know the actual story (Check out The Ten-Cent Plauge for an excellent non-fiction account of the comic book witch hunt.), I’m not sure how much appeal it would have because as a straight-up whodunit, it’s pretty basic.
There are also some nice illustrations done by Terry Beatty that are used for chapter headings and a clever summary of the suspects done comic book style before the conclusion. ...more
If you’re one of the sheep that just believe the ‘official’ history, then you think that the Manhattan Project was America’s top secret operation to bIf you’re one of the sheep that just believe the ‘official’ history, then you think that the Manhattan Project was America’s top secret operation to build the first atomic bomb during World War 2. However, if you read these comics then you’ll know the real story.
Actually the a-bomb was just the beginning. The Manhattan Projects were led by General Leslie Groves who gathered the US’s top scientist to come up with advanced weapons and tools to counter what the enemy was doing. Both sides were constantly trying to take out the other’s capabilities so any given day might find the Japanese landing a Red Tori teleportation gate powered by Zen Death Buddhists in the MP’s headquarters and then sending a bunch of Honda Kamikaze Killing Machine robots through to do as much damage as possible.
In the face of threats like this, fanatical General Groves feels justified in extreme methods, and he’s not choosy who he’ll have work for him like Dr. Robert Oppenheimer. What Groves doesn’t know is that Oppenheimer was actually just killed and eaten by his psychotic twin brother who has stolen his identity. Or that Albert Einstein has more than a few secrets surrounding a mysterious monolith he’s built. Or that Werner von Braun and his robot arm are so obsessed with getting humanity to the stars that he’ll work with and/or betray Nazis or Americans with a equal enthusiasm.
So if you want to finally learn the truth about these men and many others that your history teachers never told you, check out The Manhattan Projects. ...more
Imagine an America where the wealthy people in power rule a system in which they are free to reap enormous profits through unregulated businesses whilImagine an America where the wealthy people in power rule a system in which they are free to reap enormous profits through unregulated businesses while every privilege that society can offer is given to them. These titans of capitalism underpay their employees for hard labor that lasts at least twelve hours a day in unsafe conditions with no overtime or benefits. If any of these workers dare complain, then the government will happily label them as dangerous socialist terrorists who threaten the American way of life and do anything within its power to crush any attempts to organize the labor.
Ah, it’s enough to make a right wing conservative weep with joy.
Danny Coughlin is a Boston patrolman at the end of World War I. Since his father is a legendary and politically connected police captain, it seems like Danny’s got a bright future ahead of him with the department. Danny’s father and some other power brokers offer him a chance to make detective by going undercover in various subversive groups including the social club of the Boston Police Department which is looking more and more like a union.
Danny doesn’t want to cause problems for his fellow police men who have been shafted by the city. Working a minimum of almost 80 hours a week at a wage below the poverty level and forced to pay for their own uniforms and equipment, the men of the BPD literally can’t feed their families but when their grievances are brought up, the men in charge insist that the cops are vital government personnel and therefore can’t strike so they can safely be told to go fuck themselves. When the men complain about this treatment, the politicians are shocked and insist that anybody who wants to make enough money to buy his kids some food is nothing but a damn Bolshevik. Danny eventually finds an actual danger to the public in the form of a bomb happy anarchist, but his superiors continue to be more concerned with those who might force change on the economic system.
Meanwhile, a black man named Luther Laurence, who is on the run following a messy incident with a local kingpin in Tulsa, is trying to lay low in Boston and ends up working for Danny’s family. Luther has a hard enough time just working around the racism that runs through all aspects of life, but things get worse when he runs afoul of a psychotic police crony of Danny’s father. Danny and Luther eventually strike up a friendship that defies the odds as they get caught up in the conflict between the old world and the changes being forced upon it.
Lehane’s books have often a crime oriented social component to it, and it seems like his time working for HBO’s The Wire encouraged him to add a depth and complexity to his work in this historical fiction. This is the story of a bygone era, but it seems familiar since the tactics employed by the powerful are still in use. One of their favorites is getting half of the working class to turn on itself by claiming that anyone who questions the fairness of the economic system is an American hating socialist as well as probably being a secret terrorist. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The only parts that really didn’t work for me were the interludes with Babe Ruth. It seems like Lehane was trying to point out some things regarding a common guy who could barely read becoming rich and famous as a city ripped itself apart while refusing to pay its police a living wage, but those segments just didn’t seem to sync up with the other action.
Still, it’s one of Lehane’s best and most ambitious books yet. ...more
Marilyn Monroe has affairs with both JFK and RFK! The FBI and the Mafia are secretly recording everything! She dies under mysterious circumstances andMarilyn Monroe has affairs with both JFK and RFK! The FBI and the Mafia are secretly recording everything! She dies under mysterious circumstances and powerful people cover it up! Then she runs off with Elvis after he faked his death to live with the aliens hidden in Area 51!
OK, so maybe that last one is pushing it.
Nathan Heller, a private detective who is more of a figurehead for his successful national agency than investigator, is asked by his old friend Marilyn Monroe to set up wiretaps on her phones because she’s worried that her movie studio is trying to smear her as part of a contract dispute, and she wants to document her conversations. While arranging that Heller learns that Marilyn’s phone is a party line with several other people like J. Edgar Hoover and Jimmy Hoffa listening in.
Marilyn’s dalliances with the Kennedy brothers has everyone trying to dig up dirt for their own blackmail schemes. Heller has a long history of working angles both for and against everyone involved including Bobby Kennedy, Hoover, Hoffa, Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana, and he tries to smooth over everyone’s conflicts while trying to minimize the damage to Marilyn. When the bombshell turns up dead, Heller doesn’t buy the official suicide story and finds himself at odds with the government, the Mob, the LAPD and the Hollywood studio system. Take your pick as to which one is the most dangerous.
The whole Marilyn-was-murdered conspiracy angle is a little tired with me, but I had a lot of fun with this one. I’m a sucker for all the behind the scenes shenanigans that were going on between the Kennedys and the Mob and the Rat Pack so I found it entertaining as hell.
One of the things I liked most was the character of Heller. This was the first one in this series I’d read, and from what I gather, the theme is that Heller is constantly getting mixed up with famous historical figures and crimes. It works extremely well here with Heller’s shady history enabling him to talk at different times with Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa while both men think of Heller as being on his side.
Heller is a businessman and an operator who is cynical enough to know the score. He’s much more J.J. Gites than Phillip Marlowe. He’s also kind of a prick, but he’s got just enough conscience to redeem himself. I especially liked that he considered Marilyn a friend, even though he’d slept with her too, and he seems like the only to think of her as a person and not just a movie star or pin-up girl in the whole mess.
I picked this up as quickie paperback grab at a bookstore when I needed some short term reading material and ended up with a very entertaining crime yarn with a historical backdrop. Now I gotta check out the rest of the Nathan Heller series. ...more
Notorious prankster Richard Nixon and his wacky pals pull a practical joke on their political rivals. Hilarity ensues.
Watergate has been examined backNotorious prankster Richard Nixon and his wacky pals pull a practical joke on their political rivals. Hilarity ensues.
Watergate has been examined backwards and forwards, but Thomas Mallon attempts to put a new spin on it here by telling the story as historical fiction from the viewpoints of several people and examining the damage done to those involved or close to Nixon. Among the key players are E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent and author of spy thrillers who was one of the key planners of the break-in. Fred LaRue worked off-the-books for the president’s reelection campaign and becomes the bagman for pay-offs to try and keep everyone’s mouth shut. Elliot Richardson is a rising star in the Republican party who keeps getting promoted to high profile government jobs and who has his eye on eventually making it to the Oval Office.
Rosemary Woods is Nixon’s personal secretary and so fiercely loyal to her boss that she has a hard time controlling her anger towards anyone she feels has crossed him. Pat Nixon hopes to fade into the background during Nixon’s second term and is quietly pining for the lover she had to leave when Nixon ran for president in 1968. One of the most intriguing and funniest characters is the ancient daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, Alice Longworth. Washington players still have to pay tribute to her and fear her sharp tongue. She has a soft spot for Richard Nixon and watches the Watergate scandal play out with the critical eye of someone who knows how the game is played better than anyone. And there’s Nixon himself who swings between self-pity and anger as presidency is consumed by the scandal.
One of the big questions that’s always hung over the break-in is why they did it in the first place. Nixon was crushing McGovern in the polls and everyone knew that the Republicans would cruise to victory. (I think it’s because Nixon and his group of rat fuckers were so used to conducting their business this way that it didn’t occur to them that it wasn’t necessary and a stupid risk.) The twist here is that the characters don’t really know themselves, and when Mallon provides a fictional answer, it’s more of a comedy of errors than a vast conspiracy. A lot of the reasons for why things happened are mundane enough to seem plausible like the way Mallon provides a simple excuse for the infamous 18 minute gap on one of the Oval Office tapes.
All in all, it was a well written and interesting take on the scandal, and I learned some bits of trivia. (It’s crazy how many of the people involved actually lived at Watergate like Rosemary Woods and Fred LaRue.) However, by trying to portray the break-in as being caused by an odd set of circumstances, it almost seems to be trying to excuse Nixon for it. Even if Watergate was the result of some kind of mixed signals, it was still possible because the likes of Gordon Liddy had been working for the White House and cooking up a variety of dirty tricks that all the top dogs, including Nixon, encouraged.
While Mallon came up with some interesting causes for events, he never delves into why so many people were so loyal to a charm-impaired paranoid power-grubber like Richard Nixon, and in a story that explores the psychology of Watergate that feels like a fairly big oversight....more
Ever wonder why all those 19th century European painters were so batshit crazy? According to Christopher Moore it wasn’t just the absinthe, lead poisoEver wonder why all those 19th century European painters were so batshit crazy? According to Christopher Moore it wasn’t just the absinthe, lead poisoning and/or syphilis.
Lucien Lessard is a talented painter who also makes a mean loaf of bread in his family’s bakery. One of Lucien’s best friends is another artist named Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who doesn’t let his short stature stop him from drinking constantly while trying to sleep with every whore in Paris. Lucien and Henri are saddened by the news of the suicide of their friend Vincent van Gogh. Lucien’s world is rocked even more by the return of his old flame Juliette who vanished two years earlier.
Juliette wants to pick up where they left off and insists that Lucien do a nude painting of her, but unbeknownst to him, Juliette is actually a supernatural entity linked to a special shade of blue that she makes with a gnome-like paint supplier known only as the Colorman. Through the course of the book, we learn the long history of Juliette and the Colorman and discover that they’ve inspired and destroyed many an unsuspecting artist.
Moore’s created a historical fiction with a supernatural twist as he uses many real artists as characters. As you’d expect with Moore, it’s got plenty of bawdy humor with just enough heart to keep it from spinning off into complete absurd nonsense. All in all, it’s a fairly entertaining mix of history, fantasy, mystery, romance and humor.
However, this ended up in the second tier of Moore books for me, behind ones like Lamb or Fool. While there are plenty of laugh out loud lines, he didn’t hit the consistent tone of hilarity that he’s managed in his best work.
The structure is a bit of a puzzle because there’s so much time jumping done in the story. No only do we get many flashbacks to Juliette and the Colorman’s past, there’s also lots of inserts to Lucien’s past, and then there’s all the random trivia about the color blue in the art world. At the end, most of this has added up to a complete story, but for the first half of the book it felt like we were just kind of wandering around and looking for random bits of story to piece together.
Not bad, but not my favorite Christopher Moore. I think it might have been more entertaining if he had just written his version of the art scene at the time and left out the supernatural stuff because that part of it felt like the same kind of plot he’s delivered in his other books like Bloodsucking Fiends or Coyote Blue....more
Dan has already written about our encounter with Megan Abbott at Bouchercon which resulted in her signing his copy of this book as Megan ‘The Bitch’ ADan has already written about our encounter with Megan Abbott at Bouchercon which resulted in her signing his copy of this book as Megan ‘The Bitch’ Abbott. I was unfamiliar with her at the time, but Dan told me that her Queenpin was very good, and I was impressed what she had to say on a panel I watched the next day so I went and bought my own copy of The Song is You. While she was signing it for me, I told Miss Abbott that I’d been there the day before during the The Bitch signing incident, but that I thought she seemed like a very pleasant person. That’s why my copy has her note “+ And I’m very nice!!”.
Aside from being very nice and not a bitch at all, Megan Abbott is also a helluva a writer judging from this book. Using the true life 1949 disappearance of a bit actress named Jean Spangler in Hollywood, Abbott spins the dark tale of a former reporter turned sleazy slick-talking public relations fixer named Gil ‘Hop’ Hopkins. Hop had done some partying with Jean and a girlfriend of hers the night she disappeared, and the last he saw of Jean, she was with a couple big time actors with a reputation for being kinky. After Jean vanished, Hop took charge of covering up the actors’ involvement and is rewarded with a plum job covering up the misdeeds of Hollywood types.
A few years later, Jean’s friend shows up and accuses Hop of orchestrating a cover-up for Jean’s murder. Hop tries to justify his actions by telling himself that he thought he was just keeping the movie stars’ names out of the papers; he didn’t actually think they were involved. After his conscience gets the better of him during a drunken encounter with a female reporter, Hop has to scramble around to put a new coat of pain on the white wash he did as he also confronts some uncomfortable questions about what kind of person he is.
Abbot writes like a saner and more lucid James Ellroy with a healthy pinch of Jim Thompson thrown in. With it’s terrific dialogue and morally compromised characters, this was an excellent piece of noir fiction. There’s a rhythm to this that made it a real pleasure to read and makes me want to get another book by her in the very near future. ...more
This is one of those books where the author let facts get in the way of a good story.
It's based on the true crime story of the murder of Charlie Wall This is one of those books where the author let facts get in the way of a good story.
It's based on the true crime story of the murder of Charlie Wall in 1955. Wall was a local legend in Tampa and a retired gangster who was found in his home after suffering a brutal beating and getting his throat cut. This historical fiction takes us through the investigation and how it involved local gangsters, the Sicilian Mafia, newspapermen, crooked cops, movie stars, Cubans and Cuban exiles like an idealistic lawyer named Fidel Castro.
Ace Atkins used a couple of composite characters involved with the Wall murder to describe a bygone era, and it’s very well researched. Unfortunately, the Wall murder was never officially solved and Atkins sticks close enough to real story that it comes across more as a chaotic look at a bunch of eccentric characters rather than a coherent storyline. I’m not sure why journalist Atkins didn’t just write a non-fiction account rather than going the historical fiction route if he didn’t want to break away from the real story.
As a bonus on this, I listened to the audio version which included Atkins talking about how he got interested in and researched this story as well as a few recollections from some of the people who were actually involved. ...more
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