6 of My Favorite Hardboiled Detective Tales

 I've often mentioned in online musings that I discovered the detective novel via a bit of young reader's naïveté. In the wake of Chinatown, a host of new detective films rolled out of Hollywood. I was a little young to catch them in theaters, but movie-tie-in editions or re-issues led to my dipping a toe into the water of the hardboiled reading universe, starting probably with Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. 

I ran across Lew Archer around then as well in a combo of The Drowning Pool movie tie-in and the TV movie based on The Underground Man, and those books tipped the line of dominoes.

Since I'm blogging again with a little more frequency, I thought I'd throw out a few of my favorite hardboiled novels, maybe obvious or maybe not. I'm working from memory, so my fondness above all is what prevails here. This is by no means a definitive list nor is it a complete list. 

1. The Chill by Ross Macdonald

Far from my first Lew Archer, it remains a standout for me. It's post Galton Case and Macdonald's transitional period where his style and psychological themes matured as he dealt with the pain of his troubled daughter's struggles. 

As a younger reader, it struck me most for it's pace and the momentous twist that often gets a classical reading by scholars. It's the tale of a
young bride who takes a powder on her honeymoon. Lew's hired to find her and warns us early he should have walked away from the job offer. He's soon embroiled with university professors, a murder, possibly false testimony and a great deal more. All of the Archers are slim books. This one reads like lightning yet never seems rushed or condensed. 

I guess it's special too because my old man read it first and liked it a great deal. We clashed on some topics but rarely books, and he read much of my collection back in the day and liked a good detective tale himself. 

SEE ALSO: ARCHER AT THE BEACH

2. “The Gutting of Couffignal” by Dashiell Hammett

I found The Maltese Falcon somewhere in the mix of paperbacks at Waldenbooks when browsing other
titles. I was gaining a knowledge of the hardboiled school when I gave it a try. I didn't like Sam Spade and The Continental Op--who I met first in The Dain Curse--quite as much as I did Chandler's Marlowe as my tastes were developing. I sensed what I've come to call the romance of Chandler. Granted he had crime in the hands of criminals and all that, but the style, the humor, and elements that would shape film noir appealed to me more. Hammett seemed a little more pragmatic, at least as I thought of it. However, I found a battered used 1967 Dell paperback copy of The Big Knockover at my favorite used book shop, The Book Nook in Alexandria, LA. 

I know it's a story and not a novel, but many of Hammett's novels, like Chandler's, took shape in novellas. (Chandler, of course, called it cannibalizing.) It's kind of Die Hard on a private island. This one's an island of the very rich. The Op is on hand to guard wedding presents when the only bridge to the island's dynamited and a band of robbers with machine guns mounted on a car rush in on a raid. The Op has to take them on, and he's up for the job. It's a men's adventure tale. There's a mystery twist, of course, but I read it as action first as a kid. It took time for it to grow on me in other ways. It was really in re-reading with more mature and sophisticated eyes that I've come to see the magic Hammett had going on and to appreciate the Hammett style. 

SEE ALSO: Where Bush Street Roofed Stockton

3. The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker  

A review of this one, the fifth book in Parker's Spenser series, popped up in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as I was finding my way in understanding the mystery genre. 

Spenser had been around for a while by then and his friend Hawk had been introduced as a respected adversary in earlier books. Spenser doesn't take assassination cases, the review noted, but he is up for a bounty hunt. Hired to track down a group of terrorists responsible for the death of a client's loved one, Spenser does some globe hopping with Hawk helping out. The humor is powerful in this one, and the action is plentiful and brutal at times. EQMM reviews used to grouse about a lack of detection in Spenser books, but I always found them engaging with or without a puzzle, and this one was a great introduction. Everything culminates in a brutal battle with bad guys in an Olympic village.

5. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block

I discovered Matthew Scudder by way of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and the fabulous story

"A Candle for the Bag Lady." He's an ex-cop, driven to "serious drinking" by the accidental death of a child as he stopped a holdup and one of his bullets ricocheted. Via the gateway of that story and Block's column in Writer's Digest, I moved on to the early Scudder novels, and back to the novella "Out the Window" via a second hadn AHMM. After a significant character arc culminated in Eight Million Ways to Die (1982), the series paused until the prequel, Ginmill (1986) that grew out of the novella "By the Dawn's Early Light" in the collection The Eyes Have It edited by Bob Randisi. 

It's set in Scudder's serious drinking days. There's a holdup at an after hours club, and Scudder's pressed into tracking down the perpetrators while simultaneously working on other cases. Dave Van Ronk's song "Last Call" that provides the book's title, is a core element as Scudder contemplates his existence and his drinking life. Happily that's readily found online these days. You can listen along with Matt as he experiences the song's spiritual resonance.

SEE ALSO: THE BOOKTAKER: A NAMELESS DETECTIVE STORY

6. S is for Silence by Sue Grafton

When I was teaching horror, mystery and suspense in the classroom, I could never get through a lecture slide about Sue Grafton without tearing up as I read her daughter Jamie Clark's remark upon her mom's death and the culmination of the alphabet detective series about female P.I. Kinsey Millhone: 

“...out of the deep abiding love and respect for our dear sweet Sue, as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y.”

Z is for Zero was never to be, but the twenty-five book series documenting Kinsey's adventures is quite substantial. For me, S, No. 19, is a standout. 

It's a character study with Kinsey's 1987 case harkening back, via alternating chapters, to the 1953 disappearance of a woman named Violet Sullivan. Flashbacks paint a picture of the fifties world and a snapshot of Violet's rebellious nature with a new car a pivotal element. It's a little different and definitely a great glimpse of Kinsey at work. 

Again, those are just a few, but they, for me, are great excursions into the hardboiled world. 

For more hardboiled fiction thoughts, visit my guest post over at Charles Gramlich's Razored Zen. 

In the Vicinity

 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf Special - Diamonds are Forever RIP Sean Connery

Very sad to read this morning of Sean Connery's passing. I'd thought of him recently, perhaps because of  the not-much-loved League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cropping up on Amazon Prime. 

My first Bond in the theater was The Man With the Golden Gun, for my friend and I, a fun, glossy action extravaganza despite how it's viewed these days, or by critics then.

My first Bond book however was the tie-in edition of Diamonds Are Forever, Connery's return to the role. Ads on TV and even on the radio made it sound thrilling. 

My old man bought me the novel off the drug store paperback rack when it cropped up and that introduced me to Ian Fleming's world. Combined with the radio ads, the cover helped me understand the disparity between spelling and pronunciation of Sean. 

RIP, Mr. Connery. You and Bond are forever. 

Goodreads Giveaway - Three Fool's Run Signed Print Editions!

 

Just a brief note here. It's less than a month until the release of Fool's Run, my new detective thriller. 

Leading up to the release from Crossroad Press's Gordian Knot imprint, a Fool's Run Giveaway is underway through November 21, 2020 on Goodreads. 

SEE ALSO: Fool's Run Cover Reveal on YouTube

You can enter to win one of three signed print copies. 

Publisher's Weekly said: "This thriller-cum-caper will keep readers eagerly turning the pages."

A NetGalley reviewer just gave it five stars saying: "I like this book because it's well written in a tough language, the pace is very good, there are twists and thrills, and it's fast and easy to read."

Another NetGalley reviewer said: "Fool's Run by Sidney Williams is a superb read! It is an engrossing page turner of a read well worth the time spent."

Read all the NetGalley Reviews!

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY NOW!

Pandemic - The Walks Part 2

 

My wife Christine and I moved to Williamsburg in 2019. We'd planned to travel more in the state this year. Those plans got a little upended. 

SEE ALSO: PANDEMIC - THE MEALS

But since outdoor activities reduce stress and are reduced-risk, we've been trying to do a little more in that vein. 

The other morning we put on our hiking shoes and headed out to York River State Park. It's not too far, temps are dropping just a tad, and it was a road not yet taken. 

It's a road with a great deal of variety, especially since it borders the York River, as the name suggests. 

The river's history is ancient and fossils, shells and shark teeth can be found on the beaches, along with other interesting fare including periwinkle snails amid the marsh grass.

SEE ALSO: PANDEMIC - THE WALKS

It brings that sense of awe that comes with the brush of an ecosystem that's alive yet linked to thousands of years of befores.

In the autumn it makes you think of the cycle of decay and renewal. 

And the memories of things lost and yet alive within us. 

 

And a reminder that as winters approach, there is something beyond the cold, something to wait for and reach toward. 

Pandemic - The Walks

When my wife, Christine, visited Williamsburg in the fall of 2018 for a job interview, she found the area bathed in an array of colors we hadn't seen for a while in Florida. It was an array we actually seldom saw in Louisiana or Texas. 

My point of comparison, at least from what she described, was a view of the area around Nashville in the late '80s when I flew in there for what was then the World Horror Convention. The view as the plane dipped toward the airport was amazing. 

A late summer dry spell and a few other factors delayed the change of leaves last fall, so we saw some color change but not as much as either of us had hoped for.

Late summer 2020 proved rainy. I guess the year has that going for it at least, and in these pandemic times, outdoor activities, at least, can be enjoyed without as much risk or worry as a trip to the grocer.

SEE ALSO: PANDEMIC - THE MEALS

In just a few paces from our place in the New Town area, I've been a bit amazed by the display, even on a foggy morning.  

It's a mix of red's golds and oranges I wasn't expecting. 

Did I mention the orange?

Reds were actually the first change I noticed driving by. They are reds so red. 

And the gold and brown...

It's been pretty astounding to step out the door and walk a few paces. 

It's soul-restoring in a bleak year. We've been through a lot. Am I optimistic yet of a time beyond this moment? Maybe not yet optimistic, but hopeful. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Night Prayers

Jove, 1986

 

Pandemic - The Meals

Christine watched a New York Times webinar last night called Breaking the Bubble: Staying Creative and Connected  while working from home. It was interesting and meaningful, and part of the emphasis was on meal planning. 

I realized Christine and I are fortunate and already quite a few pluses in our favor when quarantine kicked in. 

Ritualistic

I'm pretty disciplined, perhaps ritualistic. I've worked from home a great deal for eight years. I taught for seven online and in the classroom. The past year I've been writing and teaching exclusively online. 

At my old school, we were allowed to do most of our grading from home. Reading creative work, I had fewer distractions except for my cats when they were alive. I learned to work with a laptop high on my abdomen and a cat in my lap.

SEE ALSO: THE MY GARDEN SANDWICH

The host of the webinar noted she often debated whether to spend 45 minutes in meal prep just for herself, but long ago I came to find some joy in the process. 

It was always a nice break from a full day of grading to pause for a sandwich. Not to mention the fact I learned to make deli quality. 

A reuben with a dash of Russian dressing I always kept on hand. Italian sandwiches with pepperoni and cheese melted to just to bubbly with just a touch of brown. Pastrami on rye. It was always a little hard to find sandwich-sliced rye like I wanted, but otherwise those were wonderful.

International

I'm from the South, but I guess I got a little international with my lunches, and if I shifted to salads, I'd craft quite a Caesar, sometimes Greek for variety.

Chopping cucumbers, slicing purple onions and tossing in a fall-colors blend of little tomatoes I could get from my grocer made it a bit of creative effort.

I became the dinner chef as well because Christine worked in an office. It was not far away, but the commute took a while in 5 p.m. Orlando traffic. I got pretty good at stir fry, baked chicken and fish.

That all continued when we moved to Williamsburg. Nowadays with Christine at home, we bump into each other in the kitchen from time to time, but we get by.

I never saw myself as training for quarantine times. It was just a bit of ritual as I mentioned. I tend to keep to a schedule in my head. That's all mixed with meditation, I suppose. 

That made me realize I have a lot of rituals. The morning coffee, the Saturday dinner, the writing/grading balance. Reading time. A TV break. 

I guess that's helped me keep on track a bit in these very dark times. I didn't know I was trying. 

May it help you too, if it's useful.

SEE ALSO: FOOD FOR THE SOUL

 

Validation

I always sweat a bit about reviews, and when Crossroad Press said they'd be sending a review copy of Fool's Run to Publisher's Weekly, I perspired a bit more. It's a natural move, but you never know what's going to be said.  

READ THE PW REVIEW

A friend who's also a publisher told me not to worry. Bad reviews can still mean sales and discovery by new readers. What a critic didn't like might be what a reader of the review is looking for. 

Brutal opening in a horror tale? Sign me up!

I guess all the sweating made the positive review all the more meaningful. 

Writing a novel is a bit like putting a puzzle together, and it's also about decisions and judgment. 

Once upon a time, I didn't think I had anything new to offer the detective novel. I wrote three trunk private eye novels starting in college and just after I started as a reporter. 

They primed me for writing the first novel that sold, Azarius, but I didn't feel I had anything new to offer the private eye tale. I put my Benjamin Ross stories away and moved on.

ADD FOOL'S RUN ON GOODREADS

I returned to the form while teaching a mystery writing class and studying and codifying the mystery in its various forms for students. 

Si Reardon, hero of Fool's Run, took shape as a flawed former police officer on a dark mission. I didn't want him to simply go from one interview to another and piece a puzzle together.  I hoped to juggle the tropes of the mystery form a bit and swirl something a little different.

The reviewer from Publisher's Weekly seemed to get that. Someone will come along who doesn't love it, but so it goes. 

Pre-order the novel 

Fools Run Cover Reveal - A Look at the First Si Reardon Novel

Cover Reveal: Fool's Run - A Si Reardon Novel

 Coming November 24, 2020

Pre-order now on Amazon

#coverreveal #cover #thriller #mystery

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: The Sorceress by

Haven't done one of these in a while. Manor Books, 1977. 

Inside, other books by the same author are noted: Mondo No. 1, 2 and 3 and Dachau Treasure. 

Flash of Fear - Foolish Fire - A Bit of Flash Horror Fiction

Friction rises among friends on a night drive to check out reports of a will-o'-the-wisp in this tale called "Foolish Fire."



The most recent Flash of Fear was very brief, so this once come quicker than usual. It's an all-new story,  a tad longer, 1,500-words or so.

A Clip from Silverline Live - Bloodline Comic

Reading loglines for upcoming comics projects on the Silverline Live show May 6.

https://www.twitch.tv/silverlinecomics/clip/GlutenFreePopularEyeballGivePLZ

Still Gone

Still Gone 

The sun hits the blinds

Bright, white, blinding.

I can’t quite see the tree,

But the leaves are green again.

The leaves have gone and returned.

Only Ollie is still gone. 

Flash of Fear - A Check-in from Lockdown's Confines

I'd decided to post a new Flash of Fear story reading every six weeks or so, aligning with haircuts. Lockdown put the kibosh on haircuts, but I thought I'd check in with a few words and a new, brief reading, a piece that originally appeared here on the blog.

I hope all are hanging in during this tough time. May it pass quickly. 

  

Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse and Tales From My Dark Side

For a while yesterday (April 18, 2020, in the time of quarantine), Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse edited by Lyn Worthen, which includes my story "Witch of Washington Park," had the Hollywood Squares spot right below Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, and we were on a diagonal from collected stories of Theodore Sturgeon, all in the Science Fiction Anthologies category. Or maybe it was the Zoom spot right below them. Or the Alice below Carol and Marcia.

I know, I know, new things climb into the Top 100 and stay a while, like the fog in a Carl Sandburg poem, and then move on, but it was still a thrill for me anyway. In good ways. Bradbury and Sturgeon are deservedly perennials in those slots. BUT STILL!!!! "...once there was a spot/ For one brief shining moment...Camelot..."

READ ALSO: My Interview with Ray Bradbury

And sorta there's bad in me related to this...
Or a dark side, and the placement soothes an old contusion, I'll confess... When I was a kid in junior high I gave a buck-twenty-five copy of The Martian Chronicles as a Christmas gift at school. It was the cool orange one with the sketch of Bradbury on the cover. You drew a name, you had to buy for a $1 or so in those days. It was a while back.

When my present went to the guy, who was actually happy to get it, a look of disgust crossed this other kid's face. "You always give books," he muttered, spitting the word "books" with about as much contempt of a word as is humanly possible.

READ ALSO: Ray Bradbury - The October Game - Major Spoiler 

Yeah, I gave books, and I still do...
...some of them direct from my brain to yours if you choose. Probably says more about me that I recall that dis, that utterance of contempt. But, uh, I guess I hold grudges sometimes. You know, for, uh, decades. Several decades. So that little thumbnail was fun!

Plague Diary or Coronavirus Thoughts Entry 1

When I went to see The Invisible Man on March 3 word of Coronavirus arrival in the U.S. was on the news, and I was a little nervous though reports of cases were pretty far away yet and it was a pretty empty theater. A couple came in and chose to sit right behind me, of course.

I washed my hands before and after the movie, tried not to touch and hoped for the best. I didn't realize it was the demarcation point, that I wouldn't be venturing out much after, but the world seemed to get crazy after that.

In coming days, Christine, my wife and I visited a bookstore, did our grocery shopping and tried to stockpile soon after we began to stay close to home as word of the spread continued and the alarms sounded.

We moved to Williamsburg, VA, in 2019 following my wife's acceptance job. I've been working close to home since, freelancing, writing fiction and getting prepared for an online teaching job. We had also been looking for a house, and we had a trip to visit Christine's parents planned.

Shortly before the trip as news worsened, we cancelled plans, and Christine spent the vacation days at home, and as we were staying in close, we received word her job would be implementing work-from-home orders.

We've been hunkered down ever since.

Cat Books Here - Get up to 10 ebook titles featuring cats including the pre-launch Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse

Act Now: https://storybundle.com/cats

For a limited time, you can get Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse via a special pre-launch offer. Cat Ladies includes my story "The Witch of Washington Park" and 9 other titles as special story bundle. Pay what you want for 10 titles with six of them exclusive ebooks.

They all feature cats, which are, of course, a great source of comfort. That's how they serve in my story as a heroine faces a brutal future and works to prepare an urban environment for agriculture in a devastated land.

There's also mystery, horror and suspense in this mix. As I'm writing this, 17 days remain on the offer, so act fast and get some great reading to fill your down time.

See the full cover of Cat Ladies edited by Lyn Worthen here.

Horror Flash Fiction - Flash of Fear - Jack-O-Lanterns

A new Flash of Fear installment, this time a reading of a piece that appeared first here on the blog.

More readings here



This story and more short horror and mystery tales are found in the ebook Scars and Candy from Crossroad Press also.

Anthology - Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse Cover Reveal

I'm happy to present the cover art for the upcoming anthology Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse.

Plans for this collection edited by Lyn Worthen began last fall, and that's when I wrote my story, "The Witch of Washington Park." Who knew? The Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was set at two minutes to midnight.

In January 2020, it moved up thirty seconds, to a minute and a half.

Visit the Camden Park Press Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse page

The submission call read "It’s time to turn the `man and his dog wandering through a dystopian world' trope on its head..."

I wasn't sure at first what I'd do with that. I began with the notion of a former scientist, her name's Cassandra, making her way through a deserted city and finding a frightened boy holding a cat.

She was working to establish a bit of an oasis where food could be safely grown in an urban environment. Most of the world outside, a landscape ravaged by climate and nuclear disasters, but she and her cat named Midnight were holding on.

She'd grown despondent, however. Taking care of the boy, naming his cat Raven, offering him bits of culture and history while teaching him about agriculture began to give her new life.

Yet threats loom, threats always loom.

As always when a story takes off, the writing experience was exhilarating.

The collection includes many other great tales. Cats that eat zombies. Badass librarians, cat ladies battling something like Cthulhu and much more. It's arriving soon, so keep watching your favorite bookseller's site.

See also: Quoth the Raven featuring my story, "A Cooler of Craft Brew."

The Witch of Washington Park,

I'm excited to announce my 8,000-word story, "The Witch of Washington Park," will be included in the upcoming Camden Park Press anthology Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse edited by Lyn Worthen. Think of it as the flip side of A Boy and His Dog.

The story's set in a future where cataclysmic events have created a wasteland beset by predators of human and animal form alike. Of course.

My heroine, Cassandra, once a scientist, is at work attempting to prepare an urban setting to become an agricultural oasis amid the gloom of a post-apocalyptic world, but she's in danger of giving way to despair. Until she finds a young boy who needs her care.

Nothing's easy for them, of course, and the big threat's in the form of... Well, read it and see.

This story was great fun to write. I'd been wanting to do a little more in the science fiction or speculative fiction realm. The title of the anthology really sparked my imagination.

I'll post links when preorder information becomes available. Probably coming about mid-March 2020.

Flash of Fear - Pilgrim Crime Story Reading

Don't know that I'll be maintaining a weekly pace for these, but here's a new installment in my little Flash of Fear series of readings for You Tube.



This time around it's a crime story with horror elements that originally appeared in Heater magazine. It's a dark little tale of a detective called to a brutal crime scene.

Flash of Fear - Custom Scent - Horror Flash Fiction

I'd been meaning to develop some content for You Tube for a while. With me reading, very brief pieces seem to be the best idea.



This is a bit of flash fiction that appeared first in Sanitarium magazine No. 46. It was kind of fun. Maybe I'll do more.

Love Among the Thorns - A Gothic and Paranormal Romance Anthology Featuring Novelette Strake Hall

I'm excited to be part of the new anthology Love Among the Thorns, a collection of paranormal and Gothic romance stories.

My tale is the 10,000-word "Strake Hall," the story of Aleda Garson, an American archivist who takes on the job of organizing the document collection amassed at a towering castle in the English-Scottish borderlands. It's a daunting task, but she soon discovers a connection with the businessman she's working for, Aaran Strake. He's devoted to bringing the dream of his late father to life, keeping Strake Hall in the hands of the Strake family.

Howling winds, other strangeness and the beautiful financial consultant all threaten to upset any blossoming relationship, however.

There's something cold and frightening at the heart of Strake Hall. Can Aleda uncover secrets amid decaying parchment and crumbling stone in time to rescue a blossoming romance and perhaps even save lives?

Full list of contributors:

Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Lisa Mangum
J.L Madore
Olivette Devaux
Tami Veldura
Gayle Ann Williams
Melanie Cossey
Jadelynn Asher
Michele Dean
C.J. Mattison
Sidney Williams

RIP Oliver Littlechap AKA Oliver Orange Cat AKA Sad Orange Kitty

I wasn't the biggest Game of Thrones fan, but I was engaged enough to keep up with it and certainly to feel the elation in Arya Stark's great moment as she restated the caveat from her childhood in a final episode.

What do we say to the God of Death?  

"There is only one thing we say to death. Not today."

For the past several months, that's been on my mind as Oliver Littlechap showed signs of decline. 

He was the third of four cats who came into our lives beginning in the late nineties. He arrived in 2005, was hanging out with some other neighborhood cats.  I was on my back porch slipping a treat to a neighbor's cat I had a bit of a relationship with and feared wasn't well cared for. 

When Oliver saw a treat, he wandered my way and looked at me hopefully. My first thought was to shoo him away, but he had a look that later earned him the nickname Sad Orange Kitty, and I'm a softy. Over a period of weeks after that, he worked his way into our lives without trying. He was an outdoor cat a while. Then an indoor-outdoor then...

He became the last feline standing a couple of years ago when Ash aka Ashley passed away following the deaths of our original cats Monty and Daisy. "It's his time to be the only cat," we said. "His time." He'd earned his spot at the center of our attention and our world. 

We'd long battled allergies with Ollie. He was FIV positive and we struggled most to control rhinitis, but when antibiotics did their work, even as recently as January, he'd sprint around the house and bounce from windowsill to furniture. 

More recently, other signs of decline had arisen, most notably weight loss. We'd had discussion. The day will come...

Yet we managed his symptoms and saw great days for him. He climbed into moving boxes and supervised as I prepared for our furniture for a move from Orlando to Williamsburg.

When he joined Christine in our new apartment, he was doing so well she feared he'd draw the ire of neighbors as he strolled through the place caterwauling.

That energy faded a bit, but he remained affectionate and close.

A while back, he climbed onto the sofa with me and I realized his pupils were unnaturally large. I knew from our other cats that meant a blood pressure spike. As with all things of that nature, something's causing it.

But what do we say to the God of Death? 

I took him to the vet and got him started on blood pressure medicine, and we got retinal reattachment that restored a good bit of vision for him in spite of those strained pupils. 

Then there was weight loss. The vet okayed Fancy Feast a couple of months back, and he ate joyously and we fed him freely. 

He also regularly took his place on my desk, my lap or at my side waiting to have his fur brushed, and all in all, he felt good. He slept occasionally on Christine's pillow. 

Last Christmas.

But nature will have its way in spite of all the management you do, and in spite of all the "not today" admonishments.

I went downstairs yesterday to find him lying on his side. He'd sleep that way sometimes, but I sensed something wasn't quite right. He didn't rise to wait at the edge of the kitchen for his breakfast.

At first I thought he wouldn't awake at all, but then I realized he was experiencing some distress, that he was weak. I thought it might be low blood pressure, so I fixed some Fancy Feast and helped him sit up. He devoured it. I remembered with a bit of guilt the time I considered shooing him. At least now, one of the last things I could do for him was give him food, food he enjoyed.

But he couldn't manage to keep himself upright. Christine and I got him on a cushion between us and kept him comfortable. I answered messages and emails, waiting until I could call the vet. Who knew Facebook battles could  be a bromide?

It kept my mind busy and off the inevitable. In a way I didn't want the vet's phones to kick over from the answering service to the receptionist, but the time had to come. I asked to bring him in. They said come on. Back of your mind, you think, maybe there's a shot, an IV drip, a pill.

And eventually the vet--a very sweet lady who'd traded off on his care with his primary veterinarian--eventually the vet--though not in so many words, though not wanting to step in for the God of Death said--Today.

He was fading by then, but she gave us a blanket, and we sat across from a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the Brother Sun, Sister Moon saint. The Brother Dog, Sister Cat guy. The patron saint of nature and animals and little cats.

We sat with Oliver on both our laps and stroked his fur like we did on a thousand nights as we read or watched TV. 

Then he quietly left us. But we sat for a while.

Stroking his fur. Touching his head, remembering. Feeling sad but also thankful that he had been in our lives and part of lives for such a long, long time.

An early Oliver memory

Wane - a poem

Wane

Leaves take on new beauty:
Harbinger of demise.
Verdant energy fades.
Edges curl.
Ribs show.
Essence crumbles
To brown fragments:
Remains and companions
To the memory of the green,
The love of the whole.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - A Werewolf Among Us by Dean R. Koontz

Baker St. Cyr is part computer part human and all cyber detective. From Ballantine, January, 1973. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Dark Sonata by Beatrice Murray

A fairly recent acquisition. Gothic with a bit of variation. We have heroine in very early-seventies attire fleeing a more standard mansion inmist. This dates from 1971, and the copyright is Richard Posner, who apparently wrote under his own name and a number of pseudonyms in various genres.

Favorite Short Stories - Terror in Cut-Throat Cove by Robert Bloch

Spoiler Note: This one you can't discuss without spoiling something. Flee if you want to read it without influence.

“Terror in Cut-Throat Cove" by Psycho-author Robert Bloch doesn't sound like a mythos tale. It sounds like a pirate adventure, and it opens like a John D. MacDonald crime-adventure story. Yet it's a fabulous excursion into cosmic horror. It's kind of a shame it's not anthologized more, though it is in Bloch's Mysteries of the Worm: Early Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.

It appeared first in the June 1958  issue of the digest Fantastic,  which had a bit of a nautical theme and a pirate illustration on the cover, probably making the story's impact even more sneaky to early readers.

It's ultimately a tale that straddles the line that might be drawn through Bloch's work, dividing early supernatural and cosmic horror from the more real-world terrors such as The Scarf and Psycho.

It must have been penned around the same time Bloch was imagining the workings of real-life killer Ed Gein's mind for Psycho which would be published in 1959.

This first-person account comes from a writer,  Howard Lane, living in the Bahamas for the cost-of-living benefits. He's doing his nightly drinking at his favorite bar when he bumps into burly, blond and muscle-bound Don Hanson and his girlfriend Dena Drake, who Lane sees as a Christmas tree angel. She's the beauty perpetually attached to guys like Don, as he sees it.

It's Dena who really leads him to help Don, who has a touch of wealth already and has come to the island of Santa Rita to find sunken pirate treasure including a stunning golden altar. So yeah, it is kind of a pirate story and an adventure story after all.

As SCUBA dives begin, hints emerge that there might be more at the bottom of Cut-Throat Cove than pirate booty. One of Don's employed divers meets a fate not unlike that of Mary Crane's in Psycho, the novel. He loses his head. Divers speak of seeing something with tentacles around the pirate wreck as well.

Soon Lane, which interestingly rhymes with Crane when you think about it, is needed for more than smoothing things over with the local authorities. He learns to dive himself and begins to make his way down to the ship alongside Don. It's there influences slip out to touch his psyche and drive him toward goals far beyond attaining Dena.

The noir themes are many. Dena's beautiful but opportunistic, attached to another while remaining an object of lust.

The crime influences don't stop Bloch from taking things to an interesting place in the cosmic realm however. It's eerie and effective, appropriately mythos yet surprising and extreme.

It may be my favorite of Bloch's stories, as intriguing as "The Shambler from the Stars," "The Shadow from the Steeple" and "Notebook found in a Deserted House."

It's a long read, definitely worth seeking out.

Quoth the Raven Interview

Note: Tiffany Michelle Brown, who's also a contributor to Quoth the Raven, a contemporary reimagining of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Lyn Worthen, conducted this interview with me a while back. It had a lot of fun questions and brought back memories of my dad, so I thought I'd share it here.   


The Quoth the Raven anthology by Camden Park Press celebrates the eerie and influential legacy of Edgar Allan Poe. What is it about Edgar Allan Poe’s work that speaks to you (perhaps from the grave)? 

I think Poe strikes me on two levels. The full scope of his work conveys a mood. It captures the essence of shadow, the dark, grim recesses of the world and the psyche. I was telling someone else that when I was very young, four or five, my dad read me “The Raven.” I didn’t fully understand it, but I picked up enough to be terrified by the pervasive presence plaguing the narrator. That dark tone reverberates through all of Poe’s work in a remarkable way. I guess that’s the visceral impact. Knowing of Poe’s life and challenges, I think, strikes the rational mind. It’s fascinating to see the torments and trials filtered through his artist’s thinking. It’s a glimpse of literary alchemy, and it generates appreciation and sympathy at the same time. What a brilliant and tormented artist.

Pick three adjectives to describe the story/poem you wrote for the Quoth the Raven anthology.

Human. Dark. Infinite. I know those aren’t all labeled adjectives in the dictionary, but if you use them like this, they modify: A human story. A dark story. An infinite story.

Imagine you’re in an old-timey elevator, a rickety one that boasts a well-worn, rusty cage. There’s a man in all black in the elevator with you, and he asks what your story/poem is about. What do you tell him? 

It’s the story of a man who think’s he’s average and ordinary, but actions are swirling around him that will drive him to extraordinary measures using the tools he has at hand, the tools of which he's a master. Choices reveal an almost calm and unexpected cunning and suggest he may be tapping into the very darkest part of his own soul and some collective soul as well. Whew, how’s that? I think that’s something a man all in black in an elevator might relate to.

Okay, I’m continuing with this scenario thing. It’s 1849, and you’re at a gathering of literature lovers, a salon, if you will. Across the room, you spy Edgar Allan Poe, and you simply must go over to him to compliment his work. What is the story or poem of his that you laud to excess? And why? 

I have a second to think, right? I’d be very prone to babble, because I can imagine the look I’d get back from Poe as I touch his shoulder and interrupt his thoughts. I think I’d babble also because there are so many stories and poems that come to mind and possibly I might say something goofy like: Do you know your name is also the first three letters of poem? Oh, you’ve heard that? With a moment to compose myself, I’d settle on mentioning “The Cask of Amontillado,” which is the antecedent for my Quoth the Raven story “A Cooler of Craft Brew.” I encountered it first in high school, and it’s the first Poe story I approached on that visceral and intellectal level at once, and having approached it again, I see the depth of its horror even more in its concise length and the brilliance of its execution as well. There are elegant, grim choices that really set its hook deep, perhaps more so a few seconds after the last words are read.

As a writer, what do you think are the most important elements of dark fiction?

Stephen King writes of what he calls “The Terror” in Danse Macabre, kind of the ultimate level of horror fiction and impact. We feel a breath, turn but there’s nothing there, as he puts it. I think that level really involves suggestion and providing a reader’s imagination just enough to work with. It’s about dropping a hint that invites visualization and contemplation. H.P. Lovecraft was an afficianado of Poe. I think he saw and distilled some of that dark essence from Poe’s work. Shocks are good. Shocks are punctuation points that throw us off balance, but ultimately, forcing the mind and imagination to work and keep working are where dark fiction is at its most powerful.

Ray Bradbury does it in “The October Game.” He doesn’t focus directly on gore. He provides building blocks so that we have an impression of something happening in the dark, then literally he leaves us to look on the horrible scene in the light with the story’s very last line. In a bit of rare restraint, because it stems from Bradbury’s pen, I suppose, the EC Comics adaptation of that story from the fifties gets it right. We’re left with a final panel of shocked faces instead of a typical EC final panel, and that gives us something we can’t escape by closing our eyes. We know what they’re seeing. We’re imagining it. It’s like Bradbury’s channeled the old Zen maneuver: “Whatever you do, don’t think of a pink elephant.”

As a reader, why are you attracted to dark fiction? Why do you think we like to read about the things that terrify us?

I think it’s because my father scarred me by reading me Edgar Alan Poe when I was four. But seriously folks, Kafka said we should read stories that wound and stab us and that if the story doesn’t break through the ice within us or deliver a blow to the head that wakes us up, why are we bothering? Many meditations about conflict and catharsis have been written as well. Deep down, I think there’s a logic to dark fiction and that resonates and satisfies us. It kind of offers a capsule of a bigger, messy, complicated world, a snapshot of a dark moment we can contemplate and from which we stand to glean some understanding.

What’s a story or poem – by any author – that has truly creeped you out (in the best way possible, of course)? What was it about that particular story that just got to you?

Wow, I guess, top of my head, it’s “The Raven” that I mentioned earlier. It put me in that lonely, isolated room with the narrator, and in that isolation and darkness when the tapping begins so does the terror. It’s so pure and basic, and it’s with me years and years and years later.

Who are some of your literary inspirations?

Poe really is an early one. I guess, at least when I was a young person, he was a staple for parents and educators. We had a collection from Whitman, the publisher that did all the TV tie-ins when I was a kid and offered Trixie Belden and Tarzan and the like. Edgar Rice Burroughs thrilled me when I was a kid, the books and comic book adaptations that my father also read to me. This could be a long list, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Bloch. Later Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. Lovecraft and Stephen King come a little later still. Ray Bradbury, August Derleth, Seabury Quinn, the Weird Tales writers who were collected in horror paperbacks when I was in junior high. Like everyone who puts pen to paper, I think there are countless influences.

I’ve always loved the dedication page to the novel Logan’s Run that touches on everything from The Green Hornet to Dangerous Dan McGrew. So, that.

What are you currently working on right now?

I’ve been working on a New Orleans noir novel for a while. It’s called Fool’s Run. I’ve finished a draft, done the heavy lifting, so I’m letting it sit a bit. I think if you do that, then you can delve back into a work and see if it really says what you thought you were saying. I picked up the notion of something growing cold to the author’s eye from an online conversation with thriller author Joseph Finder, so I should acknowledge that. I like to say at the moment I’m on a bit of a vacation as well, writing short stories such as “A Cooler of Craft Brew.” Short fiction’s fun and statisfying. I get back to short stories whenever I can.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The D.A. Goes to Trial

Erle Stanley Gardner's best known for his defense attorney detective Perry Mason, but he wrote a few books about young district attorney Doug Selby, who deals with murder cases and the politics surrounding his job. 

The late Jim Hutton played Selby in a TV movie, They Call It Murder. Ed Asner and Leslie Nielsen also appeared. I watched it when it aired back in the day when my old man worked late and I hung out in the living room waiting for him to come home. Didn't know the character history nor of the Perry Mason-tie at the time. Hutton played detective Ellery Queen later in an NBC series that lasted a season. His son, Timothy, would later play Archie Goodwin in the wonderful and sadly only two-season A&E series A Nero Wolfe Mystery. 

Favorite Short Stories: The Gentle Passing of a Hand by Charles L. Grant

A friend asked for some recommendations on horror tales the other day, and as I mentioned a few that had had an impact on me, I realized they were almost equally balanced between visceral and quiet horror.

For me, used correctly, a visceral punch can be powerful and affecting. Quiet horror, read in the correct frame of mind, can be perhaps even more potent, evoking, sometimes for just a split second a sense of awe, a push into Stephen King's third level of horror, The Terror.

Charles L. Grant was an advocate for and a practitioner of quiet horror and championed the power of shadow.

When I first attended conventions as a kid before I'd published anything, I went to numerous panels where quiet horror and splatterpunk were debated in "tastes great-less filling" fashion, and Grant always made a good argument for the quieter side.

Oxrun and Other Streets

He's, of course, known for numerous series and novels with his Oxrun Station cycle maybe the most famous. Stephen King calls the Station Grant's "half-magical little town." I ran across the September 1978 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction the other day, which featured an excellent Oxrun story I'd never encountered, "Caesar, Now Be Still."

That's not why we're here, though. That story sent me looking back through anthologies I'd picked up in my earlier years.  I re-discovered Tales From the Nightside, a World Fantasy Award-winning collection, which I bought in the TOR edition from one dealer's table or another. It offers three sections of tales: Tales from Oxrun Station, Tales from Hawthorne Street, and Tales from the Nightside.

Hawthorne Street is another slightly askew area of Grant's universe, perhaps most famous for "Temperature Days on Hawthorne Street," which became the Tales from the Darkside episode "The Milkman Cometh."

It's on Hawthorne that I re-discovered "The Gentle Passing of a Hand."

I also discovered I have, having spent a few years mulling theory for the sake of students, a better understanding now for the points Grant was making on those panels and in the pages of essay where he advocated for "shadow."

Shadow is basically an ill-defined something sideways in the world, and "Hand" builds to just such a revelation, a revelation that's profound and unsettling as the culmination of the story, the "Oh my, God!" moment.

It's a story told by a young narrator, Jay, orphaned and living with his Aunt Helen and Uncle Steve who are struggling with the burden and responsibility of his care.

Jay's as honest and as reliable as his world view and understanding of the world let him be, but he is a child, and it's through a child's perspective that we experience his world.

It's at a birthday party he discovers backyard magician, the Great And Astounding Albert. And it's from Albert he seeks knowledge for his own slight-of-hand magic act, though it's really too much to expect a magician to be mundane in a horror story.

Albert provides a few pointers, the most important seemingly that there's really nothing up his sleeve, but Jay's destined to learn a bit more as he works his way through his world. He's not unaware of the possibility that he might be passed on to someone else by his aunt and uncle as possible career opportunities develop.

Knowledge and naiveté

Secret knowledge and naiveté can be a dangerous combination, and to say more would spoil the effect as Jay plays with slight-of-hand tricks and toys with the nothing up the sleeve notion as well as the matter of his hand, that's mentioned in the title.

There's definitely a feel of Ray Bradbury in the tone of the chill and in the world of Hawthorne Street. There's a sense of idyllic tinged with dark edges. Albert's a kinsman to Bradbury's sideshow influence Mr. Electrico who fueled his imagination and fiction.

The end effect is actually the same core effect that fuels a major literary horror novel of a few years back, though to name it might spoil both.

It's hard to say if Grant was an influence or if the author arrived at the idea independently, but Grant definitely got there first, and, when the story reaches that point it's a cold hand clutching your gut.
Again, read in the right frame of mind and with the right degree of immersion, "The Gentle Passing of a Hand" is significant and affecting shadow play.

I'm dubbing it a new favorite.
  

Thirty Devilish Years of Azarius!

I waited with a bit of trepidation the year my novel Azarius was in development. I'd sold it myself with a query followed by a complete manuscript, "over the transom," as they used to say, after an agent failed.

I'd fumbled my way along with Writer's Market and Writer's Digest and observation of what was on the bookstore shelves. Edward Lee's Ghouls alerted me that Pinnacle Books was alive again after Mack Bolan jumped ship for Harlequin, so I addressed my letter To the Editor of Ghouls. I'd read Stephen King had once sent a query To The Editor of The Parallax View. That must have been for the novel Rage and not Carrie, but I'm not sure. 

As a newbie with just a few short stories published in literary and little magazines, I had little say in the cover art, and there'd been a good bit of negative buzz about crass paperback covers with skulls and demonic children.

The Postman Rings

When a packet arrived unexpectedly in the mail one morning with a stack of cover flats, I was relieved and elated. The lettering was foil embossed but in a cool way, and the image of an eye in a broken mirror, mined from the book's pages, seemed perfect and subdued at the same time.

It's hard to believe that was 30 years ago.

Early 2019's been hectic for me with a move to Virginia, so it took a phone conversation the other night with Wayne Allen Sallee, author of The Holy Terror, Rapid Transit and much more, to note the anniversary year had arrived. It's the 27th for Holy Terror. 

It seems long ago and like yesterday. 

It started with a bad dream on the heels of three private eye novels I'd never felt were quite good enough to ship out plus a coming of age novel with crime undertones.

Letting Go of I

I switched over to third person from first and found it freeing, and the words flowed. A hundred thousand or so hammered out on a Commodore 64 in the wee morning hours after working a 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift at the newspaper where I was a reporter. I've always said past midnight was a good time to be writing a horror-mystery.

I had to take vacation time to do the edits requested by Ann LaFarge, who'd found it in the slush pile. A New Orleans-area murder-for-hire trial had been relocated to Central Louisiana, and I drew the straw of covering it. It was interesting but also a distraction.

Azarius Lives!
Crossroad Press re-issued Azarius a couple of years ago as I was rolling up my sleeves and preparing to devote my writing time to literary short stories.

The ebook edition cover was designed by David Dodd who does most of the covers for Crossroad . I was really pleased when it arrived in my inbox, bypassing the postman.

David had found a different but equally intriguing way to represent the novel's central, deceptive presence, leader of a horde of fallen angels all eventually confronted by a young reporter.

It touched off what I've come to think of now as the Aimsley Cycle of novels, all set in the fictional Louisiana city Aimsley and its surroundings where events traditionally supernatural and otherwise abound.

Looking back, that led to an interesting life for me.

I'd have never taught without Azarius, I'd never have made as many friends as I have around the world, never have bounced around as much. It's all a blur of course.

And happily you can order here or via the Crossroad Press website.