Bouchercon 2013 panels: Why Eric Beetner is righteous (James Sallis, too)

I'm resurrecting another previously posted post today, and not just because I'm too deep in Bouchercon preparations to do much new posting. My remarks about Eric Beetner's novel The Devil Doesn't Want Me play directly into what makes his brand of wisecracking, self-aware noir what it is, and I hope they fuel the discussion when Beetner takes part in one of my Bouchercon panels.

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 Two gems from my recent crime fiction reading, the first from Eric Beetner's The Devil Doesn't Want Me, the second from Drive, by James Sallis:

"Used to be, in this town, to get anywhere you had to be with the family. You had guys like Sinatra kissing your ring. Now it takes a decent criminal a year to pull down as much cash as Steve Wynn takes in over one weekend of legitimate business."

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"No way he remembered. He’d treated dozens of them in his day. Back in the day, as they said now—and found himself wondering again where that came from. Back in the day. Up in here. You’d never heard these phrases before, then suddenly everyone was using them."

I like Beetner's wry recognition that his Las Vegas is no longer the one of movie and crime-novel myth. Beetner has clearly thought about the nature of twenty-first-century crime even if he would not admit anything so serious.

As for Sallis, his remark makes him the first crime writer in the Detectives Beyond Borders Things That Drive Them Nuts Hall of Fame. I bet I'll never find "going forward," "reaching out," "scenario," "basically," "noise level" (instead of just "noise"), or "the fact that" in any novel by Sallis — unless he's making fun of them.

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Eric Beetner will be part of my "Goodnight, My Angel: Hard-Boiled, Noir, and the Reader's Love Affair With Both" panel at Bouchercon 2013 in Albany on Friday, Sept. 20, at 10:20 a.m.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Book references in books

I've  just read my first James Sallis novel, Drive, and I can see why Ken Bruen likes this guy. Both authors wear their influences on their sleeve, filling the protagonist's ears and bookshelves with the author's favorite music and crime novels.

George Pelecanos makes it into books by both writers, and Sallis himself finds a place in Bruen's London Boulevard, next to Elmore Leonard, Charles Willeford, John Harvey, Andrew Vachss and, naturally, Jim Thompson.

"Driver," the unnamed protagonist of Drive sleeps, for at least one night, next to a nightstand crowded with Richard Stark, John Shannon, and Gary Phillips, in addition to the Pelecanos. Drive's musical references include the jazz guitarists Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson and lo, Sallis has written at least three books about jazz guitar and guitarists.

Quite naturally, given my other recent reading, Sallis also has a character invoke Paul Celan in a conversation that also includes Borges and Don Quixote.

Your question:  If you've read Drive, what do those references add? If you have not, what kind of novel do you think it is, based on this selection of its literary and musical references?

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Crimefest 2012: Wrap-up and fun facts



(Peter James, James Sallis)

1) As a good chunk of crimeworld knows by now, a seagull shat on Lee Child and three other Crimefest 2012 attendees.

2) James Sallis attended the festival, and he must be a nice guy because everyone referred to him as Jim.

3) Philip Kerr, author of the Bernie Gunther World War II novels, was also on the program, and if I did not mention him earlier, that's an indication of how packed the Crimefest program was with star power. Kerr's Prague Fatale made the shortlist for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, announced at Crimefest.

(Peter Guttridge, Philip Kerr)

4) I've already written about my Crimefest encounters with P.D. James and Bill James. Peter James was there this year (he asserted on a panel that crime fiction begins with Sophocles; I reminded him that the much older Epic of Gilgamesh contains considerable elements recognizable as crime fiction. "Good point,"  he said.)

I also renewed my acquaintance with Dan Waddell, one of whose novels is written under the name Dan James. So, parents, if you want your kids to grow up to write crime novels, change their last names to James.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

The most influential crime writer? — Jean-Patrick Manchette plus a question for readers

A year ago, I asked readers to name their choices for the most influential crime writer ever. Here's another name for the list: Jean-Patrick Manchette.

Manchette reinvigorated noir, inventing what French critics call the néo-polar, or neo-whodunnit, and if all that neo stuff makes you roll your eyes, stop and think for a minute: How many of the old-time hard-boiled writers make your blood run cold the way they presumably did for readers in the 1930s and 1940s? How mean, in other words, are Raymond Chandler's mean streets today?

Certainly Manchette's time, an age that saw assassinations, cover-ups at the highest levels, and revelations of the violence that attended colonialism and its end, could no longer be shocked by small-town or even big-city corruption of the Hammett and Chandler kind. Manchette restored that ability to shock, with tales of what power can do to those it finds convenient to crush. And he did it while remaining true to the roots of pulp. Heck, the guy even loved American movies and played the saxophone. How much more genuine can you get?

I was reminded of Manchette twice recently. The first reminder came in Duane Swierczynski's novel The Blonde, which names a character, or rather a part of a character, after Manchette. I suspect Swierczynski would not call himself a political writer. Still, he was attracted by Manchette's non-stop, man-on-the-run plots, and something of their energy infuses Swierczynski's own work.

The second arrived this week in the form of a tribute on the encyclopedic Ile noire blog on the thirteenth anniversary of Manchette's death. The article, in French, discusses the rage Manchette felt at political repression in the time after the political and social upheavals of 1968. The author himself coined the term néo-polar, according to one critic quoted in the article, not because he wanted to introduce a new school of French crime writing, but to emphasize that he was parodying the traditions of the genre's classics. The Ile noire article links to a Manchette Web site, also in French, that is as comprehensive as any I have seen. For a beautifully written appreciation, try this piece by James Sallis. (It's in English.)

As for Manchette's influence, how about Carlo Lucarelli's De Luca novels? And here's an open-ended set of questions for you, readers: If you've read Manchette, what's your take on him? If not, let's revive the old question of who the most influential crime writer is, only with a twist: Who is the most influential crime writer since the end of World War II? And why?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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French crime fiction
Jean-Patrick Manchette