Why I like Henri Pirenne better than "Chris" Wickham, plus Black Wings Has My Angel

I've read all or parts of three books recently by the great historian Henri Pirenne, who wrote in the last century, and never once does he use the words narrative, storyline, or interventionist. That's one reason I like him better than I do his successor in our time Chris Wickham. Another is that Wickham writes under the name Chris, even though his name is Christopher. Call me old school, but I say save that informality for the pub. If you're going to write a book about ancient Rome and its heritage in the Middle Ages, use your full name.

2) Black Wings Has My Angel is as chilling a work of noir as it is said to be, and it has been reprinted by New York Review Books, so you know it packs a ton of literary respectability. But don't hold that against Elliott Chaze's 1953 novel, originally published by Gold Medal. The novel follows several conventions of mid-century noir (readers of Jim Thompson might like it, or of Charles Williams at his darkest, for example), and it does does so thoroughly and well. But Chaze's writing is so understated, its narrator/protagonist's reaction to his hellish so circumstances so heartbreakingly matter-of-fact at times and so tragically noble at others, that the book becomes at the same time something more.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

Rick Ollerman captures the spirit of paperback originals without copying it

Shallow Secrets, a novel by Rick Ollerman published in 2014, captures the feeling of paperback original crime novels published 50 or more years earlier without, however, resorting to showy nostalgia.

How does it accomplish this? On the one hand, its narrative is more leisurely than, say, Harry Whittington's. On the other, Ollerman uses the Whittingtonian technique of giving his protagonist, a cop named named James Robinson, a recurring physical ailment to which he can resort when he needs an ultra-econmical description of the character's physical and mental state.

On the one hand, the old device of using newspaper headlines and stories to mark significant events in the novel; on the other, the recent dates of those headlines and stories: 1989 and after.  And the novel's narrative arc, about which I'll say no more in order to avoid spoilers, reminded me of one that occasionally turns up in paperback originals of the Gold Medal era.

If you like Whittingon or Dan J. Marlowe or Charles Williams, you might like Shallow Secrets. Ollerman likes them, too, I'd bet, but without aping or idolatry.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Douglas Sanderson: World's toughest sort-of Canadian

Douglas Sanderson is said to have been inspired by Mickey Spillane, but his 1959 novel Cry Wolfram reminds me more of Peter Rabe or Patricia Highsmith.

Like Rabe's The Box and Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery, Cry Wolfram is a story of foreigners at loose ends in a warm country just as likely to bite them in the ass as it is to give them a suntan. (In this case the foreigners are in Spain chasing down a lucrative concession to mine wolfram — also known as tungsten — hence the book’s delicious pun of a title.)

Like Highsmith and Rabe, Sanderson offers a convincing portrait of a setting outside his own country. Scenes of bull-fighting, religious festivals, and the eerie calm of a small town at night, and of how the latter can scare the bejeebers out of a visitor, are beautifully rendered. While these scenes may not want to make you visit Sanderson's Spain, they will surely give you a vivid picture of what to expect if you do

Cry Wolfram also reminds me a bit of Charles Williams. Like Williams and Rabe at their best, Sanderson could write gracefully and artfully enough to satisfy the demands of a “literary” novel without, however, sacrificing suspense and tough-guy credibility. (Highsmith, of course, was so good as not to need mentioning in this respect.) In only one paragraph — one sentence, really — does Cry Wolfram come even close to literary preciousness. Disregard those eight words, if you like, and enjoy the rest of the book.

(Sanderson came by his knowledge of Spain honestly. Born in England, he moved to Montreal as a young man, then hit the road, settling eventually in Spain, where he married and had a son, according to the good folks at Stark House Press, who publish Cry Wolfram in a twofer edition with Sanderson’s Night of the Horns.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Why Frank Kane is better than Stieg Larsson

Frank Kane's 1955 novel Liz, newly rereleased by Stark House Press, is about a sexy, smart woman who kicks ass, takes revenge on sexual sadists, and has great breasts. Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its follow-ups are about a sexy, smart woman who kicks ass, takes revenge on sexual sadists, and acquires great breasts through surgery.

What are the differences between Kane's Liz Allen and Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, besides two syllables, three novels*, and 2,260 pages?  Liz does not pretend to be about big issues; at least one of Larsson's novels, on the other hand, feels compelled to include alarming statistics about violence against women as chapter epigraphs.  Why Larsson or his publishers chose to do this other than as a flagrant bid to have the book regarded as a thinking person's thriller, I don't know, but the following excerpt, typical of one strand of Larsson criticism, makes the point well:

"I lost count of the book reviews I read that basically went like this: HUZZAH FEMINIST STIEG LARSSON, FEMINIST PENNER OF FEMINIST THRILLERS FOR FEMINISTS LISBETH WHAT A BABE."

Larsson's detractors, that is, accuse him of wanting to have it both ways: to condemn violence against women while using that same violence to attract readers. Kane makes no such pretense; I suspect that sort of pandering was left to higher-brow authors in 1955.

Speaking of having it both ways, Salander is bisexual, which I think readers are meant to take as a sign that she is a complex, modern character, though the real reason may lie elsewhere. The discussion to which I link above notes the apparent breast fixation of Larsson's co-protagonist Mikael Blomkvist. Big tits and female bisexuality. Sound like any set of male fantasies you know?

Kane's Liz, on the other hand, endures then deflects a lesbian encounter with a mix of fascination and repulsion. It's a sexy scene, yes, but believable and utterly without self-congratulation or self-importance.

=======

Ed Gorman's blog reprints Robert J. Randisi's introduction to the Stark House reissue of Liz, which also includes Kane's Syndicate Girl.

* Including the post-Larsson novel due out in the U.S. in September

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

My second book cover as a photographer!

I received the excellent news yesterday from the excellent J.T. Lindroos that one of my photos will be used for the cover of Famous Blue Raincoat, by Ed Gorman, a story collection that has one hell of a title. (I found out after posting the news on social media that the title is taken from a song by my landsman Leonard Cohen. Oy, am I proud!)

I shot the cover during some bad weather back home, unlike my cover for Charlie Stella's Eddie's World, which I shot during some good weather back home for Black Gat Books, a new imprint from the good and discerning people at Stark House Press. And yep, I'm excited.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Gil Brewer: Squalid, but funny

Some things that surprised me about Gil Brewer's 1961 novel A Taste of Sin:

1) The protagonist drinks too much, but his drinks are absinthe and Pernod. 

2) The morbid (and mordant) humor, as in the ending of the first chapter: 

"In my mind there was the sound of broken glass."  

and its segue into the beginning of the second: 

"I got in the Volks and sat there. 

"Well, a sane woman could be a bore." 

3) The virtuosic sarcasm of some of the best of that humor, as this observation about the cop who questions the protagonist: 

"He was very bright. He sighed brightly."

 4) That no one could write squalid, desperate sex like Gil Brewer could. Lots of books of the time tried, and their scenes often read like something out of a sex version of Reefer Madness. Not Brewer's

© Peter Rozovsky 2015 

Black Wings Has My Angel

Barry Gifford is right so far about Black Wings Has My Angel. The author of Wild at Heart called Elliott Chaze's 1953 lovers-on-the-run story "An astonishingly well-written literary novel that just happened to be about (or roundabout) a crime."

The novel is so well-written, and so diverting in its incident, that when Chaze injects not just a noir touch a few chapters in, but one of the must typical mid-twentieth-century noir touches, it seems entirely new and entirely right.  This is not what I think of when I think of Gold Medal Books, but that is precisely who first published the book.

Two more observations:  One is unlikely to read description much better than Chaze's of the waitress "who was hanging over the table like a fat starched cloud," and I'm hardly surprised Gifford loved this book, because in its story and in the relaxed, off-hand, humorous way of telling it, even at its grimmest, it seems a virtual blueprint for Wild at Heart and the rest of Gifford's Sailor and Lula novels.

*

Gifford is not just an author and screenwriter.. His Black Lizard Press launched the revival of interest in paperback-original writers from the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, including Elliott Chaze.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015 

My first book cover as a photographer!

Stark House Press, that terrific publisher of crime classics and crime originals, has a new mass-market crime line called Black Gat Books. The imprint's first three offerings include work by suck authors and photographers as Harry Whittington, Leigh Brackett, Charlie Stella, and me.

Yep, I shot the cover for Black Gat's edition of Stella's novel Eddie's World, and I could not be more chuffed. Stella is one of my favorite crime writers, a hell of a guy, a loyal family man and sports fan, and a passionate, entertaining social commentator whose only flaw is that he wouldn't know a good bagel if it bit him on his Buffalo Bills-loving rear end. Here's what I wrote about Stella in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

"Much of a crime novel's texture comes from the bits between the main action, and no one writes those bits better than New Jersey's Charlie Stella. If you like Elmore Leonard, you'll love this guy and his funny, unsparing yet sympathetic looks at mid-, high-, and low-level mobsters, hangers-on, and cops."

Judge the book by its cover, or the cover by its book. In this case, it really is all good.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015