A post about Angel Colón's "No Happy Endings" that includes just one ejaculation/masturbation joke

Angel Colón reads.
Photos by Peter Rozovsky

Good fun was had by all at Friday's launch of Angel Colón's new novel at Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan. We also had at least as good a time afterward, the novel's title to the contrary. The book is called No Happy Endings, a reference to the (planned) sperm-bank heist that drives the plot. Our evening, on the other hand, ended in good fellowship, crepes, and wine in the West Village.

Look closely. That vessel next to
the book is not a gift-set jam jar.

Wine was served at the launch in plastic specimen cups (Angel got them cheap), and the evening included its share of ejaculation jokes, but I was more impressed by the author's distinguishing the novel's very human protagonist from the other lead character he writes about, the ex-IRA hard man Blacky Jaguar. "Blacky's a cartoon," Colón said.

Fantine Park, on the other hand, the new book's protagonist, is an epigone: She's not nearly the safe cracker her mother was. And her relationship with her father (said Colón and some attendees who had read the book) is a thread running through the novel and one reason I'm looking forward to reading it. Farce and character is not always an easy combination to, er, pull off, and I'll be eager to see how Colón does it here.

From left: Scott Adlerberg, Angel Colón, Dave White

Later a gang that included Colón; his wife, Jeanette; Scott Adlerberg; Suzanne Solomon; Jen Conley; and me repaired to Shade Bar for dinner, drinks, and conversation that ranged over Shakespeare, politics, crime writing, the teaching of history, and (says Jen) Nine Inch Nails and Donald Trump. The most excellent bartender, Laurie, remembered my name, Todd Robinson showed up, and I realized that I dig hanging out with gregarious, intelligent, opinionated New Yorkers. I was feeling so expansive that I passed up the 10-year aged tawny port and bought myself a glass of the 20-year instead.

For me, though, the evening's most trenchant observation came from Scott as we rode the subway from the bookstore to the bar. True crime, said this crime writer, is depressing in its brutality, banality, and stupidity, if I recall his words correctly. Crime fiction, he said, avoids this because it is highly stylized. That is the most thought-provoking observation I've heard about crime fiction in quite some time, and I'll be thinking about it and quoting it.  So thanks, Scott.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016

DBB meets ITW: A Thrilling Interview

My former colleague Gwen Florio, who has taken up the higher calling of writing crime novels, interviews me over at the International Thriller Writers' "The Thrill Begins" Web site.

Gwen asks good questions (no surprise there; she used to be a reporter), and here's one I had especial fun with:

Q: What do you look for when you review a book? Any make-or-break issues?

A: No make-or-break issues come immediately to mind, though I prefer novels that do not begin with prologues marked “Prologue,” especially if those prologues are about a protagonist recovering consciousness and finding her or himself tied up, unable to move, in a dark room or a damp basement, etc. And especially if the prologue is set in italic type and narrated by a serial killer.

Read the entire interview at http://thrillbegins.com/2016/02/04/an-interview-with-peter-rozovsky-of-detectives-beyond-borders/
 
Our discussion is part of a series of interviews with reviewers, critics, publishers, editors, and authors that has so far included Todd Robinson, Janet Hutchings, Carole Barrowman, Benoit Lelievre, and Kristopher Zgorski,

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Noir at the Bar New York in words and pictures

Noir at the Bar has covered the globe like a fast-growing but benign fungus since I staged the first ones in Philadelphia back in 2008. Sunday night I had good fun at Noir at the Bar New York.

Suzanne Solomon

Joe Samuel Starnes

The venue was Shade in the West Village, the MC was Thomas Pluck, the food, the beer, and the company were good, and the readings were damn good. As a bonus, Henry Chang, that most amiable author of hard-hitting crime novels set in Chinatown, showed up even though he wasn't on the bill;  those New York crime writers have a cozy little community on their cozy little island.  Here's part of what happened (all photos by your humble blogkeeper):

Alex Segura, Todd Robinson

(One of these pictures does not depict a crime writer. Rather, it's a face I saw earlier in the day, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  but I thought it fit the evening's noir theme. It looks like a small-time hood who is beginning to worry his plan to rip off the boss and flee with the boss' woman may not go as well as he planned.)

Gerald So and his reflection. I call
this photo So and So.

Thomas Pluck, Jeff Soloway

Clare Gilliland Toohey. I wonder if she
likes this collection of stories by Gil Brewer.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Noir at the Bar: The History

Over at LitReactor, Keith Rawson presents an oral history of Noir at the Bar-- interviews with me and with some of the people who took the N@B idea and ran with it: Jed Ayres in St. Louis, Todd Robinson and Glenn Gray in New York, Eric Beetner in Los Angeles. Duane Swierczynski, the reader at the first Noir at the Bar ever, right here in Philadelphia, weighs in with a highly entertaining excerpt from the piece he read at the first L.A. N@B.

The photo above, from October 2008, which I sent Keith for inclusion with his article, captures a seminal moment in Noir at the Bar history.  Scott Phillips (lower left, miming the theft of a bicycle) had dropped in to the fourth Noir at the Bar to hear John McFetridge (top left) and Declan Burke (center) read. (That's me behind the perp.)  Scott liked the idea, took it back to St. Louis, where he organized a Noir at the Bar with Jedidiah Ayres, and the rest is history, Noir at the Bar spreading across North America like a slow-moving, persistent, incurable virus.

It's nice to see how much the event has meant to writers all over North America, and the Noirs at the Bar Keith writes about were just some of the early ones. Toronto. Vancouver. New Hope. Texas. New Jersey. Portland. Baltimore. You name it, Noir at the Bar has conquered it.  And, like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, it started here in Philadelphia.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

From Syria to Jalisco to Noir at the Bar in Baltimore

(Feasting Scene, Jalisco, Proto-
Classical 200 BC-AD 250. Earthen-
ware, red-slipped resist painting,
appliqué 20 1/4 x 19 3/4 x 17 in.
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.)

(Bearded Figure
With Necklace.
Syrian, 2400-
2000 BC. Terra-
cotta. H: 5 3/8
x W: 2 3/4 x
D: 1 5/16 in.
Walters Art
Museum, Baltimore.

Good fun Sunday at Noir at the Bar in Baltimore (That's a few of us at right, gathered around one of the evening's early readers.)

Some good stuff got read by Dennis Tafoya, Art Taylor, et al., not all of it unquotable on a family blog, but my favorite part was just hanging out and talking about writing and writers, notably with Dana King. Talk turned to James Ellroy, and author/Thuglit editor Todd Robinson said Ellroy made him nervous when they met.

Now, Robinson is wide, he's bald, and he's tattoo'd — not the first person I'd picture getting nervous in the presence of others. I took this as an endearing surprise, and also as evidence that despite Ellroy's intelligence, sensitivity, hard work, wide reading, and sometimes intense self-awareness, perhaps the man really does get close to the edge sometimes.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Thuglit at the Bar

I discovered this week that some folks had staged a Noir at the Bar in New York, adding to a list of Noir at the Bar cities that includes L.A., Austin, Toronto, St. Louis, and the place where it started, right here in Philadelphia.

The New Yorkers brought in some good people to read, including Wallace Stroby, but the big find for me was Todd Robinson, because he's the Thuglit Web zine guy. I'd never read Thuglit even though it published authors like Stuart Neville and Hilary Davidson. But I'm a fan now, based on "Rags to Riches" by Joe Clifford and "Five Kilos" by Mike Wilkerson, both in Issue #38, and I've bought Robinson's own collection of stories, Dirty Words, plus Blood, Guts, and Whiskey (Thuglit Presents), a collection stories, most of which appeared first in the Web zine.

The blog post where I learned about the New York event properly credits Jed Ayres and Scott Phillips for what they've done with Noir at the Bar in St. Louis. But Ayres and Phillips, those generous gents, know how to acknowledge their inspirations.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012