Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

Three real knockouts this time. Excuse the effusiveness.

If the rage that characterized the British writers known as The Angry Young Men had ever been focused on a novel about prison, Allan Guthrie’s SLAMMER might well have been the result. In the course of the relentless story of prison guard Nick Glass, it takes apart the prison system, prisoners who make the OZ boys look soft, the police, the underground gun society and, not least, a marriage foundering on the fact that neither Glass nor his wife can quite get around her brief affair with another man.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

MYSTERY SCENE #106 has to be one of the two or three best issues of the magazine ever published. Art Taylor’s article tracking crime novels written during the civil rights era is not only fine scholarship, but also a reminder of several novels that deserve to be read even now; Gary Phillips’ piece on the black singing and screen star Herb Jeffries provides a complementary look at other popular culture in last century’s history; Kevin Burton Smith reminds us that whether you like his work or not, Robert B. Parker has been the dominant influence on private eye fiction since the publication of his first novel (I wonder if there’d even be a private eye market if Parker hadn’t come along); and I interview Donald E. Westlake, who talks at length about the history of the Richard Stark books. With Jon L. Breen on reference books, Dick Lochte on audio books and Ron Miller discussing TV shows (and all the regular columns and book reviewers), the new issue should be snapped up by mystery fans of every kind.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, the magazine that inspired everybody from Stephen King to Steven Spielberg, appeared in 1958. By then, I was well into my Gold Medal books phase. I still read science fiction and I still saw most of the horror movies that came my way. But FAMOUS MONSTERS, I’m almost ashamed to admit, struck me as pretty juvenile and not worth buying.

McFarland’s THE GREAT MONSTER MAGAZINES: A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE BLACK AND WHITE PUBLICATIONS OF THE 1950S, 1960S AND 1970S by Robert Michael “Bobb” Cutter takes singular exception to my feelings about FAMOUS MONSTERS. But just about everything else he praises strikes me as just about right.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

Haffner Press’ THE WORLDS OF JACK WILLIAMSON is a massive, handsomely made book that is a centennial tribute to the writer Arthur C. Clarke put on a level with both Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. The book is also a tribute to science fiction and fantasy as well, because by the time he passed away at age 98 in 2006, Williamson’s history was the field’s history.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

The other night, a blogful of people talked about how it’s cool to read something purely entertaining sometimes. One of my favorites in this category is Loren D. Estleman’s 1989 novel PEEPER, about a sink-hole dirtbag Detroit private eye named Ralph Poteet.

Even after three readings over the years, PEEPER keeps me laughing – many times out loud – all the way through. This isn’t cheap parody. It’s a witty take on many private-eye clichés filled with people you wouldn’t want to meet without wearing a biohazard suit, including a monsignor who dies in a whorehouse.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

I often talk about writers who seem to do their best work late in their careers. I’d like to say that about Richard Lupoff’s magnificent, stunning, overwhelming MARBLEHEAD: A NOVEL OF H.P. LOVECRAFT, but even though it was only recently published in its original form, it actually was completed around 1970. But that doesn’t matter. Whenever it was written and published, it’s Lupoff’s masterpiece.

MARBLEHEAD is a faux biography, speculative fiction in the real sense of the term. A good deal of it is actual-factual, which is to say that Lovecraft was just about as loopy as his stories: an old-fashioned New Englander whom God or actually the dark gods chose to plunk down in a century he loathed.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

Ray Bradbury has done something rare among writers: He worked on the same manuscript – on and off – for more than 50 years. It was worth the wait.

SOMEWHERE A BAND IS PLAYING is an evocative, luminous story of reporter James Cardiff’s discovery of a place called Summerton and one of its most beautiful residents, the elegant and lovely Nefertiti. Never mind that the town is not listed on any map, nor that the place didn’t have any children. Cardiff suspects even stranger truths and senses that Neff can, if she chooses, reveal them to him.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

If you’ll forgive me the vanity of quoting myself, I once noted that David Goodis didn’t write novels, he wrote suicide notes. I meant this metaphorically, of course. And then I opened up the new Hard Case Crime edition of THE WOUNDED AND THE SLAIN, and right there in the first paragraph, the protagonist plays “with the idea of doing away with himself.”

Jim Thompson’s books were peppy Broadway musicals compared to Goodis’. Except for a small group of French existentialists right after the big war, I can’t think of anybody who saw life as a bottomless cesspool more than Goodis.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

The only series I read regularly are those that offer worlds I want to visit. This may be because before I began reading mysteries regularly, I read science fiction. World-building is critical in sci-fi and fantasy.

And it is in mystery fiction, too. Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie. John Dickson Carr. Indelible worlds. Or Mr. and Mrs. North. Craig Rice’s various detectives working out of Chicago. Hammett, Chandler, Chester Himes’ Harlem novels.

And Bill Crider’s small-town Texas series, the latest of which is MURDER AMONG THE OWLS. This time, Sheriff Dan Rhodes has to decide whether Helen Harris’ death was accidental or criminal. At certain points in his investigation, his deputies are his biggest hindrance to solving what is now clearly a crime. Wizards they’re not.

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Quick takes and capsule reviews from the dark suspense master himself, Ed Gorman!

Since I’m never sure what “best” is supposed to mean, I’m submitting these books because they gave me great degrees of pleasure in a variety of ways:

• THE HUSBAND by Dean Koontz
• DARK HARVEST by Norman Partridge
• ASK THE PARROT by Richard Stark
• ECHO PARK by Michael Connelly
• THE CRIMES OF JORDAN WISE by Bill Pronzini
• THE DEAD LETTERS by Tom Piccirilli
• THE EMPIRE OF ICE CREAM by Jeffrey Ford
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• EVERYBODY KILLS SOMEBODY SOMETIME by Robert Randisi
• THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL by Paul Malmont –Ed Gorman

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