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.

The story is riveting and the writing some of Bradbury’s best. Accompanying the short novel are fragments of the book that he never finished and the start of script scrapped later, giving us a fascinating look at the process of creating fiction. William F. Nolan contributes a knowing and helpful introduction.

This is among Bradbury’s best work. Gauntlet Press should be congratulated for bringing it out. And Brabdury should be thanked for writing it.

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MATCH TO FLAME: THE FICTIONAL PATHS TO FAHRENHEIT 451 may well be the most valuable collector’s edition of Bradbury’s work ever published. Here, we have the collection of stories, letters and notes that all combined to create the final version of FAHRENHEIT 451. The most imposing of the stories is 1951’s “The Fireman,” which later was expanded into the now-famous novel.

Bradbury cuts across all forms of fiction, from the most cerebral to the most popular. His work – his very being – now has inspired three generations of readers and writers alike. Even though he admits that a few of the earlier stories here are fledgling pieces, I found the whole book fascinating in the way it demonstrates the creative process behind his masterpiece.

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Allan Guthrie’s HARD MAN is actually a couple of books, both of them excellent. There’s the storyline with Pearce – the Guthrie man we’ve met before – avenging the murder of his dog in a seriocomic – and occasionaly black-comic – pursuit of a lunatic named Wallace. And then there’s Edinburgh iteslf, the city where it’s set.

The violence of the story plays well against the violence of the city, which Guthrie manages to make seem much smaller than does Ian Rankin. This is because Guthrie and his cast of characters all inhabit a very small psychological – if not physical – section of the city. If Rankin’s cop is looking for something resembling truth, Guthrie’s characters are looking for nothing more than satisfying the immediate needs of their rather amusingly diseased minds. Jim Thompson with the heebie-jeebies.

This is a quick, compelling novel that proves that Guthrie is as restless as his characters. I don’t think he’s a writer who’ll settle for doing the same book over and over. This is a calculated and successful departure from his first two books. Interesting to speculate on what he’ll do next.

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Lee Goldberg wrote one of my favorite novels of the past few years, THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, and he brings that same kind of skill to focus on the novels he writes about the TV detective Monk, which also happens to be my favorite TV show.

MR. MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS is the best Monk novel yet. Remember Monk’s first assistant, the demonstrative Sharona Fleming? She reappears in hopes that Monk will help her prove that her husband is innocent of the murder charge he’s facing. Of course, Monk now has a new assistant, the more refined Natalie Teeger. Needless to say, this novel isn’t big enough to hold both of them. Not only must Monk deal with murder and his numerous neuroses, he also must wriggle his way between his two assistants.

There is some especially good detection here, as well as some of Monk’s most impressive battles with germs. Goldberg not only writes the novels, he also writes some of the TV scripts. His affection for the series shines through in these novels that are so rich with humor and character.

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The first Ross Macdonald novel I ever read was THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE. He was John Ross Macdonald then, still going back and forth I suppose with John D. MacDonald about the use of names so similar.

I was 15, steeped in Gold Medals and Lions and Ace Doubles. By then, I’d read a good deal of Hammett and Chandler as well. None of it prepared me for Ross Macdonald.

I was too ignorant to pick up on stylistic differences. What I noticed were the characters. Few of them were new to me as types;most of them, in fact, were in most of the hardboiled novels I’d read, but Macdonald brought a depth and humanity to them that made me think not of other crime writers, but of authors such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway and James T. Farrell and Graham Greene – my idols at the time. This was real, no-bullshit psychological writing.

Just as superheroes never outgrow their need for milk, I’ve never outgrown my need for the novels and stories of Ross Macdonald. I share his view of humanity – that amalgam of fascination, disappointment, anger and sorrow that fills his work.

If you want to remind yourself of how good he was even early on, I’d recommend THE ARCHER FILES, edited by Tom Nolan and published by Crippen and Landru. In addition to being a fine-looking collection, it contains all the published Lew Archer short stories, plus an intriguing section called “Notes.” Macdonald started stories that he planned to someday finish, a way of keeping thoughts alive. Most of these sure would have made superb tales.

Then there’s the long introduction by Nolan, in which he takes the reader into the work and life of Kenneth Millar aka Ross Macdonald. Nolan wrote the Edgar-nominated biography of Macdonald and this introduction is almost a synthesis of it in its information, insight and elegantly arranged presentation.

Oh, yes – the stories. There are an even dozen, and while some are better than others, all of them demonstrate why he became so important so quickly, even though his real fame took many years to achieve. My favorite is an imperfect piece called “Wild Goose Chase.” There’s a sort of Gothic frenzy to it that kept me flipping those pages.

This is an essential acquisition for all libraries, home or public.

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Jeffery Deaver is a celebrated bestselling novelist. He’s also a versatile and cunning short-story writer. But you probably know all this.

Whenever somebody brings him up, I ask if they’ve read the Rune novels. Many people say they haven’t. They’re my favorite among all his books: MANHATTAN IS MY BEAT, DEATH OF A BLUE MOVIE STAR and HARD NEWS.

Clever as the plots are – and you’d expect nothing less from Deaver – it’s Rune herself who carries the three novels in her pursuit to: a) find out Who She Really Is in the existential sense, and b) keep recreating herself until Something More Appealing comes along. She’s genuinely tough, too, in a wryly belligerent sort of way. One way or the other, she does what she wants to.

One other feature of the novels is the view of late-’80s/early-’90s Manhattan as seen through the eyes of a punk rocker who also channels the ’60s on occasion. She makes a great sardonic reporter from the war zone. These are early Deaver books, but the skills that have taken him to the bestseller lists are already in place. He is a sleek, gifted storyteller, and the Rune books are among the best of his tales.

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Every once in a while, I get stoned just watching a literary master do his work. The last two nights I was flat-out dazzled from beginning to end with Donald E. Westlake’s 1964 novel PITY HIM AFTERWARDS.

The story concerns an escaped madman who takes the identity of a man who is headed to a theater that does summer stock. While we see the story several times from the madman’s point of view, we’re never sure who he is. This is a “fair clue” mystery.

In quick succession, a young woman who works summer stock is found murdered in the house where the young, struggling actors stay. A part-time chief of police appears to find the killer.

Two points: Writers owe their readers original takes on familiar tropes as often as possible. The madman here is no slobbering beast, but rather a deranged and sometimes pitiful lunatic; the opening 3,000 words are among the most accomplished Westlake pieces I’ve ever read. And the police chief Eric Songard is one of the most unique cops I’ve come across in mystery fiction. He works nine months of the year as a professor and summers as a police chief. The small town he oversees usually offers nothing worse than drunks and the occasional fight.

Murder is another matter. Westlake gives us a cop whose self-confidence is so bad, all he can do is try and hasten the appearance of the regular cops from a nearby district. Meanwhile, he has to pretend he knows what’s going on. He easily could have gone to series. He’s a great character.

As the story is told, we get a believable look at summer stock with its low pay, brutal hours, frequent rivalries. The payoff is that some of the actors will get their Equity card at the end of the nine-week run and thereby become professional actors.

Then there is the telling. The craft is impeccable: precise and concise and yet evocative because of the images Westlake constantly presents us. You also have to marvel at the rhythm of his language, watching how’ll he’ll shave an anticpated word here for a certain effect, add a word there for the sake of cadence. These sentences are crafted.

There are so many great Westlake novels, it’s impossble to rank them. But given what he accomplished, I’d have to say this is one of his early best. –Ed Gorman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• ASK THE PARROT by Richard Stark
• BLACK MONEY by Ross Macdonald
• DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE by Lee Goldberg
• THE DRAGON WHO ATE HIS TAIL by Ray Bradbury
• KILLTOWN by Richard Stark
• LEMONS NEVER LIE by Richard Stark
• THE MAN WITH THE GETAWAY FACE by Richard Stark
• MORE TWISTED: COLLECTED STORIES, VOL. II by Jeffery Deaver
• MR. MONK AND THE BLUE FLU by Lee Goldberg
• MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE by Lee Goldberg
• POINT BLANK by Richard Stark
• THE SOUR LEMON SCORE by Richard Stark
• 361 by Donald E. Westlake
• WHAT’S SO FUNNY? by Donald E. Westlake