tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10302450763944372642024-03-05T05:13:24.958-05:00SCOTT ADLERBERG'S MYSTERIOUS ISLANDOn Books, Writing, Movies, and Whatever Else.scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-40315857859947659142017-05-07T17:22:00.000-04:002017-05-07T17:22:05.154-04:00Homicide: Life on the Street<br />
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Back in 1993, well before <i>The Wired</i> aired on HBO, the first great Baltimore crime show premiered on network television. It was <i>Homicide: Life on the Street, </i>and it would run for seven seasons. But were the indications of the show's greatness apparent from the very first episode? I took a look back at the <i>Homicide</i> pilot for Criminal Element. You can read the piece <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2017/02/first-in-series-homicide-life-on-the-street">here.</a><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-64885534128653765332017-05-02T16:35:00.003-04:002017-05-02T16:36:48.979-04:00Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Man kills woman. Man cleans up scene. Man plants clues for the cops to find. Then he goes to work, and it turns out he's the chief of the police force homicide division. It's Elio Petri's great 1970 Italian film, INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION, starring Gian Maria Volonte.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Part murder mystery, part Kafkaesque satire, it's a film that is hard to shake. I've seen it a few times over the years, and I figured it would be fun to write about for Criminal Element. You can find that piece <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2016/05/investigation-of-a-citizen-scott-adlerberg">here.</a></span><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-28790082028135060542017-01-05T11:02:00.001-05:002017-01-05T11:02:31.640-05:00Wintry Westerns<br />
There's nothing like a good western film set against a harsh, snowbound landscape. These movies often have an unsual mood, a distinct feel, nothing like your typical western set in a dusty town or on an arid plain. Anyway, it's a type of western I've always loved, and over at Criminal Element, I took a look at four wintry westerns that are really good.<br />
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You can read the piece <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2016/12/4-great-wintry-westerns">here.</a><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-26911140574952477802016-12-01T11:54:00.001-05:002016-12-01T11:54:44.622-05:00Andrew Nette's Gunshine State<br />
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Australian crime novelist Andrew Nette has a new novel out, his second (the first, <i>Ghost Money</i>, was excellent), and I recently had a chance to review it for Criminal Element. <i>Gunshine State</i> is Nette's take on a heist novel, and a sharp piece of work it is, put together by a writer who knows his heist fiction inside and out. My full review of the book is <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2016/09/review-gunshine-state-by-andrew-nette">here.</a><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-611283153440974632016-11-29T14:36:00.001-05:002016-11-29T14:36:41.206-05:00Authors On Air TalkWell, I've been away from this blog for awhile, devoting my blog writing time to my weekly Tuesday slots over at the Do Some Damage site. But even though I'll continue to post regularly at DSD, I also want to get back to posting stuff over here. I mean I should. It's my own site.<br />
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To that end, here's a little something to listen to, for those so inclined. Host Pam Stack had me on her Authors on Air radio show last night, and we had an enjoyable 45 minute talk. We touched on writing and real life, travel and creative inspiration, social media, switching between writing fiction and writing non-fiction, and a number of other things.<br />
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Give a listen:<br />
<a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/authorsontheair/2016/11/29/author-scott-adlerberg--writing-and-real-life--live-on-authors-on-the-air">http://www.blogtalkradio.com/authorsontheair/2016/11/29/author-scott-adlerberg--writing-and-real-life--live-on-authors-on-the-air</a>scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-70271375685433629262016-04-30T17:53:00.003-04:002016-04-30T17:56:10.006-04:00My New Story: SUMMERFIELD"S FILM<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have a new 13k-word story out called SUMMERFIELD"S FILM. It's a story about film obsession set in New York City. It's up on Amazon now, and I may as well let the description of the story that's there do the talking:</span><br />
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Now that he's a stay at home father in New York, taking care of the baby while his wife works, Tyler can't get out to the movies often. On one of his rare theater outings, something unexpected happens. He stumbles across the famous director K.M. Summerfield. Once prolific, now a recluse, the filmmaker vanished from public view years ago after he went blind. No one knows where he's been living, and nobody knows what happened to the legendary film he supposedly made just before he lost his sight. It's said he made a horror film, but nobody can be sure.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Thrilled about the encounter, Tyler hatches a plan. If he can get his hands on that unseen film, if he can release it to the world, he'll be a hero to film fanatics everywhere. Still, something seems off to Tyler. Is he playing Summerfield as he thinks, or is the once great director, for reasons of his own, playing him?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/SUMMERFIELDS-FILM-Scott-Adlerberg-ebook/dp/B01EUIBP5Q?ie=UTF8&keywords=summerfield%27s%20film&qid=1462052656&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1">Amazon e-book link.</a></span>scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-91510692352988785062016-03-15T10:27:00.002-04:002016-03-15T10:27:42.609-04:00THE CONJURE-MAN DIES by Rudolph FisherBefore Walter Mosely and before Chester Himes, there was Harlem Renaissance author Rudolph Fisher and his 1932 novel, <i>The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem</i>. It's a book set in Harlem with an all-black cast, from the NYPD detective investigating the case to the physician assisting him to the suspects to the victim (who's a Harvard-educated African!). It's well-written, full of twists and great characters and came as a total surprise to me when I read it recently. It's a book more people should know about and read. To that end, I wrote a piece about it for the Los Angeles Review of Books, a piece you can check out right here: <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/elementary-dear-harlem-on-the-first-african-american-detective-novel"><i>The Conjure-Man Dies</i></a>.<br />
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-71907720021521857072016-02-28T03:38:00.000-05:002016-02-28T03:38:09.975-05:00How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers by Max Booth IIIThere are authors whose work, even if enjoyable and topnotch, has a similar feel from book to book. They may have a certain tone they carry from work to work or they may write a series. You may be able to identify them easily as a writer of private eye novels, cozies, international thrillers, horror, science fiction, whatever. Not so, Max Booth III. So far, through the three books I've read by him, Booth has established himself as a writer who's unclassifiable. In both <i>Toxicity </i>and <i>The Mind is a Razorblade</i>, his previous two books, he showed an assured ability to mix crime fiction with black humor with speculative fiction with a healthy dose of satire and outright slapstick comedy. For all the frenetic activity in his books, though, he also was able to keep things emotionally grounded, never losing sight of the yearnings, the need for connection, among his most central characters. Above all, one gets from Booth the definite sense that he wants to entertain. He's a showman, and I mean this in the best sense of the word. Booth is freewheeling in how he approaches genre and not afraid to go over the top and far afield in his subject matter, but there's nothing aloof or preening or snarky in his tone. He'll do what he wants to do in his fiction - and conventional story expectations be damned - but his goal clearly is not to shove weirdness down the reader's throat for the sake of weirdness. He simply wants to take the reader along on a wild, fun, exciting ride.<br />
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With, his most recent book, <i>How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers</i>, Booth does not disappoint. Again, as the title indicates, there is crime at the center of the story, but here the tone is decidedly satirical. You don't have an investment in the characters as much as you do in some of the characters in his other books, but that's only as it should be in a satire. Booth knows just how to set the reader at the right distance from his characters, neither looking down at them nor especially caring all that much about them. Satire is very much about deriving enjoyment in the kind of way you might take pleasure from watching an ant colony at work, and that's pretty much how I viewed this tale, which involves kidnappings, robbery, shootings, serial killing, and beheadings.<br />
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But what exactly is Max Booth satirizing? Nothing less than the indie lit scene now booming, and Booth, who runs an indie press when not producing his own novels, knows this world cold. He gives us a nasty blogger, an indie press publisher and his motley staff, a prolific bizarro lit hack who turns out titles like <i>The Cumming of Christ</i>. Indeed, all the titles Booth mentions in the book sound ridiculous (<i>Attack of the Chlamydia Kamikazes</i>, <i>Cunnilingus is Close to Godliness</i>), but they actually aren't much more outrageous than a lot of indie lit titles that exist in the real world. Throw into this mix a ferocious serial killer, a cop who loves the stuff the indie press - BILF Publishing, meaning Books I'd Love to Fuck Publishing - puts out, and an overweight guy desperate to work as an editor for BILF; and you pretty much have the cast of characters for this novel. I won't go into detail about the plot because the less said about it the better. Why ruin the surprises? I will say it's lightning fast, gleefully blood-soaked, absurd, and filled with twists. Booth's satire, like a lot of the best satire, is very focused and specific, not broad; he keeps his eye on the target and picks away at it. He also knows that one key to comedy is to make the characters themselves serious. <i>They</i> don't know how silly and idiotic they often are. While they strive and screw up, you laugh. True, the more you know about the indie lit scene, the more you'll recognize in the book and the more you'll laugh at what's presented, but I don't think a reader's enjoyment will be dependent upon knowing this world well. After all, the follies of ego, resentment, insecurity and envy are universal, common to every artistic and professional scene. And in the midst of it all, during a brief respite from the shenanigans, Booth shows us his earnest side, the side that tells us something about him as a writer:<br />
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"Genre exists to limit writers, okay? You gotta break these walls down. Don't let stereotypes and fictional guidelines silence your originality. Too many writers kill their inner desires to write whatever they want in fear of upsetting potential readers because you didn't follow the exact guidelines of your usual genre. These fears want you to die. Chuck them into a fire and be done with them. There are no rules here. Your main characters do not have to end up together happily ever after in your romance story. The scientist does not have to be mad in your science fiction series. Your male protagonist does not have to ruin your female protagonist's face with cum in your latest erotica. Everybody does not have to die in your horror novel. In fact, nobody has to die. There are no rules in fiction. There is only you and the story. Write from your heart and keep the words true and forget about everything else."<br />
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Well said, and, to judge by his books so far, words that Booth himself tries to follow. I'm confident he'll keep following them. I'm also fairly sure I'll read his next book. But I can tell you this: I have no idea what his next book will be about and I don't know what genres and tones he'll be playing around with. Can't predict with this writer. Love that.<br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-74420780040678708452016-02-23T07:00:00.000-05:002016-02-23T07:00:20.734-05:00Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Graveyard Love<div>
"There are a few crime authors walking the dividing line between literary fiction and noir, but Scott Adlerberg's <i>Graveyard Love</i> is the kind of text that could easily become canonical when it comes to defining what that line looks like. At once elegant, dark, and mysterious, this relatively short novel offers readers a love story wrapped in a bizarre secret and sprinkled with sexual tension and unexpected violence. The result is a narrative that's as hard to define as it is to put down."</div>
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Crime author and book reviewer Gabino Iglesias reviewing <i>Graveyard Love</i> for Vol. 1 Brooklyn. The full review you can read <a href="http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2016/02/17/obsession-mysteries-and-gothic-elegance-a-review-of-scott-adlerbergs-graveyard-love/">here.</a></div>
scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-77299722812416472812016-02-22T08:00:00.000-05:002016-02-22T08:00:06.167-05:00Criminal Element on Graveyard Love"Adlerberg's storytelling is reminiscent of Julio Cortazar conjuring up the befuddled photographer in "Blow Up" (1959) or Vladimir Nabokov's unhinged chocolate factory worker, who erroneously believes he's found his doppleganger, in <i>Despair</i> (1934). Both represent unreliable narration from a first-person psychotic point of view - doing their best to convince us they are 100% sane.<br />
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Oh, and that ending! A bookend of horrifying excellence that exists as a kind of homage of sorts to Alfred Hitchcock Presents."<br />
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David Cranmer reviewing <i>Graveyard Love</i> for Criminal Element. You can read the full review <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2016/01/into-a-mind-of-madness-scott-adlerberg-graveyard-love-david-cranmer">here.</a><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-64131728791191454662016-02-21T22:19:00.001-05:002016-02-21T22:58:11.036-05:00Good Reviews for Graveyard LoveWell, it's been awhile since I posted here so I was thinking this might be a good time to mention what's been going on of late.<br />
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The main thing is that my new novel , <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Graveyard-Love-Scott-Adlerberg-ebook/dp/B01B8METYG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Graveyard Love</a>, came out at the beginning of February, and I'm happy to say that the reviews for it have been good.<br />
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There have been a number of good reviews for the book so far - one from Angel Colon at <a href="http://www.mybookishways.com/2016/02/read-this-graveyard-love-by-scott-adlerberg.html">My Bookish Ways</a>, one from Benoit Lelievre at <a href="http://www.deadendfollies.com/2016/02/book-review-scott-adlerberg-graveyard.html">Dead End Follies</a>, and another from <a href="http://www.outofthegutteronline.com/2016/02/review-graveyard-love-by-scott-adlerberg.html">Out of the Gutter Online</a>.<br />
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I also did an interview talking about <i>Graveyard Love</i>, the pitfalls of publishing and genre fiction with Benoit Lelievre at <a href="http://www.deadendfollies.com/2016/02/a-conversation-with-Scott-Adlerberg.html">Dead End Follies</a>, and I chatted with crime novelist Alex Segura for a talk over at <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/the-dark-triangle-an-interview-with-scott-adlerberg">The Los Angeles Review of Books</a>.<br />
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It's been a heady and enjoyable couple of weeks.<br />
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Now....back to the novel in progress.<br />
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-73633939953659394472016-01-18T01:53:00.000-05:002016-01-18T09:58:13.142-05:00HURT HAWKS by Mike Miner<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In his novel <i>Prodigal Sons</i>, Mike Miner
captured the many complexities inherent in the dynamic among three adult
brothers. In his follow up book, <i>Hurt Hawks</i>, Miner again explores the
bonds between a band of brothers, but this time, the fraternal ties are
not based on blood. Or, at least, not blood in the familial sense.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>When
an Afghan War veteran in Dorchester Massachusetts is killed by a local
thug who collects shakedown money for the area's local gangster, an
ex-soldier whose life the vet once saved calls together his old unit to
find out what happened to the vet and who killed him. To say that
Captain Patrick Donavan, the unit commander, has led a morally checkered
life since leaving the service is an understatement, and in fact none
of the members of his old four man unit has had an easy time of it in
civilian life stateside. But the chance to reunite for a righteous
cause, and to defend the victim's imperiled widow and son, is something
that re-energizes these men and makes their lives worth living again.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>Hurt Hawks</i> calls upon a number of familiar tropes.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You
have a revenge story that wouldn't be out of place in a Western - the
way the young boy Andrew looks up to Donovan clearly has echoes of <i>Shane</i>
- you have the war vets in a crime story back home trope; you have the
morally compromised individual searching for something, a defining act,
that will give him a measure, however small, of redemption. What makes
<i>Hurt Hawks</i> work is the purity with which Miner tackles his subject
manner.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>A story doesn't have
to be brand new to work if the execution clicks. And here, yes, it
clicks. The writing is direct, clear, and fast. Every character in the
book, major and minor, is vividly etched.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The
tone is serious and morally ambiguous, the narrative compelling. You
care quite a bit about what will happen to Patrick Donavan, his crew,
and the widow and boy they're defending, and Miner ends things in the
best way possible - by following through without false sentiment on the
initial premises he laid out.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Mike Miner has a gift for creating real,
complicated people on the page, characters with weight, and now that
I've read two of his books, it's safe to say I'll pick up quickly
whatever he turns out next.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><i>Hurt Hawks</i> is published by One Eye Press, by the way, which continues to put out really good novellas and short novels.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span>scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-19412106947593974132016-01-07T10:51:00.001-05:002016-01-07T10:51:20.289-05:00THE DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S INN by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky<span style="font-size: large;">Russian science fiction masters the Strugatsky Brothers (<i>Roadside Picnic, Definitely Maybe</i>) wrote one detective novel. Just that one, but the book is a weird funny ride way more inventive than most mystery novels. It's subtitled <i>One More Last Rite for the Detective Genre</i>, and, among other things, it is in fact a send-up of the classic locked-room, isolated country house murder mystery. Well, it's that, and much more. I took a look at the novel over at <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2016/01/the-dead-mountaineers-inn-scott-adlerberg-boris-arkady-strugatsky-russia-peter-glebsky">Criminal Element</a>.</span><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-33560716248877648552015-10-22T18:40:00.000-04:002016-02-02T14:23:22.358-05:00Can't a Guy and his Kid Read on the Subway without Going Viral?<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 19.5px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
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<span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This innocent enough looking photo of my 10 year old son and me reading together on a New York City subway has gone viral. Someone took this picture of us on Saturday afternoon, and by Wednesday morning it had led to various threads on Reddit, trending at one point to #1 there. As of this writing on Wednesday night, it has been viewed over one million times on imgur.com. All well and good, but the question I was asking myself all day, since finding out this picture was out and attracting so much attention, is why. What’s the reason for the fuss? We’re only reading, for crying out loud, a father and his kid, something we do on the train quite often, but to judge by the comments on the Reddit threads, something about this picture hit people. The experience of suddenly finding thousands of anonymous people talking about you and your kid, speculating about you, giving definitive opinions about you, has been surreal to say the least.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">First off, there have been the people who ask bluntly why this picture is even posted and getting upvoted. “</span><span style="line-height: 24px;">I don't get it, is reading a book in public something people don't do anymore,” reads one comment, and another says, “How did this manage to reach the front page.. father & son reading wow.. ok?” To be honest, that’s precisely what I would have thought if I’d seen this photo causing a stir on social media. These people, actually, seem like the sensible ones to me, and I understand if they get a little sarcastic in their tone. </span><span style="line-height: 24px;">But then there are the people who are angry, their anger directed at any number of things. For brevity’s sake, let me try to list the anger points the threads contain:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: -0.25in;">1) </span><span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: -0.25in;">Anger at the photographer for taking the photo at all. The general thrust here: Can’t </span><span style="line-height: 24px;">people go about their normal business without someone creepily using their phone to snap a shot?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: -0.25in;">2) </span><span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: -0.25in;">Anger at the photographer along racial lines. This is a common one. The photographer took this shot out of an obvious condescension for black people, or as one person says, “</span><span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: -0.25in;">It must be the person’s first time seeing black people in the wild reading.” I lost count of how many people are certain the photographer is a racist. They’re sure he or she posted this out of some, perhaps unintentional, racial intent. Either the photographer’s amazed to see a black man and his son reading or the person’s astounded to see a black father at all with his son: “OMG! A father figure! Quick! Take a picture! It must be like seeing a unicorn in NYC to see a man of color reading a book AND hanging out with a young child.” Well, call me a naïve black man, but until I read the comments like these I didn’t give any particular thought to the racial motivations of the photographer. I figured the person saw two human beings in a specific way that made them appear worthy of a shot. Of course I could be wrong, but…</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: -0.25in;">3) </span><span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: -0.25in;">Anger at the people whose views about the photo they disagree with. These threads mostly consist of people cursing at other people on their thread or cursing at the friend of the photographer who actually posted the picture.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I could go on, but I think you get the idea. And I’m not even getting that deep into the self-styled wits among the commentators, the ones who came up with pearls relating to why we’re only reading books (who does that anymore?) because we can’t afford smartphones to read from, or Kindles. Ah well, the commentators were entertaining, I can’t deny that, and to watch this little picture open up a world of arguing and dissent pretty much made my day. My son and I in a photo that served as a Rorschach Test on Reddit. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The truth is we were just reading. I happen to love reading, have read since I was a child, and I’m trying to pass that enthusiasm on to my kid. Anything complicated there? If he’s into a book and wants to read on the subway – and sometimes, yes, I have to push him to pick up a book – I’ll read my book at the same time as a form of encouragement. Plus, again, I just like to read. If I’d posted this explanation on Reddit, would anyone have believed me? I’m not sure.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 24px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But what do I think the photographer’s intention was? Since I know nothing about the person, I can only venture a guess. And I like to go with what’s most straightforward, and most likely. The person with their phone saw a cute scene, son leaning his head against his father’s shouder, the two reading separate books, and took a quick shot. As a friend of mine said, the photo sort of says, “Look, there’s hope in the world.” Probably we’re dealing with a softy at heart, and this softy simply wanted to put out a photo that would warm other people’s hearts. I’ll tell you what: that’s how most of my friends, people who know me, white and black, took the photo, and there were plenty of people on the Reddit threads too who conveyed a basic, “That’s a sweet scene. Don’t read more into it,” in their comments. So maybe there’s hope after all, even on anger-filled sites like Reddit. Who knows? To start the day in normal fashion, unknown to all but family and friends, and end the day as the object of intense speculation among over a million people is enough to make me want to hole up in my house right now and sink into a book. Not with my son, though. At this moment, it's late at night, and he’s asleep.</span></span></div>
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-85717825618627584632015-10-15T13:03:00.000-04:002015-10-15T13:03:30.459-04:00MISSING PERSON by Patrick ModianoRecently, I got around to reading Patrick Modiano, winner of 2014's Nobel Prize for literature. For awhile now, I've been reading about him, and what I read made me think I would like his books, particularly <i>Missing Person</i>, his 1978 novel that won France's highest literary award, the Prix Goncourt. A detective story about a man investigating himself, ran one description somewhere, and I was very intrigued. I'm happy to say my expectations were fulfilled. I liked <i>Missing Person</i> a lot and decided to write something about it. It's a piece you can find here: <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2015/10/investigate-thyself-missing-person-by-patrick-modiano-france-scott-adlerberg">Missing Person</a>. Check it out if you have a few minutes.<br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-34623801330744583072015-09-11T00:46:00.000-04:002015-09-11T02:00:03.348-04:00Ghost Money by Andrew Nette<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Using the thriller or crime novel as a means to explore a particular place and historical epoch can be a precarious business. On the one hand, there is the danger that the historical detail will overwhelm the narrative's drive and suspense. We've all read thrillers that get lost in the thickets of period research. The story's pace slows; the author seems to be letting you know he went to a lot of trouble to gather, study, digest, and regurgitate the information before you. On the other hand, the thriller author runs the risk of appearing to use a grim setting - Germany under Hitler, the Soviet Union under Stalin - merely for sensationalism and light entertainment. We get action set against a blithely presented atrocity exhibition. Actually, I'd rather read the second type of novel more than the first. At least the pulpy approach can be fun, and the book will probably move fast. But better than either approach is the seamlessly blended historical crime tale, the one where the researched information is folded into a propulsive, compelling narrative. It's a blend difficult to pull off, but for the most part, Andrew Nette accomplishes it in his 2012 novel <i>Ghost Money</i>, set in Cambodia in 1996.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The plot is clear and engrossing. The sister of a shady Australian businessman named Charles Avery hires Max Quinlan, an ex-cop from Australia, to find her brother. Quinlan himself had a Vietnamese mother and Australian father, making him something of an outsider wherever he goes. He picks up Avery's trail in Thailand and that trail leads at once to Cambodia, where Avery has apparently been involved in dark business dealings with members of the Khmer Rouge. Out of power for seventeen years, since arch-enemy Vietnam invaded Cambodia and pushed them out, the Khmer Rouge has remained a potent and fearful force all this time, and they've been surviving by selling timber and mined gems along the Thai-Cambodian border. By now, however, a significant chunk of the movement has defected and wants to abandon hiding and exile. Cambodian Co-Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge member, is open to the possibility. He'll negotiate with them. So the country sits on edge, at a defining moment in its blood-soaked modern history, when Quinlan arrives to do his investigative work. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In a country this byzantine, that has a language he doesn't know, Quinlan needs assistance. He finds it in the form of a Cambodian journalist called Sarin. Both men carry their traumas with them - Quinlan's are personal (he had an alcoholic father who killed himself; while a cop, his own arrogance got a fellow cop killed), and Sarin's are historical (he survived the horror of Khmer Rouge rule, but he acquired the inevitable mental scars that go with such a survival) - and while dealing with their anxieties and fears, they have to contend with the outside dangers arising from their quest to find Avery. Whether Western or Cambodian, the man's acquaintances were not exactly polite types, and these people want to track him down as much as Quinlan does. On every level, from the intimate to the societal, it's a treacherous, hazard-filled world Nette depicts, and reading his book evoked some of the feeling I love to get when reading a novel by Joseph Conrad or Graham Greene. These two were absolute masters at integrating crime and espionage plots into political and historical contexts, and Nette has learned a good bit from them. Certainly there are echoes of Greene's <i>The Third Man</i> in <i>Ghost Money's</i> plot, and the hunt for the shadowy Avery, leading Quinlan from the man's sister to the dense Cambodian jungle, has a <i>Heart of Darkness</i> vibe. Two or three times, Nette pauses the narrative flow to fill us in on recent Cambodian history and how the country came to be where it is by 1996, but these sections only serve to enhance the novel. We need to know what happened in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period in order to understand why the characters act the way they do and why the country Max Quinlan travels through is as idiosyncratic, and haunted by ghosts, as indeed it is. This is a crime novel about people caught up in history and how they adapt or fail to adapt to the burdens and terrors of that history. <i>Ghost Money</i> is a serious entertainment, and it's well worth any reader's time. </span><br />
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-24504012355518855452015-07-06T19:58:00.000-04:002015-07-06T20:00:28.619-04:00Death in Brittany by Jean-Luc BannalecSometimes in my crime reading I enjoy a little escapism, namely, a traditional mystery. If it's set in an enticing locale, one I'd like to visit in real life, all the better. I recently read Jean-Luc Bannalec's debut novel DEATH IN BRITTANY for this type of escape, and the book served its purpose well. I reviewed it for Criminal Element - and <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/Scott%20Adlerberg#filter">it's a piece you can read right here.</a><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-37912336939321451962015-05-28T10:08:00.000-04:002015-05-28T10:09:13.346-04:00Blind Man with a Pistol <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For a non fiction anthology piece I''m preparing to write on Chester Himes, I've been reading/re-reading Himes. In particular, I've been going through some of the Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson books. I just finished <i>Blind Man with a Pistol</i>, the 8th and next to last one in the series (last is Plan B, which Himes left unfinished), and all I can say is....wow, remarkable. <br />
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I'll write more about this novel in my coming piece, but I just wanted to jot a few thoughts down now. For one thing, what struck me is how the chaos that is in all the Harlem Detective novels Himes wrote completely takes over in <i>Blind Man with a Pistol. </i>We get<i> </i>a blistering, almost absurdist novel where violence is rampant and none of the major crimes, including murders, get solved. There's nothing muddled or confused in Himes method, though. He knows exactly what he's doing, presenting a picture of a world out of control, with racial tensions and racial hatred at a boil (the book was published in 1969). The final images are those of total communication breakdown and, quite literally, a blind man with a pistol firing his gun in the enclosed space of a crowded New York City subway. This time even Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones understand nothing and can accomplish, in their perpetual peacekeeping efforts, almost nothing. It's a remarkably relevant book still, and it's uncompromising. It is also, in typical Himes fashion, very funny, but when you laugh reading these pages, you have a feeling of thorns getting caught in your throat.<br />
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-66626799385556077492015-05-14T09:37:00.001-04:002015-05-14T09:37:25.681-04:00THE DEEPENING SHADE<span style="font-size: large;">A few weeks ago, I read and reviewed Jake Hinkson's superb collection of pieces on film noir, THE BLIND ALLEY. Now I've finished reading his first collection of short stories, called THE DEEPENING SHADE. Like the non-fiction work, it's a book well worth seeking out, and you can read my review of it here: <a href="http://thelifesentence.net/book/distant-nightmares/">THE DEEPENING SHADE</a>.</span><br />
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-45620285948545617582015-05-13T14:03:00.000-04:002015-05-13T14:03:07.940-04:00A Great Private Eye Film: THE LATE SHOW (1978)<span style="font-size: large;">Over at Criminal Element, I have a new piece up about one of the best private eye films of the 1970's. It's a film that always seems to be just a little neglected. I'm talking about Robert Benton's THE LATE SHOW, starring Art Carney and Lily Tomlin. You can read the piece by clicking here: <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2015/05/familiar-yet-foreign-noir-the-late-show-1977-detective-california-robert-benton-scott-adlerberg">THE LATE SHOW</a></span><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-23563681870893313952015-04-29T12:58:00.003-04:002015-04-29T12:58:57.857-04:00JAKE HINKSON'S THE BLIND ALLEY<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Jake Hinkson's new book on film noir, THE BLIND ALLEY, is terrific. It's a collection of essays on cinematic noir, and it's compulsive reading. I wrote a review of it for the new great crime website The Life Sentence. <a href="http://thelifesentence.net/book-type/av/#sthash.LWCC6K37.ZVCbv9wl.dpbs">Take a look here.</a></span></span><br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-19807085744006680682015-03-23T23:44:00.001-04:002015-03-23T23:44:57.607-04:00The Mongolian Conspiracy<span style="font-size: large;">And what about Mexican crime fiction? I'm starting to read more
crime novels set in Latin America, and one I read recently that stands
out is <i>The Mongolian Conspiracy</i>, by Rafael Bernal. It's set in Mexico City, and even though it was written in 1969 and takes place
during the height of the Cold War, its view of Mexican politics remains
as relevant as ever. It's also mordantly funny. A great read overall. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I wrote a piece about
it for Criminal Element, which is right here: <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2015/03/the-mongolian-conspiracy-by-rafael-bernal-mexico-city-cold-war-assassination-plot-scott-adlerberg">The Mongolian Conspiracy.</a></span><br />
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-21573279814912001612015-03-05T11:18:00.000-05:002015-03-05T11:40:52.800-05:00Brothers on the Road<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;">
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When a writer really knows his characters and their world,
when he knows his people and their milieu inside and out, a novel can’t help
but be a strong one. Assuming the writer has talent and craft. Mike
Miner has both, and in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Prodigal
Sons<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>he has put his skill,
experience, and imagination to use to write a calm, nuanced book about a family
in crisis.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The book centers around the Flanagans, from
Connecticut. There are three brothers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and their
parents. Matthew, the oldest and the wild child of the family, has
moved to Los Angeles. Mark works in the family store. Luke,
the youngest, lives in Boston where he battles with mental illness. In
L.A., Matthew writes scripts, makes a lot of money working on commercials, and
has a beautiful, loving wife and a large home. Everything should be ideal
for him. He has ostensibly made it. Except that he drinks too much.
Way way too much. When his wife leaves him and his boss places him on
leave from his job, Matthew responds by taking to the road and going on an epic
bender, accompanied by a teenage girl he has met named Tomiko. (Their
relationship is sweetly conveyed and not a sexual one). Where else do you
go when you want to cut loose and immerse yourself in debauchery? Las
Vegas. Matthew and Tomiko drive there from Los Angeles, while back in
Connecticut, the Flanagan family meets to decide what to do about
Matthew. He’s gone missing from his LA house, and nobody knows where he
is. When Mark and Luke agree to go out west to find him, everything is
set in motion, and you wonder what Mark and Luke will do if and when they get
to their brother. Will they give him a few brotherly punches in the
mouth, tie him up and drag him to rehab, bring him back home?<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="text-align: justify;">Prodigal Sons</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">is a fluid, fast-moving
read about excess, the lure of darkness, family ties, and the difficulty of
grappling with the question of stability. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Matthew is the unfettered one and has
brought chaos upon himself. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Mark
is the family straight arrow, but he sometimes wonders what life is like on the
other side, where Matthew is. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Luke
doesn’t need an intoxicant to get out of himself; with him, the chaos and the
demons are within, always about to swallow him. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Miner gets deep inside the head of
each brother and renders the cares and concerns of the Flanagan parents
wonderfully. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">This is a very
real family, parents and siblings who love each other, irritate each other,
grouse a lot, joke among themselves, carry resentments, have both happy and sad
memories of one another – in a word, complex. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Matthew drinks too much, but there is
no moralizing in this book (a great thing), and it’s clear that everyone in the
family, when the need arises, likes to pop open a beer and chug one or
two. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Miner has a sharp
observant eye for the physical world as well; the book contains some lovely
descriptions of snowy Connecticut and the flat dusty land abutting the roads in
Nevada and Utah. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">With the
possible exception of a plot development at the very end, nothing in this book
feels strained or forced. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">It
unfolds with ease. Again, I think it’s a testament to a writer working in full
command of his material, and because of that command, I found</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Prodigal Sons</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">an engaging read, start to
finish. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-66305319836069627322014-12-21T23:45:00.002-05:002014-12-21T23:45:57.936-05:00Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia MarquezDid the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez ever write a mystery novel? Sort off, though of course, being Marquez, he wrote a story that's rich and strange and that does some peculiar things with the mystery form. It's his short but remarkable book <i>Chronicle of a Death Foretold</i>, and I wrote a piece about it, looking at it as crime fiction, for the <i>Criminal Element </i>website.<br />
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You can check the piece out here: <a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2014/12/chronicle-of-a-death-foretold-by-gabriel-garcia-marquez-scott-adlerberg-latin-americas-crime-fiction">Chronicle of a Death Foretold.</a> <br />
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<br />scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030245076394437264.post-73876269145453312262014-12-11T09:56:00.000-05:002014-12-11T06:56:05.585-05:00Guest Blog: Dana King on How a Character Can Evolve<div class="MsoNormal">
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By Dana King<br />
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I want to start by thanking Scott for this opportunity to
talk about my series protagonist, private investigator Nick Forte. Among the
things Scott suggested I might write about was how Forte changes over time.
This was in my wheelhouse, as he’s changed quite a bit over the course of the
series. What’s interesting—to me, at least—is that it wasn’t planned.<br />
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First, it should be pointed out that, while I’m here today
to promote <i>The Stuff That Dreams Are Made
Of</i>, which is the second Forte story, there are two more on my hard drive
that have been ready for several years and will be released over the coming
months. He also has an important “guest starring” role in one of my Penns River
novels, <i>Grind Joint</i>. More people know
him as the badass in <i>Grind Joint</i> than
as someone who needs intervention to be saved in his original story, <i>A Small Sacrifice</i>. What happened to him?<o:p></o:p><br />
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Family issues and the relationships between parents and
children are a common thread in all the Forte books. A divorced father who adores
his daughter, Forte believes he can never be as good a father as one who lives
at home. This makes him prone to transferring his protective nature to some of
his clients, who tend to have a great deal of violence done to them, physical
and otherwise, often with few, if any, consequences. This is a problem for
Forte, who finds himself much more willing to meet violence with violence as
the series progresses, until he eventually crosses the line into what I think
of as prophylactic violence, violence as a preventive measure.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This was never the plan—I always thought of Forte as an
Everyman with skills—even after the first four books were written. Then,
preparing for his role in <i>Grind Joint</i>,
I looked back and saw how he had become darker and less bothered by violence,
both done to him and by him. This presented some delicious options to ponder.
For instance, in Forte’s books, he has his own version of Spenser’s Hawk, named
Goose, to fill what has been called by many as the “psycho sidekick” role. (I
don’t think of Goose—or Hawk—as psychos, but that’s the term, and I can live
with it. Mouse and Bubba Rogowski, now <i>those</i>
are psychos.) Given Forte’s evolution—or devolution, depending on your point of
view—the hero of the Nick Forte series is able to serve as the psycho sidekick when
he travels to Penns River for <i>Grind Joint</i>,
taking the case places his cousin, the cop, can’t or won’t go. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This change also allows the character to have more layers in
the upcoming fifth Forte story, tentatively titled <i>Bad Samaritan</i>, where Goose is more engaged in reining in Forte than
the other way around. The series will have flipped from a hero with a violent
sidekick to a violent hero with the same sidekick trying to act as a governor.
It’s Goose who remains the constant. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Looking back, I see now that <i>The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of</i> is a turning point for Forte.
He’s still somewhat reactive at this point, trying to fill the role of
Hippocratic detective by doing no harm, and learns that sometimes doing less
can be more harmful than doing more. This will stay with him and color many of
his future decisions, not always for the better.<br />
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<i>The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of </i>is available now at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Stuff-That-Dreams-Made-ebook/dp/B00QHBL5CS">AMAZON</a>.<br />
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<u>Bio Info:</u><br />
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Dana King’s new release, <i>The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of</i>,
follows the Shamus-nominated <i>A Small Sacrifice</i>, featuring Chicago private
investigator Nick Forte. He also writes a series of police procedurals set in
the economically depressed Western Pennsylvania town of Penns River.
Classically trained, he has worked as a free-lance musician, public school
teacher, computer network engineer, software sales consultant, and systems
administrator. He lives in Maryland with his wife, Corky, and daughter, Rachel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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scott adlerberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10997101672313963063noreply@blogger.com0