THE DEEPENING SHADE

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: THE DEEPENING SHADE.

A Great Private Eye Film: THE LATE SHOW (1978)

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: THE LATE SHOW

JAKE HINKSON'S THE BLIND ALLEY

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. Take a look here.

The Mongolian Conspiracy

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 The Mongolian Conspiracy, 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. 

I wrote a piece about it for Criminal Element, which is right here: The Mongolian Conspiracy.

Brothers on the Road

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 Prodigal Sons he has put his skill, experience, and imagination to use to write a calm, nuanced book about a family in crisis.

           

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?

Prodigal Sons is a fluid, fast-moving read about excess, the lure of darkness, family ties, and the difficulty of grappling with the question of stability.  Matthew is the unfettered one and has brought chaos upon himself.  Mark is the family straight arrow, but he sometimes wonders what life is like on the other side, where Matthew is.  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.  Miner gets deep inside the head of each brother and renders the cares and concerns of the Flanagan parents wonderfully.  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.  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.  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.  With the possible exception of a plot development at the very end, nothing in this book feels strained or forced.  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 Prodigal Sons an engaging read, start to finish.  

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Did 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 Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and I wrote a piece about it, looking at it as crime fiction, for the Criminal Element website.

You can check the piece out here: Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

Guest Blog: Dana King on How a Character Can Evolve

By Dana King

    

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.

                                                                   

First, it should be pointed out that, while I’m here today to promote The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, 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, Grind Joint. More people know him as the badass in Grind Joint than as someone who needs intervention to be saved in his original story, A Small Sacrifice. What happened to him?

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.

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 Grind Joint, 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 those 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 Grind Joint, taking the case places his cousin, the cop, can’t or won’t go.

This change also allows the character to have more layers in the upcoming fifth Forte story, tentatively titled Bad Samaritan, 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.

Looking back, I see now that The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of 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.

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of is available now at AMAZON.

Bio Info:

Dana King’s new release, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, follows the Shamus-nominated A Small Sacrifice, 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.