Genre-Hopping

In Ed Gorman's comment on the previous post, he mentions his hardboiled buddies laughing at him for reading Agatha Christie. That brings to mind something that puzzles me a little. When did the mystery field become so balkanized? I started reading mysteries in the Sixties, and I read everything. The classic hardboiled stuff -- Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Mickey Spillane, Richard S. Prather. More traditional whodunits -- Ellery Queen, Rex Stout. British mysteries -- Agatha Christie, Dorothy S. Sayer, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham. Spy novels -- Ian Fleming, Donald Hamilton, John Le Carre, Man from U.N.C.L.E. books, Edward S. Aarons. I read about rogues like the Saint and the Baron, I read about cops like Roger West and the guys from the 87th Precinct. I could go on, but you get the idea. I read just about everything there was in the mystery field . . . and it seemed perfectly normal to me. Now you got your hardboiled readers laughing at cozies and your cozy readers sneering at the hardboiled stuff, and for all I know people who read cat mysteries can't understand why anybody would want to read a dog mystery, and vice versa. I don't understand it. Give me a good story and some reasonably interesting characters, and I'm fine with it, no matter what the trappings might be.

The only thing less understandable to me than people who read only one genre, or even one sub-genre, are the folks who read only one author. When I was running a used bookstore, more than once I had customers tell me that they read only Louis L'Amour books. And when they finished reading all of them, they went back and started over again. Now, I think L'Amour wrote some really good Western novels (TO TAME A LAND and FLINT are probably my favorites), but I can't even begin to comprehend spending the rest of my life endlessly rereading his books. There are probably people who read only Barbara Cartland or Edgar Rice Burroughs or Erle Stanley Gardner (to name three prolific authors at random).

I tell you what, though, people who read only one author or one genre, at least they're reading, which makes them more and more of a rarity these days, so bless their hearts and more power to 'em, I guess. That's sure better than not reading at all.

Agatha Christie

I'm a nostalgic kind of guy, and let's face it, I never really grew up to start with. I still read comics and pulps and old paperbacks. But some of my interests have faded away over the years. During my junior high and high school years, I read lots of British mysteries (along with all other sorts of mysteries). Many of them were by Agatha Christie. I haven't read anything by her in years, though.

Until recently, when on a whim and a desire to revisit that part of my earlier years, I picked up a copy of her novel MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS. This is a Hercule Poirot novel that I never read back in the Sixties, and he was always my favorite among her characters. I'm afraid I never cared much for Miss Marple. Anyway, I've now read about a third of MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, and I'm enjoying it very much. True, at this late date the plot seems almost like a parody of itself: a dysfunctional British family, plus a couple of mysterious outsiders, gathers at the family's country estate for Christmas, and the obnoxious patriarch of the family winds up being murdered. Naturally, Hercule Poirot happens to be visiting one of the local police officials, so he's drawn into the investigation.

Sure, it's a hokey set-up, and characters tend to have conversations with each other about things they already know, simply as a means of filling in the readers on the backstory, but I'm willing to forgive that. The characters themselves are pretty interesting and Christie does a good job of sketching them in without going overboard on the background. The prose is fast-paced and quite readable, and I haven't figured out who the killer is yet. (Unlike a novel I read recently by a current big-name thriller writer, where I saw every single plot twist for the entire book in the first fifty pages or so.)

So, while I doubt that I'll ever gobble down Agatha Christie mysteries like I did in the old days, I'm having a lot of fun with this one and will probably read a few more now and then.

Reviews, Good and Bad

There's been some interesting conversation about reviews the past few days on the blogs of Sarah Weinman, Ed Gorman, Lee Goldberg, and Bill Crider. I thought I might as well weigh in with my opinions. For a long time, my books never got reviewed. My first novel was read by almost no one, and after that everything I did for a long time was published under pseudonyms or house-names. (At one point I had written eighty novels, and only one of them had my name on it.) However, as I started getting published under my own name, some of the books began to get reviews here and there. Most of them were good. Those I liked. Some were lukewarm, which were also okay but a little worrisome. A few were bad, and of course they bothered me. But not too much. In the words of Denny Crane, "I've had my heart broken plenty of times. Stings for a few minutes."

Then along came Amazon.

Some of the readers who post reviews on Amazon do not like my books. Some of their comments have been so vicious I can almost feel the spit flying off the monitor screen when I read them. It's been said on there that one of my Civil War books is the worst Civil War novel ever written. Another review claimed that one of my World War II books was the worst World War II novel ever written. One reader said he couldn't find the words to describe how much he despised me and my books.

Okay. Stuff like that is so over the top it's not that hard to ignore. Sure, you don't like to see it, but it doesn't mean anything. I'm more bothered by reviews that are little more than excuses for the reviewer to throw out some cute, insulting quips that were probably thought up before the book was ever read.

The only review that really got me upset wasn't even for one of my books, but was directed at one of Livia's novels. The reviewer spent most of the review complaining about a particular plot point that she said wasn't explained in the book. Well, it most certainly was. I got the book down off the shelf and looked to be sure. This one thing that the reviewer said was not in the book (and the lack of it ruined the rest of the book, in her opinion) was right there on page so-and-so, lines whatever. That one still bothers me, because it tells me that the reviewer skimmed the book, at best, yet still felt qualified to condemn it in public.

I've long said that the best review I ever got came from my father, who was not a man to pass out many compliments. After reading one of my books, he told me, "You know, there really wasn't a good place to stop reading in that book."

I'll take that, any day of the week.

Crider's Law

I mentioned this axiom in one of the comments below, but it bears repeating for those who don't read the comments.

"You never regret the books you buy, only the books you didn't buy."

Outline and Stuff

I got the outline done that I needed to write this weekend and am fairly satisfied with the way it came out. I have a little time before I have to send it in, too, so I can let it sit for a few days and then read over it, maybe tinker with it a little more before I get Livia to read it and see if it makes sense. I used to enjoy taking off and starting a book with just a concept and a general idea of where it was going, but these days I really need a decent outline before I start.

I'm reading HOLLYWOOD NOIR by Jeff Mariotte, a novel based on the ANGEL TV series, which I watched regularly when it was on. I've gotten more interested in TV tie-in novels lately, thanks to the talk about them on Lee Goldberg's blog, and this is a pretty good one so far.

Speaking of TV, earlier this evening we watched the first episode of YOUNG BLADES, which must have been pitched as THE THREE MUSKETEERS: THE NEXT GENERATION. This series is on the PAX network, and the last PAX series I watched was the truly terrible BONANZA prequel, PONDEROSA. But I love sword fights and swashbuckling, so I figured we'd give it a try. Boy, was it bad. Which is a shame, because there were some pretty good concepts buried in a lot of anachronistic silliness. At its core, the storyline concerns a group of young Musketeers in training investigating some sort of secret society dabbling in the dark arts. Played straight, that might've been pretty good, but the jokey, post-modern smugness of the humor just ruined it. I don't know if we'll watch any more episodes or not. I sort of doubt it.

Johnny

I was surprised and saddened to hear that Johnny Carson had passed away. The first late-night talk show I remember watching was Steve Allen's syndicated show in the early-to-mid-Sixties (which I liked a lot). I started watching The Tonight Show while I was in high school, probably around '68 or so. From then on, until Johnny retired, it was a fairly regular part of my TV viewing. I watched it all through college, I watched it at Livia's parents' house while we were dating, and we watched it after we were married in the various places where we lived. When one of us would ask, "You want to watch Johnny?", we never had to ask, "Johnny who?"

Of course, we saw all the classic bits -- Tiny Tim's wedding, Ed Ames and the tomahawk, Jack Webb and the Copper Clapper Caper. My favorite moments on The Tonight Show, though, were when things got out of hand -- Johnny and his guests cutting up their ties with scissors or squirting whipped topping all over each other, or the night that Johnny discovered Don Rickles had broken his cigarette box during a guest-hosting stint and marched over to the set of C.P.O. SHARKEY to harass Rickles about it. (One favorite non-Carson Tonight Show memory is of the night when Kermit the Frog guest-hosted, back in the days before that godawful Jay Leno took over as permanent guest host. We sat there watching Kermit interview guests and wondered how many drunks were tuning in and thinking they were hallucinating.)

Although Johnny's low-key final show was good, I've always thought the real farewell was Bette Midler's gorgeous rendition of "One For My Baby", sung right to Johnny, on the next-to-last show. One of the most beautiful moments I've seen on television.

Rest well, Johnny. You were a good friend to millions of people and touched their lives without ever knowing them.

DEATH HITCHES A RIDE, Martin L. Weiss, Ace D-45 

TRACKED DOWN, Leslie Edgley, Ace D-45 

A Bargain

While poking around in the Nostalgia section at Half Price Books, I came across an Ace Double I didn't have: D-45, which consists of DEATH HITCHES A RIDE by Martin L. Weiss (who he?) and TRACKED DOWN by Leslie Edgley (who he? or she?), which was originally published under the title THE ANGRY HEART (doesn't sound real hardboiled to me). Despite never having heard of either author, and despite the fact that the book was in good but not great shape . . . it was only a buck. The cover on the Weiss side of the book isn't bad, and you can't beat cover copy like "Corpse Cargo on a Highway to Hell!" Needless to say, this one went home with me. Lord knows when or if I'll get around to reading it, but by golly, I've got it if I do want to read it!

REH's Birthday

Today is the 99th anniversary of Robert E. Howard's birth in Peaster, Texas (about twenty miles from where I'm sitting, as the crow flies). It's a long-standing tradition in Howard fandom to read one of Bob's stories and drink a toast in his memory on his birthday. I'll probably read "The Phoenix on the Sword", the first of the Conan stories. I'm not much of a drinker, though, so my toast will probably be made with diet root beer or some such. But I'll definitely be thinking of ol' Two-Gun Bob today.