Merlin

I posted about the recent ROBIN HOOD movie the other day, so to go from one British legend to another . . . We’ve been watching the first season of the BBC series MERLIN on DVD and just finished it up. Like ROBIN HOOD, MERLIN takes considerable liberties with the traditional version of the legend. In this one, Merlin isn’t a wise old wizard but rather a young man struggling to come to grips with the powers he possesses, while living in a kingdom where magic has been banned by its ruler, Uther Pendragon. Merlin winds up working as a servant for Uther’s son, Prince Arthur, and discovers that there’s a dragon – the last of the dragons – chained up in a cavern underneath Uther’s castle. The dragon, who talks and sounds just like John Hurt, informs Merlin that his destiny is to protect Arthur and insure that he becomes a great king. And from that set-up, off we go adventuring, as various threats to Camelot crop up and have to be dealt with, mostly by Merlin who has to keep his powers a secret, otherwise Uther will have him killed as an evil magician.


There are a lot of special effects, nothing really fancy but reasonably good most of the time, considerable sword-fighting (always a plus in my book), and a few hints of romance. In this version, Morgan le Fey is Morgana, Uther’s ward and the daughter of one of the king’s old friends who died in battle, and Guiniviere is Morgana’s maid. Arthur is a well-meaning but somewhat dense young knight. At times the mostly young and pretty cast make this come off almost like CAMELOT 90210 (yes, I know that’s a cheap shot), but I got caught up in the storylines and wound up enjoying the series quite a bit. The writing is okay, and the cast does a good job, especially Anthony Head (who was Giles in BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) as Uther, taking a basically unsympathetic character and giving him some depth.


I believe our friend Gary Dobbs, proprietor of The Tainted Archive, is in either this season or the second one, which hasn’t come out yet on DVD. I looked from him in these episodes but didn’t see him. This gives me another reason to watch Season Two when it’s released, but I probably would have anyway. MERLIN is decent fantasy adventure, and if you’re a fan of that genre, it’s worth watching.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie. I didn’t know anything about the books on which it’s based except that they’re extremely popular and successful. But as sometimes happens, the unknown turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.


DIARY OF A WIMPY KID is a movie about a kid in middle school. That’s it. Although the script has some lines about how school is a metaphor for life, I’m not sure if the writers intended them seriously or meant them as a subtle dig at movies that take themselves too seriously. The filmmakers manage to avoid most of the other clichés that crop up in movies like this. There’s no voice-over narration by the main character as an adult, looking back on his childhood and drawing valuable lessons from it. They don’t have the kid fall in love with some beautiful, unattainable girl and fail to realize that the girl who’s his buddy is a lot smarter and better-looking. Instead it’s just a movie about the stuff that happens during Greg Heffley’s first year of middle school. The plot is episodic and just sort of meanders along (much like real life). Greg is driven by the desire to be popular, and as a result he does some dumb things, some mean things, and occasionally some noble things. The other characters aren’t as well-developed, but this is Greg’s story, after all. The script has a lot of funny lines and situations, and the cast, mostly unknown to me except for Steve Zahn, who plays Greg’s dad, does a fine job.


This is a prime example of a low-key but very good film, filled with characters you’ll probably recognize from your own school days. Yeah, it’s a movie about kids, made more for kids than adults, but I liked it a lot anyway and highly recommend it. Whether it’ll prompt me to read some of the books is doubtful, but who knows? It might happen.

Fantastic Four: The Master of Doom - Mark Millar

Since I decided to give Marvel a try again and started reading some of the current books and catching up on the past few years by picking up collected editions, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve read. And I’ve mentioned before that FANTASTIC FOUR is my all-time favorite comic book. So I had high hopes for this trade paperback collecting an eight-issue run from a couple of years ago that featured the classic FF villain, Doctor Doom. But . . . but . . . boy, I didn’t like it. Characterizations that seemed ’way off, a plot that barely made sense, and art that was good at times but filled with giant panels and double-page spreads that just seemed like a waste of space to me. I know, I know, I’m being a curmudgeon, and I hardly ever post negative reviews of anything, but this one just left a bad taste in my mouth. A new writer, Jonathan Hickman, picked up the title after this run, and I have the first collection featuring his work, too. I’m sure hoping I’ll like it more.

Stark House Newsletter

“Hitch was with this great, high-heeled monster of a woman and the only reason I was along, I spoke Italian and Hitch did not. It turned out that the woman was not Italian at all, she was Sicilian, and her glue-voiced accent was so heavy that I understood almost as little as Hitch. Not that it mattered.”

Hello Everyone--
Stark House Press is happy to announce the long-awaited publication of the late, great Peter Rabe’s final manuscripts, The Silent Wall and The Return of Marvin Palaver. Along with a very rare Rabe short story, “Hard Case Redhead,” the books will appear in a single volume this coming January. The above passage is the opening from The Silent Wall, which Booklist calls “a claustrophobic noir, at times almost unbearably tense.” And it is certainly that. Matty Matheson has the run of an entire town but he is not allowed to leave, held captive by the Mafia for reasons he only thinks he knows.

The Return of Marvin Palaver is a darkly comic, highly complex short book about a swindle, payback and the incredible lengths one man will go to get his revenge against the man who ruined him. Rabe never wrote the same book twice and even with his talent for writing different kinds of crime fiction, the story will leave you breathless with its unique voice and dark sense of humor.

Shortly before his death in 1990, Rabe had sent these manuscripts to friend and author Ed Gorman, who’s had them in his possession until now. We’re ecstatic to be the ones who are finally bringing these books, along with the short story “Hard Case Redhead,” into the world. In “Redhead,” two thieves and their uninvited guest try to wait out the aftermath of a troublesome heist. It’s hard-boiled and noir and shows that Rabe could write just as well at shorter lengths.

Donald E. Westlake named Rabe and Hammett his two major genre influences, Bill Pronzini called him “a kind of fictional surgeon,” and Bill Crider said, “Few writers are Rabe’s equal in the field of the hardboiled gangster story.” If you’ve never read Peter Rabe, there’s no better time to start.

We’re also announcing the creation of the Stark House Book Club with a special offer of free shipping on all our books to everyone who signs up now. No minimum to buy, no obligation, just sign up and you’ll receive each new release, hassle free and with no shipping, as they are published. For a limited time, each new member can order as many backlist titles as they’d like for 15% off list price and again, free shipping. To sign up for the club, e-mail us at griffinskye3@sbcglobal.net. And to check out our list of authors and titles, visit our website at www.starkhousepress.com.

On tap for the near future are a two-in-one volume of vintage sleaze crime novels from the famous (under his real name) Don Elliott and a nice trio from Day Keene, and many other exciting titles. So sign up now and don’t miss a book!

To receive this newsletter automatically, please send your e-mail address. We look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Greg Shepard, publisher
Stark House Press

Robin Hood

From everything I’ve read about it, the latest version of ROBIN HOOD is so historically inaccurate that it might be best just to approach it as an alternate history version of the legend. So that’s what I decided to do, and looking at it that way, this ROBIN HOOD is a halfway decent adventure movie.


It starts during the Crusades and focuses on a common archer named Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe), who, through an incredibly convoluted bit of plot business, winds up impersonating a minor nobleman named Robert Loxley when he returns to England. Political intrigue abounds – in fact, there’s probably too much of it for my taste – but there’s still room for a number of good action scenes. Armies clash in battle. Swords get swung. Arrows fly through the air. The editing is okay for the most part. Eventually it becomes obvious that this is just a prequel, a set-up for future movies, but whether or not they’ll ever get made is anybody’s guess.


I tend to like Russell Crowe, and he’s fine as Robin. His supporting cast of merry men, which includes the great Mark Addy as Friar Tuck (surely the role he was born to play), is good, too. Cate Blanchett is Lady Marion, a widow in this version, and the always-welcome Max Von Sydow is an elderly nobleman. There are several villains, and they’re all suitably dethpicable, as Daffy Duck would say. There’s a nice little in-joke in the script that harkens back to Crowe’s A BEAUTIFUL MIND. The problems are all that political intrigue I mentioned above, which gets a little dull and hard to follow at times, and the fact that the movie is more than two and a half hours long and feels a little too leisurely in some stretches. Overall, though, I enjoyed it and think it’s worth watching. However, it really makes me want to go back and watch THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD again, the classic version starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, and Trigger, and I just don’t have time right now to watch movies I’ve already seen. Maybe someday.

More Free Books

Livia's giving away books again on her blog. This time it's one copy each of the brand-new Delilah Dickinson hardcover, KILLER ON A HOT TIN ROOF (with a great cover) and the mass-market paperback edition of the second Delilah novel, HUCKLEBERRY FINISHED.  All the details are here.

Forgotten Books: Lawnmower Blues - Rex Anderson

My friend Clifford Fausset recommended this book to me, otherwise I might not have ever heard of it. The author, Rex Anderson, isn’t what you’d call prolific. LAWNMOWER BLUES, which was published in 2005, appears to be only the fourth novel in his career, which began with COVER HER WITH ROSES in 1969. But based on reading this one, I really need to go back and find those other three books.


LAWNMOWER BLUES is a medium-boiled private eye novel. Tony Aapt is a young Houstonian who inherited the agency from his grandfather. Tony’s trying to make a go of it in the security business but also handles more traditional PI work, mostly divorce cases. Then a barmaid at the watering hole Tony frequents wins the lottery and decides to hire him to investigate the murder of her husband. The problem is, the woman’s husband evidently committed suicide, and it happened more than thirty years earlier.


Tony takes the job and begins to investigate anyway, and sure enough, he starts to believe that maybe the guy really was murdered. Turns out there’s a motive worth millions of dollars, and some other things happen that make Tony think somebody – the real killer, maybe? – doesn’t want him to find out the truth.


This is a pretty standard private eye novel plot, and to be honest, it probably could have used another twist or two. However, what really makes LAWNMOWER BLUES worth reading is some wonderful writing. The first-person narration is fast and breezy and pretty funny in places, and Anderson does a great job with the setting (although I’m no expert on Houston, having been there exactly twice in the past fifty years). He also populates this novel with a multitude of eccentric, vividly drawn characters, none of them better than Tony himself. Smart, funny, flawed, and persistent, driven by a moral code that he struggles with, the reader can’t help but like him and root for him.


All that combines to make LAWNMOWER BLUES a top-notch novel that I really enjoyed. Highly recommended. (And if Anderson wants to bring Tony back in another novel, that would be just fine with me.)

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate it, and to the rest of you, I hope you have a great day, too!  I plan to work today, but not as much as usual, so there'll be time for family and plenty of good food.  I probably have more to be thankful for than anybody I know, and it's good to stop and remember that from time to time.

Do the Math

No, wait, Kevin J. Anderson already has.  If you're a writer, you should read this blog post.

How I Came to Write This Book

You can find out all about it over on Patti Abbott's blog today.