Forgotten Books: Malay Woman - A.S. Fleischman

Once again I’m cheating a little bit with this Forgotten Book, since the Stark House edition of it will be out next month (paired with another A.S. Fleischman novel, DANGER IN PARADISE), but for now it’s a 1954 Gold Medal that’s never been reprinted, and it’s certainly a novel that deserves to be remembered and, more importantly, read.


This is the first A.S. Fleischman novel I’ve read. He doesn’t waste any time dropping the reader right into the middle of the action. The narrator, Jock Hamilton, is an American running a rubber plantation in Sumatra, and as the book opens, he’s already on the run for the murder of his wife, who he appears to have killed in a drunken black-out because of her habit of cheating on him. Jock himself doesn’t know whether or not he’s guilty, but he’s trying to avoid the cops anyway. He heads for the plantation of an old friend of his who has a rubber plantation in Malaya. On the boat heading upriver, he becomes involved with a beautiful Australian widow who has a couple of professional killers after her. She claims to have no idea who could want her dead, but she accepts Jock’s help in getting away from them. Then, arriving at the plantation, Jock finds his old friend married, and the friend’s beautiful wife has a straying eye that lands solidly on Jock. There’s also the matter of Communists insurgents who have targeted the foreign-owned plantations.

Well, with all these complications, you know Fleischman is going to keep the action perking along nicely, and MALAY WOMAN doesn’t disappoint in that respect or any other. The writing is fast and hardboiled, and the local color is handled very nicely. There are plenty of details, but the book never gets bogged down in them and they don’t get in the way of the action. Jock is one of a long line of Gold Medal heroes who are likable but not always the sharpest knife in the drawer, and even though he’s a little dense about what’s really going on, you can’t help but root for him. All of it leads up to an action-packed and very satisfying ending.

As I mentioned, MALAY WOMAN is about to be reprinted by Stark House. If you like hardboiled mystery/adventure novels, do yourself a favor and pick up this latest double volume, which also includes the usual excellent introduction by David Laurence Wilson and a brief intro by A.S. Fleischman himself, who penned it before he passed away earlier this year. Highly recommended – and I’ll probably be posting about the other half of the book before too much longer.

Stein, Stoned - Hal Ackerman

I seem to be on a run of debut novels. Hal Ackerman is best known as a teacher of screenwriting, but he ventures into the crime fiction world with STEIN, STONED, the first of what will likely be a series featuring sort-of private eye Harry Stein. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, Stein was known as a leading authority on marijuana, probably because he smoked so much of it and even wrote a book about it. But by 1999, when this novel is set, he’s middle-aged, out of the drug culture because he shares custody of a teenage daughter, and works as an insurance investigator. He still likes to think of himself as a hippie at heart, but there’s not much evidence of that anymore.


He gets involved in two cases, one for his regular work when thousands of empty shampoo bottles go missing from a warehouse and one involving the theft of an entire crop of medicinal marijuana. And wouldn’t you know it, in classic private eye fashion the two cases turn out to be connected. In fact, the plot gets so complex and convoluted that the only way Stein can figure it out is when he’s stoned for the first time in years. I managed to follow the various explanations of who did what and why without any pharmaceutical enhancement, but it wasn’t easy.


Of course, the whole hippie-as-private-eye bit has been done before, most notably in Roger L. Simon’s novel THE BIG FIX and its sequels (none of which seemed to me quite as good as that first one, which was one of my favorite books of the Seventies) and in Brad Lang’s Crockett novels, which I haven’t read but ought to. Intentional or not, there are definitely some echoes of Simon’s Moses Wine in Ackerman’s Harry Stein. But there are some differences as well. Simon’s first-person prose seemed to be modeled on Raymond Chandler. Ackerman’s novel is in third person and is a little more detached. The pace is very fast, though, and a lot of the dialogue is pretty funny. Harry Stein is a good character, too. Although the book’s cover copy refers to him as soft-boiled, he can be fairly tough when he has to and finally does untangle everything successfully.


I don’t care much for the title – it doesn’t really say anything about what sort of book this is – but STEIN, STONED is a pretty solid mystery novel and a good debut. I read an ARC, but the book will be out in a few weeks, and if you like funny, offbeat private eye yarns, you ought to check it out.

Invictus

We hadn’t seen an inspirational, based-on-a-true-story sports movie for a while, and I guess INVICTUS falls into that category. It’s certainly based on a true story and has to do with sports, in this case rugby. In case you don’t know what it’s about, it concerns the efforts of newly elected South African president Nelson Mandela to unite the country in support of the South African national rugby team, the Springboks, who were widely hated by South Africa’s black population. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of politics in the movie as well as the sports angle.


As with any movie directed by Clint Eastwood, INVICTUS isn’t flashy. It’s just a good solid story, told without any fancy gimmicks, and well acted by Morgan Freeman as Mandela (who else you gonna get, they’re practically twins) and Matt Damon as the Afrikaner captain of the rugby team. It’s a little ponderous at times, but for the most part Eastwood moves things along well and keeps the movie from getting too self-important. The rugby scenes are good, too, or at least I guess they are. I say that because, basically, I know squat about rugby. In movies and TV shows about American football, especially, there are nearly always scenes that make me want to say, “That would NEVER happen in real life.” Maybe that’s true here about the rugby, but if so, I wouldn’t know about it. (As an aside, as much as I enjoy the TV series FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, while it started out extremely realistic, as the seasons have gone on it’s slipped farther and farther into pure Hollywood fantasy. Doesn’t mean it’s not still entertaining.)


Anyway, to get back to INVICTUS, I enjoyed it and consider it worth watching. All it’s really lacking is the bit at the end where you get an update on what’s happened to all the real-life characters since the events depicted in the film. Had to go to Google for that.

Duel in the Sun

DUEL IN THE SUN is one of those movies I last saw in high school or college, close to forty years ago. That’s long enough that it was almost like new to me. It’s widely regarded as a pretty lousy movie, but I wanted to see for myself.


The protagonist is Pearl Chavez, a beautiful young woman who is sent to live with some distant relatives after her gambler father is hanged for killing Pearl’s mother and her lover. Her new home is the vast Spanish Bit ranch in West Texas, owned by the tyrannical former senator, Jackson McCanles. The Senator’s wife Laura Belle was a distant cousin of Pearl’s father, who also happened to be in love with Laura Belle and she with him. (The fact that they were related obviously didn’t matter much in that time period.)


The Senator and Laura Belle have two sons, the studious lawyer Jesse and the wastrel Lewt. Naturally, both of them fall for Pearl (again with the cousin thing), and she loves both of them, although she’s drawn more powerfully to Lewt. Passion, angst, and scenery chewing ensues, along with a sub-plot about the Senator’s opposition to having the railroad cross his land.


I think the reason people have such a low opinion of this movie as a Western is because it’s not really a traditional Western at all. It’s a historical romance, and I think it was a deliberate attempt by producer David O. Selznick to recapture the epic feeling of GONE WITH THE WIND, which was released seven years before DUEL IN THE SUN. There’s the same sort of big, sprawling setting, with a ranch instead of a plantation, the same sort of strong but ultimately self-destructive heroine, the romantic triangle with the good but bland guy and the dashing but cruel guy. Butterfly McQueen is even in DUEL IN THE SUN, for goodness’ sake. Several things keep this movie from rising to the heights of GONE WITH THE WIND, however.


For one thing, the advance of the railroad just isn’t nearly as dramatic as the Civil War. For another, Gregory Peck, who plays the bad son Lewt, doesn’t have the same sort of dashing charm as Clark Gable, and for that matter, Lewt isn’t as interesting a character as Rhett Butler, who has a moral center that Lewt is lacking. Some elements in DUEL IN THE SUN work really well, though. The photography is beautiful and really captures the vast scope of the Western landscape. Some of the scenes have plenty of spectacle, too, such as the one where all the McCanles cowboys, led by Lionel Barrymore as the Senator, confront the railroad workers to turn them back from Spanish Bit range, only to have the cavalry show up. There are several hundred men on horseback in this scene, and there’s no CGI, either. Every one of them is a real guy on a real horse. As I commented after the movie was over, everybody in Hollywood who could stay on a horse had a job that week.


Jennifer Jones as Pearl is lovely, more sultry and sexy than most actresses around today. It’s no wonder that almost every male in the movie immediately falls in love with her as soon as they meet her. She also delivers the most understated performance in the film. Everybody else chews the scenery relentlessly, not surprising since the film was directed by King Vidor, who got his start in silent films where overacting was the order of the day. (Although, in another similarity to GONE WITH THE WIND, half a dozen other directors worked on the film at one time or another.) The screenplay is credited to producer Selznick, based on Niven Busch’s novel, but I’d be willing to bet that most of it was actually written by Oliver H.P. Garrett, who’s credited with the screen adaptation, and Ben Hecht, was brought in to doctor the script anonymously. Gregory Peck and Joseph Cotton, who plays the good son Jesse, seem miscast to me. Their roles should have been switched. Sometimes when an actor plays directly against type, as Henry Fonda did in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, it can be very effective, but I don’t think it works that well here.


So DUEL IN THE SUN is really a mixed bag in terms of quality. That said, I found more things in it to like than to dislike, and overall I found it pretty entertaining. It’s not a classic Western by any means, but I think it’s worth watching.

Forgotten Books: Gun Hand - Frank O'Rourke

Frank O’Rourke is another Western author who was successful for a long time, publishing his novels regularly in hardback and seeing at least one of them turned into a well-regarded movie: THE PROFESSIONALS, which was based on O’Rourke’s novel A MULE FOR THE MARQUESA.


However, I recall reading a couple of his books in high school and not liking them all that much. But when I recently ran across a copy of his novel GUN HAND, I decided it was time to give his work another try.


This one opens with the protagonist, John McCabe, locked up in a crooked marshal’s jail for a crime he didn’t commit. McCabe manages to escape, along with a Mexican gunfighter and outlaw, Ramon Vargas. Although they take different trails, they both wind up in the Dakota Territory town of Nioebe, which serves as a stopover and supply point for miners headed to the gold fields in the Black Hills.


Also arriving in Nioebe about the same time are Charley Atchley and the gang of desperadoes he leads. Naturally, it’s not long before McCabe and Atchley clash, but although the town leaders try to convince McCabe to take the job of marshal, he stubbornly refuses, having already dealt with too much violence in his life. But of course any Western reader knows that eventually he’ll be pushed too far and have to take action.


There’s not much in the basic plot of GUN HAND that will surprise anybody who’s read very many Westerns, but O’Rourke excels in a couple of areas that make the book well worth reading. His characterization is very good, and as a result the romantic triangle between McCabe and two women is a little deeper and more believable than the same situation in many other novels. I was pretty sure how things would play out, but I wasn’t absolutely certain, and more than that, I wasn’t sure which of the women he ought to pick. Ramon Vargas is a fine character, as well, and I couldn’t help but wonder whose side he would take in the end. Also, the action scenes are gritty and brutal and very effective, especially a scene where McCabe deals with a bushwhacker who’s shooting at him from the top of a building. The final showdown is good, too. A lousy showdown can ruin a book.


The biggest flaw in this novel is that O’Rourke’s prose tends to plod a little at times. The pace always picks back up pretty quickly, though, so it’s not enough to keep me from recommending GUN HAND. Originally published in 1953, it was reprinted by Signet in 1968 and that edition is easy to find. If you’re a Western fan and come across it, pick it up and give it a try. I intend to read more of Frank O’Rourke’s work.

Yarn-spinners

There's a great post by my buddy Kerry Newcomb over on the Western Fictioneers blog this morning.  I'm lucky enough to have known Kerry for thirty years now and have heard him tell this story in person, along with many others.  I've seldom laughed as hard as I have when Kerry would start telling stories.

In fact, that got me to thinking about some of the other times I've laughed so hard.  Fall down on the floor laughter.  One name that immediately springs to mind is Joe R. Lansdale.  Guys like Joe and Kerry are great writers, but sitting down and just listening to them talk is incredibly entertaining.  The wonderful voice that you find in their writing comes through unfiltered, and it's even more enthralling.  That's one more reason I'm glad I became a writer.  It's given me the opportunity to just sit and listen.

I was at a convention a couple of years ago where as one of the programming items, Joe sat down with Bill Crider, Neal Barrett Jr., and Joe Haldeman, and they just swapped stories for a couple of hours while a large audience listened and was very entertained.  That was the highlight of that convention for me.

Of course, not all writers are great talkers.  Some of us are more likely to just sit there quietly and take it all in.  I fall into that category.  But I'm very grateful for the yarn-spinners and glad that I've been able to spend time in their company.

A King of Infinite Space - Tyler Dilts

This is another first novel, and it’s another top-notch debut, as well. Tyler Dilts’ A KING OF INFINITE SPACE is narrated by Long Beach Police Department homicide detective Danny Beckett. Beckett and his partner, Jennifer Tanaka, along with a number of other cops, are assigned to investigate the murder of a high school English teacher who was stabbed to death in her classroom while staying late at the school to grade papers.


Like all good police procedurals, this novel takes the investigation step by step, as the cops gradually peel back the layers of the plot. At the same time, Beckett has to deal with all the personal ghosts and demons that plague him. If this sounds a little like Harry Bosch, it should. Dilts has acknowledged that Michael Connelly is one of his favorite authors. What saves A KING OF INFINITE SPACE from being a pale imitation of one of Connelly’s novels is that Dilts’ prose has its own voice, and it’s a good one. The plot is appropriately twisty, the dialogue is both humorous and poignant (sometimes in the same line), and the characters are well-drawn. What this book really has going for it, though, is that sheer, indefinable storyteller’s knack that keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what happens next. It’s really very well-paced and leads up to a fine and satisfying ending.


As I commented about John Verdon’s THINK OF A NUMBER, I have a hunch this is the first book in a series. I certainly hope so. A KING OF INFINITE SPACE gets a high recommendation from me, and I’m ready to read Tyler Dilts’ next novel.

Think of a Number - John Verdon

THINK OF A NUMBER is John Verdon’s first novel, but you’d never know it by reading this book. It’s one of the best debuts I’ve read in a while.


Dave Gurney is a celebrated NYPD homicide detective who has retired with his wife to a peaceful existence in upstate New York. Both of them are haunted by a tragedy in their past, which is one reason Dave is willing to take on the solving of a new mystery. An old college acquaintance of his has become a sort of New Age guru, and he turns to Dave for help when he begins receiving some vague but threatening messages. Dave advises his friend to go to the police but investigates on his own anyway, and the situation turns much more serious when the old friend winds up dead.


That’s just the first of multiple murders. Dave continues to be involved in the case as an unofficial consultant to the several different law enforcement agencies that become involved. The plot twists and twists, with elements that are reminiscent of the “impossible crime” sort of mystery that John Dickson Carr practiced so well, such as the footprints of the killer leading away from a victim, through a field of snow, only to stop abruptly with nowhere that the killer could have gone.


Another “impossible crime” angle gives the book its title. In the threatening notes sent to the first victim, Dave’s old college friend, the killer asks him to think of a number at random between one and a thousand. The guy does, then opens the second, smaller envelope that came with the message, and inside it is the number he thought of.


I admit, I was baffled by the whole thing, and usually I’m pretty good at figuring out plots. After Dave solves the crimes, the summation he gives at the end of the book is much like something from the Golden Age of Detection, going on for a number of pages and requiring the reader to pay close attention. As far as I can tell, Verdon plays fair. The clues are all there if you’re alert enough to catch them. (“Alert” and “me” don’t go together very well these days.) It’s not all Golden Age stuff, though. There are police procedural elements, serial killer thriller elements, and even echoes of literary fiction, with some elegant writing and a lot of back-story and character development. It’s an odd mix, but it works very well.


I suspect this may be the first of a series. Fine by me if it is. THINK OF A NUMBER is a little longer than I like and the pace is a tad slow now and then, but Dave Gurney is a fine protagonist and the complex plot really drew me in. I enjoyed the book a lot and highly recommend it.

Hitchcock Double Feature, Part 2

Both of these pictures turned out to be Movies I’ve Missed (Until Now). I’m not sure how I managed not to see so many famous movies . . .


THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY is a gorgeous film, full of beautiful autumn scenery in Vermont. Dropped down right in the middle of it is a murder mystery, with a dead body found in the woods. The victim could have been killed by any number of people who turn out to have unexpected connections with him, and they keep burying and digging up Harry (the dead guy) for a number of screwball reasons. This is a comedy more than anything else and actually is pretty funny in places, but it’s more of a “This is a really weird movie” funny than laugh-out-loud funny. It also has a good cast, being the film debut of Shirley MacLaine as well as featuring performances by Edmund Gwenn (very odd seeing Santa Claus without the beard), John Forsythe (most famous for DYNASTY, probably, but he’ll always be BACHELOR FATHER to me), and Jerry Mathers (not yet The Beaver). I think this is a likable film, not great but fairly entertaining.

MARNIE is another one I’d heard a lot about but never seen. Tippi Hedren, another of Hitchcock’s icy blondes, is a compulsive thief with a host of other psychological problems who winds up being blackmailed into marriage by the head of a publishing company (played by Sean Connery, not long after he started being James Bond) who discovers her secret. It’s pretty slow-moving and the big reveal at the end is easy to guess, but it still held my interest all the way through. I generally like Sean Connery’s work, and he’s pretty good in this one. Tippi Hedren is much more inconsistent, fine in some scenes but not very believable in others. Bruce Dern shows up late in a small but pivotal role. I think this is regarded as one of Hitchcock’s lesser movies, but I thought it was okay.


More Hitchcock coming up, but probably not for a while.

Hitchcock Double Feature

Livia’s working on a project that involves Alfred Hitchcock movies, so we’re going to be watching some of them. I’ve seen most of the films Hitchcock is famous for, but not all of them. First up are one that I saw many years ago and one that falls into the Movies I’ve Missed (Until Now) category.


VERTIGO – I was in high school or college the last time I saw this one, which tells you how long ago it’s been. I recalled liking it a lot, though. For the very few of you who haven’t seen it, James Stewart plays a former homicide detective in San Francisco who has retired from the force because his fear of heights caused another cop to get killed during a chase after a suspect. An old friend of Stewart’s asks him to tail the friend’s wife, who has been having blackouts. The friend is worried something may happen to her. Reluctantly, Stewart agrees. Tragedy ensues, but it’s followed by an intriguing mystery that turns the movie on its head.


This film still looks great. The shots of the Golden Gate Bridge are spectacular, and many of the other shots are staged in a striking, very effective fashion. And I’m a big fan of Jimmy Stewart and love to listen to him talk, no matter what he’s saying. However, other than that the movie really doesn’t hold up very well. The pace is glacial, and it’s not suspense-building glacial. It’s more a matter of “Okay, how many lengthy shots of Stewart’s character driving and driving and driving do we really need?” On top of that (and yes, I know, where do I get off criticizing the Master of Suspense?), the movie tips its hand ’way too early. Yes, even if you’ve never seen it before, you’ll likely guess the big twist early on, but despite that I think it’s a mistake to bring the movie to a screeching halt halfway through so that one of the characters can sit down and explain everything that’s been going on. Even a viewer who thinks he or she has figured out might still have a little doubt at that point, but not afterward. And then I found the ending a real letdown. Dramatic, yes, but it leaves so much unresolved that could have been resolved and made the ending even more dramatic. So overall, if you’ve never seen VERTIGO I think it’s probably worth watching, but this time around I considered it pretty disappointing.


SHADOW OF A DOUBT – This is the one that somehow I had never seen until now. It was reportedly Hitchcock’s favorite of his films, and I liked it quite a bit, too. It’s a somewhat uneasy but highly entertaining mix of small-town Americana and serial killer thriller, as a young woman (the lovely Theresa Wright) tries to figure out whether her charming uncle (Joseph Cotton, who will always be Jed Leland from CITIZEN KANE to me) is really a murderer. There’s a great supporting cast in this one and a lot of humor despite the grisly subject matter. Macdonald Carey strikes me as an odd casting choice for the FBI agent who’s the hero. Wallace Ford, who played the taxi driver in HARVEY, is much better as Carey’s partner. This is one of the few movies I’ve seen where I was really uncertain how it would end, so I think Hitchcock deserves that Master of Suspense label on this film. If you haven’t seen it, you should definitely check it out.


There’ll be more Hitchcock coming up.