Follow-up to Last Week's Forgotten Books Post: Jill, by Sid Kane

In my Forgotten Books post last week, I mentioned that Sid Kane’s prose in his novel JILL reminded me a little of James Ellroy’s work. Juri Nummelin suggested that I post a few quotes as examples, which is a good idea. So here they are:


Four o’clock.
Sun still high. Blast furnace hot.
Jill wanted a drink.
Her bra was hot and sweaty. Her feet hurt.
Hell of a way to have to start the school year.


Ten o’clock.
The Moon. Far out. Way out.
The edge of the city.
The edge of reality, on a good night, when the lights were dark, the police vice squad stayed away, and the flask was full and warm.


Midnight. And the music was midnight. And Jehova played it. He played it slow and low, deep, from way down. And at times, from far out.
On the floor, shoes off, shirts loose. On the bed, cross-legged. The room a smoke house, wine bottle on the floor, all silent as Jehova sang the songs of peace and war, hate and love.


Not exactly Ellroy-esque, but the rhythm reminded me of stories I’ve read by him. (I still haven’t read any of his novels, but I intend to.) Does this read like Ellroy to anybody else, or am I crazy? (That’s always a possibility.)

A Good Deal

That's what I call more than 17,000 words of Lucas Hallam stories for less than a buck. Especially when one of them is "Hollywood Flesh", with the great opening line:


"What the hell is a zombie?" asked Lucas Hallam.


I reread this story before Livia posted it and liked it more than ever.  It's one of my favorites of the whole series.

Yesterday's Flame Now Available for Kindle

Livia's historical novel YESTERDAY'S FLAME is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. This is one of several paranormal romance novels she wrote about ten years ago, and it's probably my favorite of the bunch. It has a nice time travel paradox, a very appealing heroine, plenty of action, and since it's mostly set in San Francisco in 1906, a kick-ass earthquake. Great stuff. The Kindle version is also a special expanded edition, with some material that wasn't in the original edition. You know my opinion is totally unbiased, so check it out.

Sons and Princes - James LePore

It’s been a while since I’ve read a Mafia novel. That’s not one of my favorite sub-genres. However, the other books I’ve read by James LePore have been very good, so I gave his new one, SONS AND PRINCES, a try.


It’s the story of Chris Massi, the son of legendary Mafia hitman Joe Black Massi, who as the novel opens has recently been murdered. Chris has more troubles than that, however. He has steered clear of involvement with organized crime despite his family heritage and the fact that for a time he was married to the daughter of Anthony “Junior Boy” DiGiglio, the last of the real Mafia dons. A U.S. attorney, a former childhood friend of Chris’s, has a grudge against him and has succeeded in getting him disbarred on some trumped-up charges. When his ex-father-in-law offers Chris the chance to take revenge on the man who ordered his father killed, Chris is very tempted to turn his back on his law-abiding existence and live up to his legacy.


That’s just the start of Chris’s problems. He becomes an unofficial private eye when he agrees to try to locate a missing woman as a favor for an old friend, and that leads him into a case involving drugs, snuff films, and associates of his ex-father-in-law Junior Boy. The plot gets extremely complex before everything is sorted out, with plenty of murders, double-crosses, surprising revelations, and suspenseful shoot-outs.


There’s nothing fancy about LePore’s prose, but he’s an exceptional storyteller, with that indefinable ability to keep the reader flipping the pages. He also creates believable, well-rounded characters and makes the reader care about them. A lot of books I read, I have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in them. SONS AND PRINCES took me by surprise several times, and I always like that. If you enjoy organized crime yarns, I highly recommend it.

Diamondback: New Cover and New Low Price!

My novel Diamondback now has a new cover, and I've lowered the price to 99 cents for a limited time. What's it about, you ask? Well . . .


"A disgraced cop who's quick to kill. A truckload of bodies (literally). An army of violent radicals. A beautiful woman who can't be trusted. And, oh, yeah . . . snakes."


Now, who wouldn't want to read that? In addition, for the low, low price of 99 cents, you get an introduction by Bill Crider and an afterword by yours truly about how the book came to be written and why it hasn't been available until now. What a deal!

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Zorro's Fighting Legion

This serial comes highly recommended by Bill Crider, but despite that, I had a few doubts as I started watching it. The cast is lacking most of the familiar Republic Pictures stalwarts (No Roy Barcroft? How can you have a gang of evil-doers without Roy Barcroft?) and the villain, at first glance, is more laughable than menacing. Don Del Oro, supposedly the reincarnation of a Yaqui god, wears a suit of golden armor and a golden mask so huge and top-heavy it's all he can do to shuffle around without falling flat on his face. Despite the fact that the story is set in Mexico in the 1820s, not long after Mexico gained its independence from Spain, the members of Don Del Oro's gang are played by the same stuntmen and riding extras who played outlaws and sheriff's posses and ranch hands in Republic's other Western serials, so they all sound like cowboys. Of course, it might have been even more ludicrous if they had tried to adopt phony Mexican accents. Charles King, who played the villain in many a B-Western, is one of the henchmen and looks out of place in his vaquero outfit.


Despite these drawbacks, though, ZORRO'S FIGHTING LEGION won me over completely. Bill's right: this is one of Republic's best serials. The plot concerns a sinister group of politicians and military men who want to overthrow Mexico's newly-established government and replace it with a dictatorship of their own. To achieve this end, they resurrect the story of the legendary Don Del Oro, and one of them pretends to be the Yaqui god in order to get the Indians to fight for them. Luckily, a visitor arrives from California just in time to oppose this scheme: Don Diego, who just happens to also be Zorro. He recruits a group of assistants to help him fight Don Del Oro, and these men are known as Zorro's Fighting Legion, hence the title of the serial. Most of the episodes are spent foiling Don Del Oro's plans to take over the gold mines in the region and steal guns and ammunition so that he arm his Yaquis. There are also efforts on Zorro's part to uncover Don Del Oro's true identity, and it all comes to a head in the cave that serves as Don Del Oro's secret hideout.


I don't know that I've ever seen Reed Hadley in anything else, but he does a fine job as Zorro/Diego. William Corson is a surprisingly competent sidekick who provides real assistance to Zorro instead of comic relief. Sheila Darcy is given almost nothing to do but looks okay in her few scenes as Diego's token romantic interest. The real stars, though, are the stuntmen, the photographers, and directors William Witney and John English. Action abounds, with the usual mix of cliffhangers, and the stunt work by Dale Van Sickel and Yakima Canutt is top-notch throughout, with Yak doing one of his trademark leaps from a stagecoach onto its racing team, where he then falls off between the horses, lets the stagecoach pass over him, grabs onto it, and climbs up the back. Great stuff for a stunt aficionado. The photography is very crisp and makes good use of location shooting, in territory that will be very familiar to fans of Republic's Westerns. There's a little bit of stock footage, but not much. Even the theme song and musical score by William Lava work very well.


My only other quibble is that the members of Zorro's Legion are all pretty much nameless and completely lacking in personality. With a running time of several hours, it seems like the viewer could have gotten to know at least a few of them.


All in all, this is now one of my favorite serials, and I recommend it to anyone who's a fan of that genre.

Texas Writers Month

My friend Stephanie Barko, an Austin-based literary publicist, is doing a month-long series of interviews with Texas writers on her blog.  You can find the line-up here, and there are a lot of interesting folks on that list.  Check it out.

Longarm and the Bloody Relic

This book should be available now in all the usual places.  I was very pleased with the way it turned out.  In fact, it's one of my top two or three favorites of all the Longarm novels I've written.  It has plenty of action, some exotic settings, and one of the most obscure pulp references you're liable to find anywhere.  Sad to say, it's also my final Longarm novel, at least for the foreseeable future.  With all my other commitments, I've just run out of time for them.  I'll certainly miss ol' Custis.  I've been writing about him since 1992, almost twenty years, and have written more words of Longarm yarns than any other series in my career, nearly three million.  But if this does turn out to be the last one I ever write, I can't think of a better tale to go out with.

Craig Ferguson at Bass Hall, Fort Worth

Shayna's a big fan of Craig Ferguson, so we went into Fort Worth tonight to see him perform at Bass Hall.  This was the first live performance I've been to in many years, and the first time I've ever gone to see a comedian.  It was a lot of fun.  Ferguson came out and went full-blast for nearly 90 minutes.  He must have been exhausted.  I was tired after just watching him.  But most of it was really funny.


This was my second time at Bass Hall.  The first time was for the launch of NOAH'S RIDE, the collaborative novel that a dozen Texas writers did a few years ago.  Needless to say the crowd was much bigger tonight.  I enjoyed it enough that if I might go back, if someone I want to see is performing there.  Although this fancy nightlife is hard on us old folks.

The Dead Man: Hell in Heaven - Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin

In a few short days, you'll be able to pick up this new e-book at Amazon, and if you have a Nook, you can already get it at Barnes & Noble.  I've already read it, and it's as creepy, funny, fast-moving, and exciting as the first two books in the series.  Don't miss it!