Posts Tagged ‘Crusin’’

Reassessing Priorities & Fancy Anders Sounds Great

Tuesday, January 18th, 2022

For the first time in four or five months, my band Crusin’ played a gig. Generally we haven’t played during the winter months for the past several years, but this was a private party for a 60th wedding anniversary for a couple who had employed us for their 50th (back when Andy Landers and Jim Van Winkle were in the band). Also, they are clients of our drummer, Steve Kundel, who is an attorney (when I introduce the band members on a gig, I usually mention Steve being a lawyer, saying we find it wise to travel with in-house counsel).

Anyway, like Steve McQueen said in The Magnificent Seven, it seemed like a good idea at the time (it was not yet winter when I booked the gig). Now as the job approached, it was clear Covid was kicking back in, and the job was in Iowa City (forty miles away) and a snow storm was predicted. We did not, however, cancel.

The snow arrived but was not such that we couldn’t make the trip with relative safety. We arrived at the Iowa City Eagles and were pleased to find it a very nice venue. None of us were crazy about playing a job in a college town, particularly so soon after the holidays, with Omicron (which sounds like a bad science-fiction movie) running rampant. But we wore masks loading in. Barb accompanied me and helped a great deal, both in setting up and making several key suggestions about what songs to perform (for example, advising me to open with a slow song and have the celebrating couple start the festivities alone, then asking the rest of the guests to join in).

Crusin' at the Iowa City Eagles, January 15 2022

The people were as warm as the night was not and there was dancing and a nice receptive response to our foolishness. A wonderful time was had by all. We’d only had two rehearsals to go back over the list and, surprisingly, we were pretty darn good. My bandmates, drummer Steve and guitarist Bill Anson and his son Scott Anson, who took over on bass when Brian Van Winkle passed, are fun to be around – very good company. At the rehearsals the absence of Brian’s sunny personality was keenly felt. Over the years the loss of bandmates – I’ve been playing rock ‘n’ roll since 1965 – is a wound that never really heals. Not a week goes by that I don’t think about my musical collaborator Paul Thomas.

I’ve had enough health problems that Barb has really been pitching in to help me set my stuff up and tear it down. I’ve talked here before about how the performances themselves are not any way burdensome, but loading up, setting up, tearing down, and loading back in will probably determine when I stop doing this. Musician friends have written me insisting that I should employ roadies, and these are mostly musicians who are getting paid the kind of money that allows that.

It occurred to both Barb and me, as we were driving up and back to the gig, that this might be my last performance with the band. Certainly it’s doubtful I would do more than one more summer season – last year, just four gigs. I would like to do a farewell appearance, and I’ve hoped to do one last CD – we were already working up originals and even playing them on the job when Covid hit and we lost over a year.

By the way, as you may have already noted if you follow these update/blogs, Barb is the best wife anybody ever had. She is smart, funny, thoughtful and beautiful. She does not, however, cut me undue slack – she knows just when I need to be cut down to size and reminded of reality. Which is of course frequent. But my God I am a lucky man.

My 74th birthday is approaching soon – March 3rd – and I find myself reassessing priorities. Last year I was crazily prolific, in part because I was doing my own fiction writing as well as putting the Mike Hammer 75th anniversary into motion. Adding in a 100,000-word biography to an already busy writing schedule took it out of me.

So while you may look to me to keep working as long as my noodle is functioning and I am above-ground, the pace is going to slow. I had to ask for an extension on the deadline for the new Nate Heller, The Big Bundle, after the unanticipated and most unwelcome return of kidney stones, which hadn’t reared their nasty, spiky little heads since 1998.

I have now begun The Big Bundle – one whole chapter is written (but also the research completed and the book worked up in chapter outline) – which is the first of a two-book RFK/Hoffa cycle (overall completing the Kennedy cycle begun by Bye Bye, Baby). Will these be the last Heller novels? Maybe. Right now my job is to complete these two. The Big Bundle will appear late this year, if all goes well.

* * *

A benefit of the Iowa City band job was that Barb and I were able to finish listening to the audio book of Fancy Anders Goes to War from Skyboat Media. (You can read about it here)

I’ve been blessed by having mostly really good readers of my books on audio. The head honcho at Skyboat, Stefan Rudnicki, has been doing both Quarry and Mike Hammer and knocking the ball out of the park; recently he’s embarked on Nolan, in his usual stellar manner. When we submitted Fancy Anders to Stefan, however, I requested that he use a female narrator, specifically Gabrielle de Cuir. He and she came through for me, and how.

If you haven’t read Fancy Anders Goes to War yet, this is an excellent way to do so. If you have read it, it’s still well worth the ride (and the price of admission), because Skyboat has done a fantastic job. They’ve used music and sound effects to really create Fancy’s world. Gabrielle does a lovely job, superbly differentiating the characters and (unlike some male narrators with female characters) nails the men, as well.

Skyboat will be doing the next two Fancy Anders books, as well – Fancy Anders For the Boys and Fancy Anders Goes Hollywood. Both are written (Fay Dalton is almost finished with the second book’s illustrations) and should be out next year as e-books, book-books, and audios.

* * *

Speaking of Fancy Anders Goes to War, here’s a great review of it at the Mostly Old Books and Rust review blog.

And the great James Reasoner likes Fancy, too – check this out!

Quarry’s Blood, not quite out yet, is already getting some swell reviews at Goodreads.

Finally, here’s a great look at the Nolan series.

M.A.C.

Astaire, the Past, the Ricardos and Nightmares

Tuesday, January 4th, 2022

In last week’s comments, I was scolded for speaking my mind in a way that might alienate my younger fans. I hope I have some, but if they like my work, surely they don’t want me to mimic their political and social points of view, just to curry favor.

I do read (or at least thumb through) Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone, and encounter mostly names of artists in film and music that mean nothing to me. Not that those names should. I am just trying, in a half-hearted, half-assed way, to keep up; but that’s a hopeless pursuit, really. We are so fragmented in our popular culture – we have so much streaming, so much popping up on social media platforms, so little Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan shared experiences, that we are all our own little islands.

That has its pluses and minuses. More stuff can get out there, but fewer eyes and ears will share the same or even similar experiences. When I remark that a TV show or movie is “painfully diverse,” I don’t mean diversity is bad – I mean, forced, cynical diversity is at odds with good storytelling. The preview I saw recently of an upcoming new version of Cyrano features Peter Dinklage in the title role – and swapping the original’s big nose for the actor’s diminutive height seems to make sense. Casting a Black actor as Christian who woos white Roxanne jars. Why, because I hate Black people? No, because it’s (a) historically risible, and (b) the whole story is set up around Roxanne being courted by a conventionally boring socially acceptable superficial clod who (to successfully win her) requires the poetic touch of a man considered to be ugly.

I’m not bent out of shape about it – this new Cyrano is a musical, after all, and there wasn’t a lot of Broadway-style singing going on between sword fights in 17th century France, either. I won’t avoid the movie, as I like sword fights, musicals and Peter Dinklage. But must we pretend the past was ethnically diverse?

The other side of the coin is represented by old Hollywood’s shameful mistreatment of minorities, particularly Blacks. That, of course, is a more complicated, even nuanced thing to navigate. On New Year’s Eve, over champagne and party mix, Barb and I watched Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The 1936 film has the usual trivial, even irritating weak comedy surrounding transcendent dance numbers.

Astaire’s solo number is “Bojangles of Harlem,” supposedly a tribute to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, whose dancing style has little if anything to do with Astaire’s. It’s an uncomfortable watch, though at times exhilarating (it’s Astaire, after all). But it’s Astaire in black face, and one of the special features on the excellent Criterion disc has Imogen Sara Smith discussing Astaire’s dance routine in terms of minstrel shows and other racially denigrating trends in show business during the first half of the 20th Century (and beyond).

Smith is an excellent critic, whose work on film noir has been commendable, and her discussion here of the shameful history leading up to a moment like the Astaire routine is accurate, even astute…as far as it goes. When the young Black woman lays blame at the feet of the “white men” who ran the studios, she neglects to discuss that white men were in charge of everything back then, and also that these particular white men were Jewish, and the object of plenty of prejudice themselves.

In another Criterion special feature, Gary Giddens – Bing Crosby’s brilliant biographer (like me, an old white guy) – discussing Astaire in black face quotes novelist L.P. Hartley: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

I recall vividly my young-person reaction to minstrel show segments in movies and on television shows (this lasted well into the fifties and even sixties) as something distasteful and stupid. My reactions then – and, frankly, now – to how (what-was-already-yesterday’s) Hollywood handled black talent was a combination of marveling at the artistry of a Mantan Moreland or Tim Moore – two incredibly funny comedians – and how sadly ironic it was that men this talented had to maneuver around white stupidity to work their magic.

But as a kid I already understood that when Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor “blacked up” they were part of a show-business tradition they did not invent; and that – this is key – as Jewish comedians black face allowed them to be cheeky in a way they might not risk otherwise. Jolson and Cantor performed in musicals where their “black” characters were the smartest and funniest and most interesting in the story/cast. They were also the stars.

True, Jolson sentimentalized the Old South in a way that now rather curdles the blood – nobody gets caught up in “Mammy” or “Swanee” anymore. But when Jerry Lewis, in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, was doing “Jolie” songs (he actually remade The Jazz Singer for TV), he was not saluting the Old South or putting down Black people – he was paying tribute to old show business and his own father, who was a Jolson imitator.

The past is a foreign country.

Writing fiction set in the past has gotten tricky as hell, but it always has been. Since the beginning of writing Nate Heller, I’ve had to consider what Heller’s language should be – in dialogue somebody might be “colored,” but in the narration (presumably written by him years later) he would likely use “black” or even “African American” (although we are now back to Black, albeit capitalized).

I almost always like Aaron Sorkin’s work, and his current Amazon Prime movie Being the Ricardos has its merits, with great performers having a blast delivering the writer’s trademark witty-to-a-fault dialogue. But Sorkin stumbles badly in the writing-about-the-past department. Some of it seems uncharacteristically sloppy – he refers to the “taping” of a show in an era before video tape (shows were filmed, or performed live with kinescopes sent to the west coast), even though the revolutionary multi-camera 35mm film technique developed by Desi Arnaz and cinematographer Karl Freund is referred to later.

Sorkin has Lucille Ball up against Judy Holliday for the lead in The Big Street in 1942 when Holliday didn’t even make her screen debut till 1949. He uses the term “showrunner” when it wasn’t around till the ‘90s. Easy-to- avoid anachronisms litter the screenplay. Perhaps the most egregious instance of Sorkin making no attempt to stay in period has Lucy accusing Desi of “gaslighting” her – a form of the word that dates to 2016.

Sorkin has had his problems with “woke” criticism, and he seems to be trying to court forgiveness here through the characterization of the young Madelyn Pugh (played by Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat), portraying Pugh as a modernday feminist somehow time-machined to 1952 to confront Lucille Ball about the infantilization of her performances as Lucy Ricardo.

This is exactly the kind of thing that turns my stomach – courting the good opinion of the predominant cultural arbiters and selling out in the process.

* * *

Guess who doesn’t sell out? While the new Reno 911!: The Hunt for Qanon is not exactly a great movie, it’s certainly great fun, if you’re already a fan. With Patton Oswalt along for the ride, we travel with the Reno 911 team as they infiltrate a Qanon cruise in hopes of serving Q with a subpoena. How they endure a thirty-day quarantine on the ship (not Covid –“extreme diarrhea”) and wind up on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex island can best be summed up thusly: Trudy has an affair with a potted plant. It’s on Paramount Plus.

* * *
Nightmare Alley, Criterion release

Among noir fans, I may be in the minority; but for me the Guillermo del Toro remake of Nightmare Alley misses badly.

I have pretty much universally liked del Toro’s other work, and have spoken here of how much I value Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak, and The Shape of Water. I sought out William Lindsay Gresham’s novel Nightmare Alley in high school after seeing the 1947 film version on TV, and it’s been on my shelf of favorite hardboiled literature ever since. I came to the film as a Tyrone Power fan – based upon such swashbuckling fare as The Mark of Zorro, Captain from Castille and Prince of Foxes – and was gobsmacked by his performance as Stan Carlisle, a carny who rises to prominence as a nightclub mentalist, a grifter who gets out-grifted and falls even lower than the lowly place he started.

It’s a haunting story and works best in its first film incarnation, where Tyrone Power’s handsome charmer makes us root for him at first and even continue caring about him when his flaws start bringing him down. The film is a noir buff’s dream, with Colleen Gray as innocent Molly, Joan Blondell as worldly Zeena, and the wonderful, unjustly forgotten Helen Walker (of Murder, He Says!) as a complex, chilling femme fatale, Lilith Ritter. Written by Jules Furthman (whose screenplays include everything from Mutiny on the Bounty to To Have and Have Not) and directed by Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel, The Razor’s Edge), the film is gritty and uncompromising even while dancing around the Production Code. While the novel ends with Stan condemned to the worst job at the carnival, the film has him reunited with his wife in a superficially, censor-satisfying ending, but clearly doomed to reenact the shabby fate of Zeena and her now-dead drunken husband. (There’s an excellent Criterion edition of this, as well.)

Del Toro claims this is a return to the novel and not a remake; however, the last line of his film comes from Furthman’s screenplay, not the novel. The original film ran 111 minutes while the new Nightmare Alley is two hours and thirty minutes, the storytelling basking in itself and refusing to move along on what is, after all, a carnival ride – a story that is essentially an ironic eight-page EC Comics horror yarn.

The new Nightmare’s art direction is ridiculously lavish – the cheap carnival’s fun house set is a visual feast and at the same time all wrong, and psychiatrist Lilith Ritter’s office is an absurdly vast art deco chamber. It’s like a musical where you come away humming the sets. Meanwhile, the director misuses some of our best actors. Bradley Cooper wanders dazed through the proceedings, utterly lacking the charm and charisma that make Tyrone Power believable as a manipulative charlatan and a rogue at times worth sticking with. Toni Collette’s Zeena trades in Joan Blondell’s earth mother for a skank who immediately climbs into a bathtub with just-walked-in carny Cooper. Cate Blanchette may be sending up every femme fatale of real films noir, or she just may be struggling with a script that presents her as an immediate over-the-top cliche. Rooney Mara’s Molly does whatever the script bids her to do at any given moment, obediently going along.

I am usually not this tough on films. There’s a lot of artistry and talent on hand here, but so is a woeful misunderstanding of the source material. Nightmare Alley, both Gresham’s novel and the original film, utilize a technique I heartily approve of: a melodramatic tale with a gritty surface of realism. But Del Toro actually expands and overblows the melodrama, making Carlisle a patricidal sociopath, turning Lilith Ritter into a witchy parody, and evil kazillionaire Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins) into a homicidal maniac spouting the f-word as if it was already common parlance in 1941.

I saw this in a theater, wearing a mask, risking Covid – just another sucker taken for a ride at the carnival.

* * *

Ron Fortier has done a lovely review of the initial title in my so-called “disaster” series.

This is a Crusin’ performance from a few years ago that features our former guitar player Jim Van Winkle, his son Teddy on trombone (an impromptu sit-in), and our much missed bass player, the late Brian Van Winkle. This was a benefit performance at the River City Music Experience in Davenport, Iowa (we were one of a number appearing). Goes out of focus for a while but straightens itself out.

M.A.C.

Fancy Anders, Nic Cage, A Suspenseful Release and More

Tuesday, August 17th, 2021
M.A.C. and Barbara Collins holding Suspense - His and Hers
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link
Trade Paperback: Indiebound Purchase Link Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link Barnes & Noble Purchase Link

Suspense – His and Hers (subtitled Tales of Love and Murder) is available now, both in Kindle e-book and a handsome trade paperback. It collects stories by Barb and me both individually and together. Two Quarry short stories are included (“Guest Service” and “Quarry’s Luck”) and a rare Ms. Tree short story (the Edgar-nominated “Louise”). It’s a pleasantly plump collection (almost 300 pages) and I think you’ll like it. Wolfpack did a marvelous job on the cover.

Fancy Anders Goes to War: Who Killed Rosie the Riveter?
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link

Speaking of marvelous covers, feast you eyes on Fay Dalton’s cover for Fancy Anders Goes to War, which is available now for pre-order at $2.99 in Kindle form. There will be a trade paperback edition as well, but that isn’t up for pre-order just yet. This is the first of three novellas I’ve done for NeoText about Fancy, who is a 24-year-old (obviously) female detective in Los Angeles during World War II. The subtitle is Who Killed Rosie the Riveter? The fantastic Ms. Dalton has, in addition to the cover, provided a full-page illustration for each of the ten chapters.

If you like to read on Kindle, an advantage is that Fay’s artwork is presented in color (well, a couple were intentionally left black-and-white for film noir reasons) whereas only the cover art will be in color in the trade paperback. These are short novels (hence the term novella) but longish ones, running 30,000 words each. They will make nice additions to the shelves of Luddites like me who prefer “real” books.

It is my intention, my hope, that the three Fancy Anders novellas will be collected in one book with the Fay Dalton art properly showcased. (The Fancy Anders trade paperbacks are POD and only the cover will be in color.) I had a wonderful time doing these stories and hope more of Fancy’s cases will find their way through my fingers to the pages of books. These may not be as hardboiled as Quarry or Nolan or Hammer, but then what is? Fancy is like a younger Ms. Tree and is not shy about taking bad people down violently.

* * *

My classic rock band Crusin’ will be performing at the Muscatine Art Center’s Ice Cream Social this coming Sunday. Details here.

Right now this is the final scheduled gig of our short season. I had hoped to line up a few more, but with the surge in Covid the better part of valor for Crusin’ is to fade into rehearsals for our much-postponed CD of original material. Rehearsing and recording that CD is our winter project. It was supposed to be last winter’s project, but….

Here is a link to a video of the second set of our recent Sunday Concert series performance. I warn you that the instrumental is waaaaay back – you can barely hear the keyboards and the punch of the guitar is dialed down from the actual event. That’s because this is a sound board recording and you get mostly vocals.

I’m providing this because I do think it captures the casual intimacy of the event, which is quite different from working a larger venue. Thanks to Chad Yocum for shooting the video and providing the link.

* * *
Nicolas Cage in Pig (2021)

As I may have mentioned, my son Nate and I are fans of actor Nicolas Cage. It’s odd to be a Nic Cage fan, because you never know whether the film at hand will be gold or dross, or something in between.

Some time ago Cage began taking (apparently) any job that comes his way if his price is met, and that price must not be sky high considering how many jobs he takes. This practice began some years ago when he had a tax problem that sent him spiraling from A-list to Direct-to-Video.

Cage was always quirky and for some an acquired taste. But here’s the thing: Nic always gives 100%. The film can be utter shit (and occasionally is – a few have caused even the loyal Collins boys to bail) but you never know when something really special is going to crop up.

Willy’s Wonderland, with the sublime premise of a defunct Chucky Cheese wanna-be restaurant becoming a haunted house for its mechanical animal musicians, has Cage giving a full-bore eccentric performance that almost elevates it to something special. Not quite, but for some of us, essential viewing. Primal is terrible, A Score to Settle rather good. You never know. A Cage movie is the surprise package of cinema.

Now and then, however, Nic and his collaborators knock it out of the park. Often he does extreme action and/or horror stuff – common among low-budget indies – and Mandy is something of a masterpiece. It’s sort of The Evil Dead without the laughs (except very dark ones) or the zombies. I would recommend it wholeheartedly to any even mildly adventurous movie fan.

But the current Pig (streaming for a price at the moment) is a reminder of just how great an actor Cage can be when a director handles him well and the material is strong. On the surface, it seems to be a revenge story, but that’s an assumption you’ll make that will prove wrong. It has tension and one violent scene, but it’s not an action movie. The premise sounds fried even for Cage: a hermit in the forest survives on the truffles he and his truffle pig find, which are sold to a city-boy hustler regularly; somebody beats Cage up, steals the pig, and Nic goes to the big city (Portland) to get his pig back.

If this sounds like you asked somebody to imagine a movie that even Nic Cage would reject, you’d be very, very wrong. It’s a wonderful movie and about all sorts of things, but revenge isn’t really one of them. Unexpectedly it becomes about being a chef, as opposed to a hermit, but really it explores loss and father-son dynamics. Pig centers on (get ready for it) an understated Cage performance that is Oscar worthy, and includes one of the best scenes you’ll ever see in any movie – what is that scene about? The hermit makes a chef cry in the latter’s trendy restaurant.

You can dismiss me as a crazy hermit who lives in Iowa if you like, but the loss will be yours.

* * *

Here is a delightful review of Antiques Carry On from Ron Fortier’s Pulp Fiction Reviews. But…it isn’t written by Ron! Suspense killing you? Read on…

ANTIQUES CARRY ON
A Trash ‘N’ Treasures Mystery
By Barbara Allan
Severn House
Guest Reviewer -Valerie Fortier

Ron isn’t into Cozy mysteries and when this one arrived in the mail, he dropped it on my desk top with the suggestion I give it a go. Months later it’s still sitting there and I decided to give it a try. As a Mom myself, I totally get the mother-daughter dynamics. Sometimes they gel, other times they are nothing but oil and water.

I would recommend you take time to meet Vivian and Brandy. The mother-daughter team that never misses a chance to inject humor and fun while investigating a new mystery. I really enjoyed the book; especially the great twist at the end in regards to who done it. Just when you think you’ve got it solved, there’s more to be revealed.

The book offers up a truly wonderful cast of characters to “cozy” up by the fire and share some time with.

Final note – This is the start and end of my reviewing career. Thanks, Ron.

* * *

Finally, here is an interesting, in-depth look at the film of Road to Perdition.

M.A.C.

Rock Oldies, London Praise, and I Love Suicide Squad

Tuesday, August 10th, 2021

My band Crusin’ played its second gig of what will be a short season (one more for sure, maybe two) and it went well. A nice crowd joined us on an upper floor of the local library (!) for the Second Sunday Concert series. We delivered two eclectic sets and the audience seemed to love it, and really responded to our off-the-cuff, often tasteless jokes. And son Nate helped us load in and out – thanks, son!

Crusin', Second Sunday Concert Series August 2021
Crusin’ — Second Sunday Concert Series, Muscatine.

M.A.C. with Crusin', Second Sunday Concert Series August 2021
M.A.C. performing with Crusin’, Second Sunday Concert Series

Somebody has unearthed an early (possibly first?) Seduction of the Innocent gig at San Diego Con in 1988. Worth a look. Miguel on drums. This is before Chris Christensen joined up and shared drumming duty with Miggie and guitar duty with Bill Mumy.

Barb and I went to the Happy Together Tour concert in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the restored and beautiful Paramount Theater. About half the audience (including us) wore masks. The older demographic meant most were vaccinated, but this was our first venture into a concert, and while we had a blast, I think the vaccination rate will have to go up before we do so again.

The Cowsills – a band I had no respect for or interest in back in the day – were the best act, hands down, vocally, instrumentally, with great showmanship. They opened, which was wise, as it got the crowd whipped up right off the bat. Everybody was good, though a couple of the acts hid the fact that no (or very few) original members were part of the INSERT NAME OF BAND HERE. Two of the original Association members made that line-up of three more valid than most, but the Association appearing alone has a full stage of singers and players whereas here they used the backing band everybody did.

But Gary Puckett was charismatic and in a fine voice, and a genuinely impressive stylist. My band the Daybreakers opened for Gary Puckett and the Union Gap on a mini-tour in Iowa in early 1968 (we were promoting “Psychedelic Siren”). Their equipment didn’t arrive by plane as planned and we loaned them ours (equipment, not plane) – they struggled through with our garage band gear and gave us a signed picture.

Would have loved to reminisce with Mr. Puckett. He was essentially the headliner, coming on right before the Turtles wound up the show and getting five songs (not the usual four), with the pre-recorded announcer bringing him on and off. The Turtles are really just a Turtle now, with Mark Volman very funny but not up to singing much and the great, ailing Howard Kaylan (the lead singer) replaced by Ron Dante of the Archies. He did “Sugar Sugar” and the probably mostly diabetic audience lapped it up.

That sounds like a less than glowing review, but it was really a fun, fine show, the backing band excellent, with the hit after hit nature of the beast pulling the nostalgic heart strings. “Cherish” was our song, Barb and mine, and even a stripped-down Association had its way with us.

* * *

A nice surprise came recently when the London Times gave a rave review to the second of the Eliot Ness non-fiction tomes by Collins and Schwartz, in honor of that book appearing in trade paperback. That review appears below (minus an incredible color photo of Kevin Costner as Ness in the DePalma Untouchables film):

Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher by Max Allan Collins and A Brad Schwartz review — the thrilling history of the torso murderer

One evening in September 1935 two boys playing softball in a run-down area of Cleveland, Ohio, found a young man’s corpse hidden in undergrowth. The body was naked except for a pair of black socks, and bore the marks of torture. Its genitals and head were missing. Decapitation seemed to be the cause of death.

Detectives were perplexed. They were used to seeing mutilated bodies. Yet as one noted, this was usually done “to prevent identification, but almost never to kill. It’s a hell of a job to remove a human head.”

Police later worked out that the dead man was Edward Andrassy, a small-time drug dealer, pornographer and pimp who worked shifts in Cleveland’s City Hospital. And his was not the only body they found that day. Dumped 30ft away was another male corpse, similarly abused. No one ever established who this second man was. But he and Andrassy would come to be known as victims of a serial killer known as the Cleveland Torso Murderer or the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. During the next three years ten more chopped-up cadavers appeared around the city, and the case became notorious across America and as far away as Nazi Germany. It embarrassed Cleveland’s police, who could do nothing to stop it. And it dogged the man in overall charge of the force: the fabled American crime-fighter Eliot Ness.

Ness is one of the most famous names in the annals of American crime-fighting: he was the inspiration for Dick Tracy and the 1950s TV series The Untouchables. The latter was supposedly based on Ness’s exploits in Prohibition-era Chicago, when he helped to build a case against Al Capone’s mob. But it was almost entirely fictitious. So there is much in his life for historians to explore.

Max Allan Collins and A Brad Schwartz are Ness aficionados. Collins has written several novels and a one-man stage show featuring Ness; Schwartz, an academic, has been obsessed since childhood. They collaborated on a previous book, Scarface and the Untouchable, chronicling Ness’s clash with Capone. But when Capone went to jail, Ness was in his late twenties and barely halfway through his life. What, the authors ask, did he do next?

Well, in 1934 Ness moved to Cleveland, to shut down illegal alcohol distilleries. Within a year, however, he was made city safety director, overseeing the police and fire services. He was not a detective (still less an FBI agent). And he seldom carried a gun. Rather, he was a conscientious, stiff-necked stickler for standards in public life, an intellectual, a progressive and an ardent believer in institutional reform.

Ness believed that urban life would be safer and happier if young men were kept out of jail and encouraged to serve their communities. He hated bent police officers and placed his trust in “untouchable” types — like himself — who would not be bribed or bullied by criminals or politicians. He thought officers should be fit, sober and alert. He loved technology and pioneered the use of police cars fitted with two-way radios. He used journalists and ad campaigns to portray his policies in a favourable light. Most of these were radical ideas in the 1930s, and not universally popular. But Ness took police professionalism seriously and saw it as a force for social change. “I want to prove what an honest police force with intelligence and civic pride can do,” he once said.

Sadly, none of this high principle counted for much when there was a crazed killer on the loose. The detectives who worked the Mad Butcher case under Ness may have had car radios, but they did not have access to modern forensics or DNA testing. Moreover, Collins and Schwarz argue, Ness was a rationalist, who believed crime had logical solutions. “The idea of a murderer who killed solely for satisfaction made no sense to him.” When he did try to get progressive, it was a disaster.

Since the Butcher preyed on Cleveland’s shanty towns, Ness sent officers in to round up the “hoboes, transients and homeless” from the slums and set fire to their shacks. Needless to say, victim-blaming on this scale made for poor public policy. For three years the butcher went about his demented business. And he was never caught, although Cleveland police investigated thousands of suspects. In 1939 an immigrant called Frank Dolezal was tortured by sheriffs outside Ness’s jurisdiction into confessing to one murder, and died, supposedly of suicide, in his cell. The other prime suspect, Frank Sweeney, an alcoholic medic and army veteran related to a senior Cleveland politician, was committed to a mental asylum but never brought to justice. After Ness left his post in Cleveland in 1942 Sweeney wrote him cryptic postcards but stopped short of a confession. When Ness died of a heart attack in 1957, after a post-police career of failed business ventures, heavy boozing and spiralling bad luck, the case remained unsolved.

In arranging this slab of Ness biography around the Butcher case, Collins and Schwarz are on slightly thin ice. Today many pious historians turn up their noses at murder narratives that focus on (or glorify) killers and cops, arguing that we should instead elevate the victims. Moreover, in using the salacious horror of the killings as a peg for what is really a much broader chronicle of Ness’s post-Chicago years, the authors give the Butcher somewhat more prominence in Ness’s life than he deserves.

All the same, this is a deeply researched book — the source notes run to more than 100 pages — which reads like a thriller and sheds new light on a poorly understood modern American icon. Crime history doesn’t get a lot better than that.

As much as I am thrilled by this review, I disagree with aspects of it (are you surprised?). First of all, Ness was a detective and man of action. Second, I feel Brad and I make it clear who the Butcher was. In writing a non-fiction book, however, we had to leave it up to the reader to draw that conclusion from the evidence we present. Still, this is sweet UK kudos for a book that was, I’m afraid, woefully ignored in the USA.

The possibility of a Showtime Ness/Capone series is written up here (as you may recall, Scarface and The Untouchable has indeed been optioned by CBS and a Showtime deal made – resist holding your breaths, however, for the show to appear).

* * *

The Wild Dog/Suicide Squad fuss continues to be covered on various comics sites, thankfully ignored largely by the wider media. Many comics fans think the creators of a character should shut up and let subsequent writers do whatever they like.

Okay, the problem here is that Wild Dog is a hero and only a criminal in the sense that Batman originally was and Zorro always was. Re-purposing the character as a right-wing lunatic who led the Jan. 6 Insurrection and took a proud dump on the Speaker of the House’s desk reflects a lazy, disrespectful writer and a quietly contemptuous editorial/publishing staff with zero regard for the original intent of the creators.

The Suicide Squad concept is villains being traded reduced sentences for taking on dangerous missions (The Dirty Dozen). Wild Dog isn’t a villain. And even if you allowed him to be viewed as one and arrested and imprisoned by the Justice System, tying him to the most notorious domestic terrorist act in modern times is a cheap shot I can’t let pass without comment.

Bleeding Cool has done the most coverage and their most recent post at least reprints my views and Terry’s, which is really all I ask. I don’t expect the writer or DC to do anything but ignore us and our wishes. It’s not like they’re headquartered in the Siegel and Shuster Building.

So you may be expecting my reaction to the new Suicide Squad film to be wildly, doggedly negative. Nope. I loved it. It’s over-the-top, beautifully written and directed by James Gunn channeling Quentin Tarantino. Oddly, it appears to be nihilistic but betrays a good heart in the final fifteen minutes. I’m not sure the movie would work without Idris Elba, who really, really needs to be the next James Bond. Also, John Cena is excellent after stinking up the joint in the latest Fast and Furious.

Another movie you might expect me to hate: Jungle Cruise. Nope. Loved that, too. It is also over-the-top, in a different way, and Duane Johnson (come on, this is the Rock, you know it and I know it) is just an actual, no kidding charismatic movie star and there’s nothing to be done about it. Emily Blunt is charming, too. It’s one of those movies that is somehow stupid and smart all at once, and if it veers too heavily into Pirates of the Caribbean mode in the second half, well, they are both Disneyland rides, aren’t they? At least we haven’t been subjected to a It’s a Small World After All flick (my mother used to sing that song to me because she knew it drove me into an absolute rage but would get me out of bed).

But we streamed both movies. As much as the Happy Together Tour pleased us, and how great it was for Crusin’ to appear as part of the Second Sunday Concert series, Barb and I are both getting paranoid about Covid again. We have grandkids we don’t want to infect, and being fully vaccinated doesn’t seem to be enough.

M.A.C.