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The Rules for Writers, Fans & Editors – You’re Welcome

Tuesday, February 28th, 2023

Let’s start with this terrific review in the Washington Post of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction:

Is Mickey Spillane now a neglected author? In the early 1950s, his immensely popular novels about private eye Mike Hammer were called sadistic and pornographic revenge fantasies, fever dreams of violence accelerating to “slam-bang” — Spillane’s adjective — surprise endings. No one who’s read “I, the Jury” (1947) will ever forget its final sentence, innocent-seeming but immensely shocking in context: “It was easy.”

In my early teens I raced through all the Spillane paperbacks I could unearth, so I quickly devoured “Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction” (Mysterious Press), by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. With no-nonsense concision, it describes Spillane’s early career in comics, his jump into writing novels, the adaptation of his work into movies (most notably the noir classic “Kiss Me Deadly”), the various Mike Hammer TV shows and the later spy thrillers about Tiger Mann. The authors also discuss Spillane’s personal life, his three marriages and — paradoxical as it may seem — this tough-guy writer’s membership in the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

There’s only one caution I would make to a prospective reader of “Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction.” It’s forthrightly full of spoilers, so that Collins and Traylor can trace the connections among the early novels as Mike Hammer works through some formidable residual guilt. This openness about Spillane’s plots may have been unavoidable, but if I were about to begin “Vengeance Is Mine” (1950) or “The Long Wait” (1951) for the first time, I’d rather not know their tricky secrets.

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction audiobook cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo
Digital Audiobook: Kobo Libro.fm
Audiobook Excerpt:
* * *

Last week, in a fit of petty panic, I disliked another writer’s work in public. I thought I was just being frank and knowingly exposing my frailties and frustrations; but I broke a rule. Writing fiction is hard. Writing fiction for a living is harder. Just typing a book-length manuscript is arduous.

So I shouldn’t criticize any other fiction writer in public. Not ever. And it’s rare that I do, and I was in fact reacting in frustration (and, later in the same post, expressing embarrassment at having done so) about a biography of that writer, a book I felt would impinge upon the chances of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction getting an Edgar nomination.

Let’s start there. The Edgars, all awards in the mystery fiction firmament (all entertainment/arts awards, actually), are a will o’ the wisp thing. The MWA committees are comprised of members – publishing mystery writers – whose collective tastes will shift as the membership of these committees changes from year to year. So one committee can nominate a recent Ness non-fiction book without previous committees nominating either of the two (I feel definitive, groundbreaking) Ness books written by Brad Schwartz and me not long ago. At the same time, I can write Nate Heller books that are honored by the Private Eye Writers of America and other mystery writer organizations and never get an Edgar nomination for any of them. And then, out of nowhere, Quarry’s Blood can receive an Edgar nomination. I’d call it a crap shoot, but I think it goes well beyond that.

So even thinking about the ramifications of the publication of another mystery-writer biography, as far as Edgar and other award nominations for Spillane are concerned, is an absurd waste of time. It wouldn’t surprise me if neither book got a nomination. Or both did. Or one.

As I’ve said here before, nominations and award wins are good for the ego – a fairly fleeting feeling – but are most valuable as a marketing tool. I do my best to chart the good, bad and in between of reviews without taking any of it seriously beyond whether a review provides what’s called a “pull quote” (a blurb taken from a review, sometimes the only good thing said about a book in that review). That’s how “The best reason to show why Max Allan Collins must never be published again” becomes “The best…Max Allan Collins must…be published again.”

I stopped formally reviewing books and movies a long time ago. I felt with novels that it was unfair to the writer – the great Tony Hillerman wrote a bad review of an early Heller novel and it struck me as what they now call “punching down.” And I knew Tony a little from playing poker with him at Bouchercons, and it hurt me that a writer of his stature would pan my stuff, particularly since we were at least friendly acquaintances. Frankly, it still stings.

I stopped reviewing books because it seems like a chef reviewing somebody else’s restaurant – it’s an obvious conflict of interest. It’s lacking in grace, whether you’re a big writer panning an up-and-comer, or an up-and-comer attacking a big writer. When I made my first independent film (Mommy, 1995), I learned how hard it was to make a movie, and the difficulties the process entailed. I think Mommy is a good little movie, but I also know that it’s difficult to make even a bad movie. I truly hope Gene Siskel has been sentenced to Purgatory until he is able to make a movie as good as Ed Wood’s worst.

So I stopped writing movie reviews (I was the first regular Mystery Scene film critic) with the exception of a column in a now-defunct magazine devoted to Asian genre films, largely because I am such a movie buff I couldn’t help myself. Also, somehow I didn’t think I was threatening Hong Kong and Japanese filmmakers with my opinions.

Then these updates/blog entries came along and I drifted back into expressing my opinions about movies and TV. Not every time, but now and then. I try to limit myself to movies and TV I like, but I often slip. Early on these updates were more strictly just me hawking my wares, and my son Nathan said I needed to include other content – which led to “sort of” reviewing again and definitely sharing my personal thoughts about the craft and the business of writing.

My role model for this was my late friend Harlan Ellison, whose personal intros to short stories and columns in his collections really revealed the Man Behind the Curtain. My wife Barb, however, after the last few updates, said pointedly, “Careful you don’t become Harlan Ellison.” Harlan was a notoriously opinionated and combative writer and by the end of his life was viewed as something of a curmudgeon.

I defended myself by reminding Barb that at (nearly) 75 I had a right to be a curmudgeon; but she did not accept that argument.

Okay, then, James Ellroy. I have nothing against him personally, and we used to run into each other now and then and
always were friendly. He was unfailingly gracious to me. I was working the historical noir side of the street before him (not by much, but I was) and it’s probably natural that I would resent and even be jealous of his commercial and critical success.

That I don’t care for his approach is irrelevant. What I don’t like about it is something I don’t care to discuss, as it gets into that reviewing area. For a writer of fiction to be truly envious of another writer of fiction requires the former to be willing to trade books with the latter. I would not trade Angel in Black for The Black Dahlia no matter how much more money and acclaim it might bring me – writers have nothing but their own work to justify their presence on the planet.

So why does Ellroy remain something of a a thorn in my side? I’m sure I’m not even a gnat annoying his field of vision. It’s the fans. The readers. Some of you out there. So it occurs to me that it’s time to put down some rules, and we’ll start with the fans.

RULES FOR FANS (IN PERSON AND IN CORRESPONDENCE)

1. Do not tell a writer that he or she is one of your two favorite authors and then announce who the other author is. Particularly don’t go on and on about that other author. (I have heard that James Ellroy is someone’s other favorite writer countless times – probably because, again, we both work the historical noir side of the street.)

2. Do not tell a writer that you want to be a writer, too, and particularly don’t send that writer your manuscript or even request sending it. You are supposed to be interested in the writer you admire, not vice versa. And most writers have been told by their attorneys not to read other people’s unpublished work because of potential accusations of plagiarism.

3. Ask first before sending a book to be signed and, when you’re given the go-ahead, provide a self-addressed postage-attached envelope.

4. Do not share with the writer which books he or she wrote that you considered the weakest. In particular, don’t praise early books at the expense of later ones.

RULES FOR EDITORS

1. Do not take authors out for lunch on their visits to New York or at mystery conventions and tell them about other authors on your list you think are really great. More specifically, don’t tell a writer that a manuscript that just came in by, for example, James Ellroy is really, really terrific.

2. Do not take offense when you present something as a “suggestion” and the author doesn’t take it. If it’s really a change you feel needs to be made, be forthright about it. I would much rather have an editor insist on changes than just decide to stop working with me because I didn’t follow what he or she requested. Home work assignment: look up meaning of “suggestion.”

3. Inform the copy editor that line editing is your job and that the copy editor has not been hired to be a co-author.

RULES FOR WRITERS

1. Don’t review the books of other writers.

2. Don’t bitch about a movie ruining your book if you cashed the check.

3. Be patient with readers who may be nervous meeting you and think you are important in some way.

4. Understand that you are not important in any way, and that it’s a privilege to lie for a living.

The above are not complete lists, and don’t deal with things like writers making deadlines and editors returning calls.

* * *

So, of course, here’s some quick reviews.

Magnificent Warriors blu ray cover

Out on Blu-ray from 88 Films, Magnificent Warriors features a very young Michelle Yeoh – decades before Everything Everywhere All At Once – displaying her incredible martial arts skills and a charming, casually charismatic appeal. This has several of the greatest action sequences ever filmed, truly jaw-dropping stuff. Be prepared for the Chinese not to like the Japanese very much.

Marlowe with Liam Neeson from director/co-writer Neil Jordan is an abysmal misfire of a Phillip Marlowe movie, from a continuation novel (not Chandler). It’s shot in Ireland and Spain and is the worst approximation of Los Angeles in the Chinatown era I’ve ever seen, not surprising because it’s the worst period private eye movie I’ve ever seen. Neeson (who actually says “I’m getting too old for this” at the close of an awkward action scene) is adequate but everyone else hams it. Scenes end before they begin, incoherence poses as art, and dialogue approximates neither Chandler nor recognizable human speech. I went home and re-watched a 1947 Marlowe movie, The Brasher Doubloon (from The High Window) with George Mongomery as a mustached Marlowe. I always thought this one was lousy, and now it looks not bad at all. And James Garner’s Marlowe movie is starting to look like a minor masterpiece.

Party Down Season 3 Banner

Party Down, the Hollywood catering comedy from various Veronica Mars talent, is back on Starz after a brief thirteen-year hiatus. I’ve seen one episode and it’s already clearly the best show on television, painfully hilarious, with Ken Marino, Adam Scott and Jane Lynch standouts, though Martin Starr steals the show as a cynic who sees everyone else’s frailties except his own (he’s a sci-fi geek who once wrote an epic novel on a roll of toilet paper).

Poker Face banner

No, wait, Poker Face is the best show on television. Barb and I almost bailed after the first episode’s wrap-up seemed to promise a Columbo Meets the Fugitive premise for the series, with Natasha Lyonne having a superpower of sorts in her ability to detect lying. Nate nudged us to keep trying, and while it’s clearly a tribute to Peter Falk’s great detective, The Fugitive aspect is played down, and the lying shtick well-handled. Tons of great stars stop by to take the ride. Wanna see Nick Nolte playing a Ray Harryhausen type? You’re in luck! Episode eight.

* * *

Here’s an interesting take on my first Batman issue (!). Check out my comment as well.

Scroll down for some more nice Rap Sheet coverage of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction.

Guess what Collider thinks is one of the ten best Prohibition era gangsters movies.

M.A.C.

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Spillane Bio Positive Praise & My Bad Attitudes

Tuesday, February 21st, 2023

Wonderful reviews are still coming in for Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction by Jim Traylor and me. We’ll start with this one, from the first-rate Shelf Awareness site:

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction
by James L Traylor and Max Allan Collins

Mickey Spillane (1918-2006), one of the top-selling pulp mystery writers, gets his first-ever biography with Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction, a splendid, intimate and well-researched achievement by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. The two have previously co-written books about Spillane, and Collins (Scarface and the Untouchable, with A. Brad Schwartz) co-authored/completed more than a dozen Spillane novels that were discovered and published posthumously. But this is the first full-length biography about the prolific author. For years, Spillane said he didn’t want anyone writing his biography because he was going to write it himself. This book contains Spillane’s entire autobiographical output–all 11 pages. (It ends in the middle of a sentence.)

Spillane gained national attention in 1947 when I, the Jury, his debut novel, introduced his violent private-eye-as-avenging-hero, Mike Hammer. The hardcover sold respectably, but the paperback sales were amazing. One book dealer reported selling 25,000 copies in one day. More Hammer novels were released from 1950-52 (including his only New York Times bestseller, Kiss Me, Deadly, and Vengeance Is Mine!, notable because it saves its surprise ending until the very last word). And then there was a decade of publishing silence. Collins and Traylor, polished writers and expert researchers, not only discover why Spillane refused to publish for a decade but also uncover his pseudonyms.

The two authors are strong and persuasive advocates of Spillane’s novels. Few readers will be able to resist sampling Spillane’s work after reading this engaging and definitive biography of the surprisingly affable tough-guy writer. –Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Here’s the review in context at the Shelf Awareness site:
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/sar-issue.html?issue=1161#m21157

I admit I was frustrated when I saw J. Kingston Pierce give a lot of space in the Rap Sheet to a new James Ellroy bio, a book that will likely knock Jim Traylor and me out of Edgar competition thanks to the brigade of “Demon Dog” acolytes. While I don’t generally criticize (in public) other writers in the genre, I have not hidden my contempt for the subject of this bio, or anyway his fiction; the very title of the bio (Love Me Fierce in Danger) announces the silly tin-ear pseudo noir poetry of this self-professed master.

I don’t say this to court an argument – this is my opinion and I’m unlikely to be swayed from it. I am also aware that a lot of smart people (probably a good number who are smarter than me) disagree with my harsh assessment of a writer I consider a fraud. It’s entirely possible that I’m wrong. But I’m counting on posterity to see through the Emperor’s lack of clothes.

No, I mention this because it demonstrates a battle I’m having with myself to focus on what’s important (my family, my health, my work) and not get caught up in my tendency toward petty resentment. My initial reaction to seeing Jeff Pierce give so much space to this particular competitor of mine was a knee-jerk one – a combination of what-am-I-chopped-liver? and childish annoyance.

Then the next day, there Jeff was at January magazine saying wonderful things about Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction. It made me feel like a fool, and I am exposing myself as one in sharing this reaction with you. But I’ll also share what Jeff (whose Rap Sheet is the definitive mystery fiction web column) had to say about Spillane:

Crime Fiction: Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor

February 16, 2023 J. Kingston Pierce.

“The chewing gum of American literature” is how crime novelist Mickey Spillane described his books, which typically blended eye-for-an-eye justice with risqué innuendos and granite-chinned philosophizing (“Too many times naked women and death walked side by side”). And boy, did readers eat up his fiction, making his first Mike Hammer private-eye yarn, 1947’s I, the Jury, into a best-seller that spawned a dozen sequels and turned its protagonist into a radio, film, and TV fixture. Spillane developed his own media persona along the way, part-Hammer (he portrayed his Gotham gumshoe in a 1963 film, The Girl Hunters) and part-ham (he spoofed himself in a succession of Miller Lite beer commercials). In this enlightening biography, fellow writers Collins (his friend and posthumous collaborator) and Traylor make the most of their extraordinary access to Spillane’s personal archives, delivering incisive perspectives on his comic-book years, his multiple marriages, his pugnaciousness and wont to embellish the facts of his life, his surprising conversion by Jehovah’s Witnesses, his vexation with Hollywood, and his eventual recognition by peers who’d earlier condemned him as “a vulgar pulpmeister.” This book’s paramount success, though, is in casting Spillane as a trendsetting stylist, who recognized early the value of paperback publication and helped shape late-20th-century detective fiction.

Here is the January Magazine post in all its glory: https://januarymagazine.com/wp/crime-fiction-spillane-king-of-pulp-fiction-by-max-allan-collins-and-james-l-traylor/

I made one minor correction here – the original review puts I, the Jury’s publication at 1945, but it’s 1947. We are still in the 75th anniversary year of Mike Hammer’s first appearance.

I am and have always been very competitive, and that feeds pettiness and resentment, which isn’t entirely bad in the first two acts of a writer’s life. But in the third act the focus ought to focus onto just the work itself – what you are able to accomplish in the time you have left.

But old habits are hard to shake. So last week when I was approached via e-mail by a bookshop owner (a dying breed unfortunately) about a possible signing, I had certain knee-jerk reactions. First, this bookshop proprietor is a sweet guy and has always been a supporter of my work (and Barb’s). When we stopped doing signings for other people, we kept doing his. Nonetheless, I experienced certain irritations. In particular, I can’t remember once in a number of decades when this very nice man ever said anything positive about my (our) work. And he always took me aside to tell me with great enthusiasm about some mystery writer (some writer who wasn’t me) he had recently discovered.

If I were a mature, grounded individual – a state I aspire to but haven’t yet reached – I would interpret this behavior in a positive way. This individual probably thought his liking for my (our) work was obvious – after all, he was booking us back into his shop for signings regularly. He looked at me as someone interested in mystery fiction and wanted to share his enthusiasm for new discoveries in the genre.

Nothing wrong with that.

But again, a part of me responded: what am I, chopped liver? And I had said, numerous times in presentations at his shop, that I did not read current mystery writers for a multitude of reasons (which I’ve discussed here at length).

Last week he e-mailed me about doing a signing. Barb and I have not, obviously, done any signings in recent years. First came the open-heart surgery in 2016 and 2017, and then Covid. And, of course, we are both approaching age 75. (This appearance would require a four-hour drive one-way and an overnight stay, at our expense of course.) But we had already discussed that this particular bookshop was a place we wouldn’t mind signing at again, maybe one last time…but at least one last time.

The shop owner’s invitation to do a signing included a strong suggestion that we “share the stage” with another writer, who was also from Iowa and who was a big fan of mine and had met me a number of times. Okay – only I don’t remember meeting him (doesn’t mean I haven’t) but I have read a number of interviews and articles with and about him, and my name (probably the best known writer in the state of Iowa) (not a huge distinction) never came up. This was accompanied by praise for this writer from the bookshop owner and one of his customers, who had recently discovered this other Iowa author.

I stewed about this for several days, feeling insulted. (Exactly the kind of behavior I am trying to shake.) When I responded to the e-mail, I did my best to stay positive and friendly. But I did take a hard pass on “sharing the stage” with a fellow Iowan author.

The bookshop owner – an incredibly nice man – has not responded to my e-mail, probably astounded by my attitude.

I guess I have a prickly side. Or maybe just a prick side. But I am generally friendly and jokey and it surprises people when I recoil at stuff like this. I wrote here about how offended another (ex-)bookshop owner was that I didn’t express gratitude for being sent a laundry list of errors in The Big Bundle I’d supposedly made (and some I had, but a good number weren’t errors at all).

Last week I discussed how I didn’t consider teaching to involve “heavy lifting,” after which I got scolded (rightly) for diminishing the tough role of teachers. But I thought I’d been clear that I was talking about my own teaching experience – how I’d been able to fake it and just use my gift of gab to get by. That it had not been my finest hour. To me, teaching is – or should be – a calling. At West Junior High, Terry Beatty’s father fueled my love for reading. At Muscatine High School, Mr. Robinson encouraged me to write (and a teacher I despised, Miss Fogerty, taught me everything I know about grammar and usage, God bless her). At Muscatine Community College, Keith Larson – farmer poet – taught me to love the sound of words, and Jack Lockridge – tattooed ex-Marine history teacher – turned me from an Ayn Rand conservative into a left-of-center Democrat in one session. At the University of Iowa, in the Writers Workshop, Richard Yates encouraged me to layer more and more reality onto my melodrama, and got me my first agent.

These were great people. I was not their equal. Barely their peer. There was never any heavier lifting done than what these teachers did with the raw clay of my desire to tell stories.

On the other hand, I will not censor myself here (my son Nate is in charge of that). I present my thoughts and, to some degree, my opinions here, unfiltered and unvarnished.

* * *

The new version of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (my 1999 documentary) is complete. It used to run 47 minutes and now is 61 minutes. We’ll be delivering it to VCI Home Video, along with the 90-minute Encore for Murder program (as bonus content) next week.

Here’s a reminder that Supreme Justice will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals in the US marketplace, now through 2/28/2023, offered at 2.99 USD during the promotion period.

M.A.C.

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Bulldog Edition

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

It’s amazing! After my brief discussion/defense of the Ritz Brothers last time, fan clubs for the boys have sprung up all over America!

Okay, maybe not.

I’m just softening the blow that I’m not doing a book giveaway this week. Maybe next week. I am working on the new Nate Heller and found myself scrapping my intended final two sections and plotting instead one second section. This required re-reading a ton of research material and re-thinking it. I have been taxing my wife Barb’s patience utilizing her as a sounding board whose ideas and reactions are always helpful.

And how about that Super Bowl? Actually, as I write this, it hasn’t happened yet and I don’t care about it, so Barb and I will be going to the new Death on the Nile at a time when the theater should be largely empty.

* * *

Barb and I have now seen Death on the Nile (in an almost empty theater!) and we both found it a whipsawing experience. Kenneth Branagh’s version of Poirot is perfectly acceptable and often pays attention to detail courtesy of the Christie (and Suchet) characterizations; but he falls prey to an out-of-character attraction he has to a raucous blues singer, based on Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whose music is used throughout in a sometimes jarring way – where we should be getting a John Barry-esque score over the majestic Nile as backdrop to all this glitzy but murderous melodrama, we get guitar-driven blues (and a traditional soundtrack playing at a barely audible level, as if the theater left its Muzak going). I like guitar-driven blues, but as the soundtrack to Agatha Christie?

Kenneth Branagh in Death on the Nile

Though relatively faithful to Christie in general, the substitution of the blues singer and her manager/niece for the drunken romance novelist and her daughter seems at once forced modernity and a clumsy removal of a valid murder motive. A nice WW I origin story for Poirot and his mustache is followed by Poirot in 1937 going to a nightclub and sitting alone at a table watching over-choreographed lascivious dancing in quiet perverse contemplation – it’s a creepy sequence, turning the Belgian master detective into a raincoater in a porn-shop booth.

When the riverboat-board mystery kicks in, the cast proves less than star-studded (and filled, by accident of course, with cancelled or sort of cancelled celebrities of a few moments ago) though the direction is fine, save for circling cameras and other stunts during interrogation scenes that only detract from the importance of the information being gathered. When Branagh hews close to Christie, which he does about two-thirds of the time, his performance and the film itself are fine.

The biggest flaw is Gal Gadot playing the woman-stealing rich girl in a positive manner, not Lois Chile’s grasping, acquisitive proper murder victim of the superior 1978 version. And for all the emotion Branagh tries to stir up, no performance here touches ‘78’s Mia Farrow, the spurned woman of one of Dame Agatha’s most chillingly convoluted plots.

I’m glad to see Christie staying in the popular culture, although Covid and the mine field of who is cancelled by the time a film comes out has done this Poirot film no favors.

* * *

My discussion last week sparked quite a bit of response, after I revealed my negative opinion of a certain James Crumley first sentence, even while granting an I-hope-not-condescending-permission for others to like it. Some of those responses appeared in the previous Comments Section, but still others were sent to me by e-mail. One of the most interesting came in that fashion, and – with permission – I am sharing it here, so I can reply and perhaps have my response seen by more readers than if this had occurred in the Comments Section.

The following is excerpted from a missive courtesy of a reader who wishes to remain anonymous:

“Your blog is your house. I think good discourse is important, but I also respect your site as your medium to transmit your message. No need to raise Cain in another man’s world. That said, I do like the Crumley line and state it here, privately. (NOTE FROM MAC: Privately until I got hold of it.)

“Perhaps it’s because, when my Dad was in the creative writing program in Montana, he met and drank with Jim (called some of his work mediocre too…you might have liked that!). Maybe it was the many ‘ramshackle joints’ like that one described that my Dad dragged us to as kids. Maybe it is because my college roommate was from Sonoma, who had an alcoholic father that just might have drank in the same bar. Maybe it is because I have never thought about a bulldog that was an alcoholic, much less an owner who would give him such a big name as ‘Fireball Roberts.’ Those all play, I’m sure, and made me want to know more. But, having lived on the Gulf Coast in my young adulthood, I know what it is like to ‘drink the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.’ Maybe you can’t go back, but that sentence fragment brought me there for a short moment.”

My anonymous correspondent has made – or anyway implied – a point that I tried to make last time. It’s part of the overall concept of the reader as collaborator. I’ve discussed that my propensity for providing what some think is over-description (of clothing, or setting, etc.), and have tried to explain that this comes from my desire to be the in-charge half of the collaborative team.

First, I would like the reader to experience what I imagined, what I conjured, as close to the way I did. Second, I don’t think it should be the reader’s responsibility to do the writer’s work. Why should you have to clothe the damn characters? Why should they be allowed to run naked through the pages, unless it’s a sex scene or set in a nudist colony? Why should you have to describe the circumstances of where these fictional people live and put the flesh on the bones the stingy writer did not deign to provide?

Now I say this specifically in regard to my work. I don’t propose it as a schematic, or “rules,” other writers should follow. This approach reflects, as it has no choice other than to do, my way of seeing things. In the comments, one reader agreed with me about the overwriting in the Crumley line, then started quoting Elmore Leonard’s rules, most of which I disagree with…for me, not for Leonard. He was excellent at following his own rules and came up with something special…and his. I was a fan of Charles Webb, the little-known author of The Graduate, and he was the stingiest writer I ever encountered – he gave you nothing but the action and words of the piece, which may be why his famous novel became an even more famous movie…it was already almost a screenplay.

My anonymous correspondent’s comments about his dad, and the way his father related to bars and drinking (I am almost a non-drinker, despite the mimosa I had this morning), are him bringing himself to the party. He can’t help doing that any more than I can avoid bringing my opinions and personal history to the party. And neither of us should try otherwise. That’s where the collaboration between writer and reader becomes interesting.

It’s also why you can love a writer, and recommend that writer to a perfectly intelligent friend, and then have your own intelligence questioned by that friend because of your terrible taste in books. (This obviously also applies to movies and music.) That is why all reviews – mine included (see Death on the Nile above) – are essentially worthless…because none of us have the same experience when we read a book (or see a movie or listen to music).

You can tell somebody a book is great, but the truth is the version that person experiences will be at least somewhat different from yours, and probably a whole lot different. I have spent my life dueling with people who don’t like Mickey Spillane. I have very little respect for their intelligence. And they have very little respect for mine. Neither of us is wrong, at least not entirely.

The one area where I would disagree with my anonymous correspondent is a style issue. I don’t object to any of the things Crumley jams into the sentence (well, I think “Fireball Roberts” is a terminally cute name for a bulldog, and Abraham Trahearne is almost as bad for a human), it’s just the show-offy way he goes about it. It’s impossible (or difficult) (or maybe I’m just slow) to chug-a-lug all that one sentence’s information.

What I do like about that line is that it provides information even as it raises questions – that’s how many, perhaps most, good first sentences succeed. A good first sentence doesn’t require you to read it more than once to make sense of it, to process it, unless you think it’s a bad idea to pull your reader down immediately into the narrative and make forward progress.

This is a first sentence that I much admire:

“Later that summer, when Mrs. Penmark looked back and remembered, when she was caught up in despair so deep she knew there was no way out, no solution whatever for the circumstances that encompassed her, it seemed to her that June 7th, the day of the Fern Grammar School picnic, was the day of her last happiness, for never since then had she known contentment or felt peace.”

That’s plenty long, but you are right with it, and solid facts accompany cascading questions. It’s the first sentence of The Bad Seed by William March, and you can have your drunken bulldogs named Fireball What’s-It.

* * *

I can’t resist reprinting this great review of Tough Tender from Booklist.

Tough Tender.
By Max Allan Collins
Mar. 2022. Hard Case Crime, paper, $12.95 (9781789091434)

Collins’ Nolan series, starring the no-nonsense thief Nolan and his younger partner, comics crazed Jon, was written from the sixties into the eighties, but it had been largely unavailable for decades, until Hard Case Crime began reissuing the series as twofers under new titles. This is the third in that sequence, following Two for the Money (2021), and it combines Hard Cash and Scratch Fever. Nolan has no interest in robbing the same bank twice, but he’s blackmailed into doing so by the bank manager, who wants a share of the take this time. Naturally, it all goes crazy wrong. Scratch Fever picks up the story years later when Nolan and Jon encounter hairstylist-turned-entrepreneur Julie, who scammed them on the bank deal. Naturally, they’d like to get their money back, and just as naturally, Julie would like to get rid of them altogether. Collins displays his usual ability to round out the flat edges of what seem initially like stock genre characters, but he really outdoes himself with Julie, surely one of the most memorable femme fatales in hard-boiled fiction (“everything she touches turns to dead”).
— Bill Ott

And here is (incredibly enough) a really nice review of Double Down, another Nolan two-fer, from Kirkus.

Nolan also gets love at http://thebadnet.blogspot.com/, which gives me great pleasure, as it’s a site devoted to Lee Van Cleef. Scroll down when you get there (linger over the naked blonde if you like).

Finally, Road to Perdition gets a spot on this list of Best 21 books about the Mafia.

M.A.C.

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Barb’s Mom and Writing From Experience

Tuesday, May 11th, 2021

Barb’s mother passed away last week. I mention this not to initiate a flood of condolence wishes, which since Barb does not use Facebook might fall on deaf ears anyway. Dorothy Carolyn Jensen Mull was 97 and had endured a long bedridden convalescence, although saying Dot’s passing was a “blessing” in a way does not make it any easier for Barb and her six siblings.

I mention it here because Dorothy deserves thanks and recognition for inspiring, to a degree, the character Vivian Borne in the Antiques cozy mystery series that Barb and I write. This is not to say that Dot was a zany eccentric or a local theater diva – neither was the case. But she was highly spirited and for a number of years went antiquing with Barb from this flea market to that garage sale. This led to Barb and her mom running a booth at an antiques mall together for a good number of years, which was a major inspiration for the book series.

And I am happy to say that Dot enjoyed the Trash ‘n’ Treasures mysteries, which in her later years (with her eyesight failing) were read to her by Barb’s sister Anne.

I go into this in part because it speaks to Barb’s methods and mine where it comes to writing fiction. Though we work in a genre with its own conventions and (to use the tiresome current favorite term) tropes, we both instill elements from our own experience in our storytelling. The psychologist character in the Antiques books draws from Barb’s sister Cindi, yes, a psychologist. Barb has an older sister just as Brandy Borne does, although past a few superficial similarities the resemblance ends there. She also has a sister, Kathe, whose work in Broadway theater impacted our novel, Antiques Con. My brother-in-law Gary inspired a friend of Quarry’s who has somehow managed not to get killed, either in real life or fiction.

This kind of thing goes back to the earliest days of my career, when I was first able to inject elements of my real life into my crime-fiction fantasy. Mourn the Living had an Iowa City setting and reflected the hippie era there when I was in college. Bait Money finds Nolan and Jon robbing the bank where Barb was working at the time; she provided me with their security protocols!

Even in writing historical fiction I draw upon my own experiences. I wouldn’t have written The Titanic Murders if I hadn’t read in grade school a Tab book club edition of Jacque Futrelle’s The Thinking Machine. Getting betrayed by my best friend from high school (who embezzled from me) played a part in any number of my novels in the last twenty years, including Quarry’s Ex, which also drew upon my experiences making indie movies.

Anyway, it’s a lesson aspiring writers in any genre should take to heart. Don’t just write out of the books you’ve read and movies and TV you’ve seen. Draw on your experiences even in the context of mystery fiction or s-f or westerns or…really, any genre.

And one last thing – thank you, Dorothy. You inspired me, through your daughter and your own unique spirit.

* * *
Scarface and the Untouchable Cover

Scarface and the Untouchable – the Capone/Ness non-fiction work by Brad Schwartz and me – hit the entertainment news last week. CBS is exercising their option to pick up the property for a series and it’s going to Showtime. We’ll see if it happens.

Read about it here, where you’ll discover my middle name is “Allen” and that apparently no one but me (and you) remembers that this all began with The Untouchables TV series starring Robert Stack.

* * *

Barb and I went to a movie at the local theater for the first time since the pandemic hit – something like fourteen months. We are, as you may be aware, frequent moviegoers and it was definitely strange to be back doing something so familiar after over a year and a half away from it. The theater did a good job with every other row blocked off and masks in the outer areas. We went at an off-time (3:30 pm on a Sunday) and were among perhaps seven other moviegoers.

The film was terrific – Wrath of Man, starring Jason Stratham and directed by Guy Ritchie. I like Ritchie’s films very much – he is essentially the UK’s Tarantino. It’s a very hardboiled crime story and not for the faint of heart (or the five year-old whose parents took her to this screening), minus the humor and quick cutting of most Ritchie films. This has more of a Richard Stark feel than the Parker film Stratham starred in a few years ago.

* * *

Here’s a wonderful review of Shoot-out at Sugar Creek, the new Caleb York.

And another.

Jeez, maybe you guys ought to read this one.

M.A.C.

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