Prose fiction

Flummery of a Fine Sort: The Nero Wolfe Tales of Rex Stout

December 8, 2011
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Flummery of a Fine Sort: The Nero Wolfe Tales of Rex Stout

The Nero Wolfe detective story series of Rex Stout (1886-1975) is, deservedly, one of the most famous American contributions to the genre. Wolfe is a classic genius detective, modelled in part, perhaps, upon Mycroft Holmes, the brilliant, corpulent elder brother of Sherlock. He is a man of strong views and has decided ideas of the sort of life he wants to live. While often an insightful observer of human beings and not exactly a misanthrope, he, unlike Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple, for example, has little natural interest in people. But what a character, and what stories! . . .

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New Novel by Noir Master Cain Discovered

September 22, 2011
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New Novel by Noir Master Cain Discovered

James M. Cain, a prominent crime-fiction novelist in the 1920s and ’30s,  is enjoying a bit of a revival these days, thanks largely to the recent HBO miniseries based on his novel Mildred Pierce. The interest in Cain and his writings may soon increase, as a previously unpublished novel, The Cocktail Waitress, of his has been discovered and will be published next year by Hard Case Crime. There may well be good reasons that this manuscript disappeared and was not published (meaning, poor quality), but then again the may well have been truly an accident and this novel a real addition to his list of accomplishments. We shall have to read it to find out. Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai is quoted in USA Today as considering the book to be an important find, as one might expect: “For fans of the genre, The Cocktail Waitress is the Holy Grail. It’s like finding a lost manuscript by Hemingway or a lost score by Gershwin – that’s how big a deal this is,” said Charles Ardai, founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, a line of mystery novels published by Titan books, in a statement. Cain was a very skilled

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Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction (Part 2)

August 11, 2011
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Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction (Part 2)

Clearly the sophisticated and genteel milieus found in the detective novels of Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham could not have been much better designed by deliberate intent to grate on Chandler’s class-sensitive nerves. The testy hardboiled author felt much differently, however, about the plainer mystery fare offered by Freeman Wills Crofts and, especially, R. Austin Freeman. Even in “Simple Art” Chandler praised Crofts, best known for his methodical tales of patient criminal investigation and determined alibi busting, as “the soundest builder of them all when he doesn’t get too fancy”; and in his correspondence Chandler admitted that he knew Crofts’ work (and Freeman’s) “very well.”

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‘The Amateur Detective Just Won’t Do’—Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction

August 10, 2011
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‘The Amateur Detective Just Won’t Do’—Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction

The brilliant British-raised U.S. detective writer Chandler was infected with a disease that knows no borders: class envy. But he was no socialist. Part 1 of 2 By Curt Evans Reading Englishman Nicholas Blake’s mystery novel The Beast Must Die (1938) for the first time in 1950, the great American hardboiled detective novelist Raymond Chandler was moved to comment (in a letter to future mystery critic James Sandoe) on his disappointment with the tale.  Chandler wrote that he initially had found the story “damn good and extremely well written.”  He went on to lament, however, the “devastating effect” on the tale “of the entrance of the detective, Nigel Strangeways, an amateur with wife tagging along.” Chandler conceded that the “private eye”– the type of detective associated most prominently with his own work (and that of his contemporary Dashiell Hammett)–”admittedly is an exaggeration—a fantasy.”  Nevertheless, he asserted of the private eye that “at least he’s an exaggeration of the possible.”  Contrarily, Chandler declared, the “amateur gentleman who outthinks Scotland Yard is just plain silly.”  In fictional mystery, Chandler concluded peremptorily, “the amateur detective just won’t do.” Raymond Chandler’s most famous (or notorious) expression of hostile views toward British detective fiction is found

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The Polished Menace of Eric Ambler

August 3, 2011
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The Polished Menace of Eric Ambler

By Shmuel Ben-Gad Spy stories are, at least sometimes, a secular equivalent of ghost stories, tales of mysterious menace. (Note that spies are sometimes referred to as spooks.) Eric Ambler (1909-1998) is unquestionably one of the best writers of spy stories in English. His stories are filled with mystery and menace and are distinguished by an air of realism, sophisticated plots, and polished prose. Ambler’s first tales appeared in the 1930s, and they reflect the tensions of European politics of the time. Ambler was then sympathetic to socialism, which is reflected in his stories of this period. The hero in two of his books, Background to Danger (1937, also published as Uncommon Danger) and Cause for Alarm (1938), is Zaleshoff, a Soviet agent. In an interview in the Times of London, Amber said, “Before the war I was very much an anti-Fascist writer, and after August 1939 and the Nazi-Soviet pact I`d really lost my subject matter. I was of the Thirties, and long after the tears had been wiped away there was still a sense of loss, a loss of belief.” Nonetheless, one of his major themes at this point was non-ideological and even anti-ideological: an ordinary Englishman visiting

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‘The Days of Laméch’ — A Preview

July 29, 2011
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‘The Days of Laméch’ — A Preview

For an idea of how extensive, comprehensive, and just plain fascinating Jon Saboe’s latest novel, The Days of Laméch, is, read the following chapter headnotes: Chapter 1: Abduction “The irony of what brought about the end of the Family Wars was the realization that the abhorrent dehumanization inherent in those wars would be replaced by a surreptitious scheme to redefine humanity itself.” Chapter 2: Discovery “The savaged, broken masses who survived the Family Wars welcomed the civilizing philosophies of the Semyaz as a drowning man welcomes air. It required subsequent generations who had never known the horrors of war to realize that the Semyaz were patiently engineering their own pervasive and furtive agenda.” Chapter 3: Curse “Until the advent of Aenoch’s city design, establishing settlements was always fraught with the difficulties of holding the ever-encroaching growth of the thick forests that blanketed the planet at bay. By laying a marble foundation that rested upon the invariably soft soils and erecting surrounding walls which separated societies from the elements, large cities and centers of commerce were finally able to flourish.” Chapter 4: Research “For centuries, the Librarian class provided the repository of all human knowledge and culture. However, as inscribing became

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Book Review: ‘Voyage of the Mind Carriers’

July 20, 2011
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Book Review: ‘Voyage of the Mind Carriers’

By Mike Gray Voyage of the Mind Carriers — By Gary Wolf — iUniverse — 2011 — Philosophical science fiction novel — Trade paperback: xv + map + 189 pages — ISBN: 978-1-4620-0433-1. Gary Wolf doesn’t write conventional fiction, and more so for his science fiction. He may occasionally use a common SF trope, but you can bet he’ll put his own unique spin on it. You almost never know where his stories will go. Wolf’s science fiction trenchantly explores the same territory that many “crime fiction” and SF authors only rarely and tangentially venture into with their works: the contested battleground of culture, the professed — and often hypocritical — acceptance of certain norms, and the cognitive dissonances that result from these clashes. In short, Gary Wolf could be unique in specializing in what might be termed “cultural science fiction.” In Voyage of the Mind Carriers, the main character is a police detective (who once spent some time in a sanitarium) trying to solve a murder (and another one later on) while dealing with his adolescent daughter’s teen angst; he’s fallen in love with one of his best suspects; and he’s come to seriously doubt his own place in

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Nineteen Fifty-One Was a Pretty Good Year for Sci-Fi Movies: The Sequel

July 11, 2011
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Nineteen Fifty-One Was a Pretty Good Year for Sci-Fi Movies: The Sequel

By Mike Gray (4) The Day the Earth Stood Still — U.S. release: September 1951 — 20th Century-Fox Studios — Runtime: 92 minutes — Cast: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray, Frances Bavier, Lock Martin (as Gort), Elmer Davis (uncredited), Gabriel Heatter (uncredited), Drew Pearson (uncredited), Lawrence Dobkin (uncredited), James Dean (uncredited), Roy Engel (uncredited), Harry Lauter (uncredited), Olan Soule (uncredited), Stuart Whitman (uncredited). I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is

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Nineteen Fifty-One Was a Pretty Good Year for Sci-Fi Movies

July 9, 2011
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Nineteen Fifty-One Was a Pretty Good Year for Sci-Fi Movies

By Mike Gray Sixty years ago: The world has just lurched past the middle of the 20th century. There is both a cold war being waged between the two major power blocs on the planet — the Communist sphere of influence stage-managed by Soviet Russia and “the West” led by the United States — and a hot war (a “police action” they call it … seriously?) being fought on the Korean Peninsula, with an unpredictable Red China right next door. General MacArthur has drafted plans to drop atomic bombs on Korea and China — and even Russia — if the situation should get that far out of hand. Ten thousand miles away rumors of Communist infiltration into the highest levels of American government (proven true five decades later) have the nation in “the grip” of what the Liberal-Progressive commentariat of the time dismisses as a baseless “Red Scare.” (Even today the Lib-Progs’ caricature of history — that people suspected there were “Commies under every bed” — is still with us. For confirmation, watch just about any episode of M*A*S*H.) Like the word “nice,” the term “paranoia” has lost its original meaning through overuse and misapplication. In 1951 — and even

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‘West Oversea’ Book Trailer Available

July 7, 2011
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‘West Oversea’ Book Trailer Available

The American Culture stalwart Lars Walker, author of several acclaimed novels about Viking life, has produced a video trailer for his book West Oversea, and the video is quite interesting and entertaining in itself: Additional information about West Oversea is available here.

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Book Review: ‘Valentino: Film Detective’

July 6, 2011
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Book Review: ‘Valentino: Film Detective’

By Mike Gray Valentino: Film Detective — By Loren D. Estleman — Crippen & Landru Publishers — 2011 — Trade paperback: 210 pages — Short story collection: 14 stories — ISBN: 978-1-932009-96-5. He dreamed he was riding in a beer truck with a pistol under his arm. The cases in the back contained reels of film, not beer. He was bootlegging them across the border between the past and the present, and Father Time was waiting for him at a roadblock with a tommygun that ticked like a clock when he squeezed the trigger. Valentino is a die-hard classic movie fanatic who through no coincidence works at UCLA’s Film Preservation Department searching for, compiling, and restoring old films. Occasionally a movie thought to be “lost” turns up (possibly as many as 90 percent of all motion pictures made before nitrate film was phased out are considered irretrievably lost); when that happens, Valentino soars into the stratosphere (both literally and figuratively) in his worldwide hunt for rare films. But sometimes his elation is checked by having to deal with the owners of these “lost” treasures, and that’s when it gets really interesting. (“Interesting” as in the Chinese curse: “May you live

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Quote of the Day: Poe on the Ideal Story

July 1, 2011
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Quote of the Day: Poe on the Ideal Story

File this one under “Easier Said Than Done”: A skillful artist has constructed a tale. He has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents, but having deliberately conceived a certain single effect to be wrought, he then invents such incidents, he then combines such events, and discusses them in such tone as may best serve him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very first sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then in his very first step has he committed a blunder. In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale, its thesis, has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed — an end absolutely demanded, yet, in the novel altogether unattainable. — Edgar Allan Poe, “Tale-Writing — Nathaniel Hawthorne”, Godey’s Lady’s Book, November 1847

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
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