Lazy Sunday Service

Thank god for Joe Lansdale. His Vanilla Ride made sure I got through one the blackest weeks in Irish history with a smile on my face for at least some of the time. My only problem with the book was that I had to stop reading every now and again to let the cramp drop out of my grin muscles. Top quality stuff. Unfortunately, the week didn't end quite as I hoped. Four of my colleagues and friends retired from work. I was tasked with giving a small speech about one of them; someone who I've worked with closely for a number of years and is a very good friend. It started to go downhill the minute I was handed the microphone. It was if my head was plunged into a fishtank and I dropped into an odd parallel reality in which the room was slightly out of focus and muffled. I'd actually spent a bit of time composing a speech in which I said why he was a really great guy, what he'd achieved in his career, and why he'd be missed. My script wouldn't come into focus. Heaven knows what I did actually say. The first thing I did afterwards was apologise. Forty years service to have his leaving speech cocked up. I can quite happily stand in front of a 1,000 people and give an academic talk, but ask me to do a personal one and it all goes skew-whiff. Disaster results.

My posts this week
What's 'smart' about emigration
Key Thinkers on Space and Place
Global reading challenge update
Spiv and spin economics
Review of Faithless by Joyce Carol Oates
Household travel survey
Fifty words to kill your victim
Unfinished estates are not a problem after all?
Estates? What estates? There are no estates here ...
Review of I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane

Review of I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane (1947, E.P. Dutton)

When Jack Williams is discovered shot dead, the investigative cop Pat Chambers calls his acquaintance and Jack’s closest friend, private investigator, Mike Hammer. Jack took a Japanese bayonet, losing his arm, to save Hammer. Angry at Jack’s death, Hammer vows to identify the killer ahead of the police and to exact fatal revenge. His starting point are the guests at a party at Jack’s apartment the night he died – Jack’s fiancée, a recovering dope addict, a beautiful psychiatrist, twin socialite sisters, a college student, and a mobster. But as he tracks them down, so too does the killer, and soon it’s not only Jack who is dead and Hammer is firmly in the killer’s sights.

In I, The Jury Spillane has the melodrama turned up to eleven, and from the sensibilities of the new century it’s a little difficult not to judge it with a Spinal Tap eye. This is hardboiled magnified with stereotype and caricature galore. Mike Hammer is a tough guy PI, oozing testosterone, with a short fuse, and a sense of conviction that he is the police, judge, jury and executioner. He’s Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, and Hammett’s Sam Spade, on steroids. Charlotte Manning is the femme fatale. And the other characters are straight off the peg. The story is told in a fairly workman like manner, with the pace kept up tempo and the dialogue snappy, though it’s difficult to imagine much of it actually being uttered by anyone except people playing caricatures. The plot is interesting enough, and it twists and turns, though it’s clear who the killer is from a long way out. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the book, but for me at least it didn’t live up to its billing as one of the classic reads of crime fiction (note, that’s not to say it wasn’t an important and influential book) and it’s not in the same league as Chandler, Hammett and James Cain. Overall, worth a read, but don’t expect your socks to be blown off.

Fifty words to kill your victim

'Fifty words to kill your victim' is an invitation by Margot to write a dribble (a 50 word story, a drabble being a 100 word story). I've had a go at two. Check out more over at Margot's Confessions of a Mystery Writer.


Inheritance

The two women stared down at the man in the bed, wired with tubes, a screen beeping.

‘I’ve been with him for ten years. We have the kids.’

‘And I’m still married to him. If someone accidentally presses this button,’ her hand hovered, ‘then everything is mine. C’est la vie.’

I'm not sure how well this one works. An experiment ...

Robbery

Strolling. Entering. Shopping. Loitering. Checking. Queuing. Staring. Blinking. Nodding. Threatening. Shouting. Gesticulating. Punching. Wrestling. Grabbing. Running. Gasping. Wheezing. Tripping. Falling. Cursing. Scrambling. Hobbling. Panting. Fumbling. Muttering. Opening. Sitting. Shutting. Starting. Accelerating. Relaxing. Grinning. Tuning. Humming. Tapping. Singing. Swerving. Turning. Skidding. Spinning. Flipping. Cartwheeling. Bouncing. Crashing. Bleeding. Laughing. Spluttering. Crying. Praying ...

Review of Faithless by Joyce Carol Oates from Best American Noir of the Century

Spinetingler Magazine has put together a set of reviews of all the short stories in Best American Noir of the Century edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, a collection of 39 stories (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). I was asked to write the review of Faithless by Joyce Carol Oates originally published in the winter 1997 issue of Kenyon Review. It was then selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 1998 and later served as the title story for her short story collection, Faithless: Tales of Transgression, published in 2001. You can read the review here and also check out the other reviews here.

Global Reading Challenge update

Rather than slavishly work towards the 2010 Global Reading Challenge, I thought I'd read as normal over the year and then see where I stood towards the end. The challenge was to read three books per continent. Below is where I stand at present. Basically, I'm missing Antarctica completely and I'm short of a South American book. I've actually got two DNF in that category, one of which I might go back to. So overall, not too bad; I might even manage to complete the challenge.


North America
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley (USA)
Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura (Cuba)
Dead I May Well Be by Adrian McKinty (USA/Mexico)

Europe
Via Delle Oche by Carlo Lucarelli (Italy)
Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Pers Wahloo (Sweden)
Brodeck's Report by Phillipe Claudel (France)

Australiasia
Dead Set by Kel Robertson (Australia)
Truth by Peter Temple (Australia)
Vodka Doesn't Freeze by Liah Giarrantano (Australia)

Asia
Shinjuku Shark by Arimasa Osawa (Japan)
Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett (Thailand)
The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Coterill (Laos)

Africa
A Deadly Trade by Michael Stanley (Botswana)
Instruments of Darkness by Robert Wlison (Benin)
Killer Country by Mike Nicols (South Africa)

South America
The Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (Brazil)
Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo (Argentina)

Key Thinkers on Space and Place

The second edition of Key Thinkers on Space and Place was published today. For some reason I thought that doing a second edition would be less work than the original. I failed to appreciate that the 52 original chapters would all have to revised and re-edited as if they were new entries as well as the 14 new chapters (the length of an ordinary edited book) shepparded through the process. It comes in at 510 pages (a quarter of million words). At 27 quid/52 dollars it's a bargain (honestly)!

Lazy Sunday Service

The reading on Friday seemed to go okay. It's only the second one I've done, I'm not really sure the best way to approach them. I decided to read a few short pieces, rather than one longer one. I started with a couple of six worders, then moved to a drabble, then a short story, before reading the opening scenes of The Rule Book, The White Gallows and Ghostland. The short story I read was Undergrowth. The question that was most disconcerting was whether I had thought of trying to write something with some comedy in it, which was a fairly damning critique of Undergrowth, one of my Harry and Pete stories!

My posts this week:
Shanghai on Shannon
Review of Killer Country by Mike Nicols
Six worders
Postcards to NAMA
Review of Enough is Enough by Fintan O'Toole
Reading Room
Saturday snippet: Vanilla Ride by Joe Lansdale