From Ed Gorman's Desk: "City That Never Sleeps"

 

from ED GORMAN’S Desk

City That Never Sleeps from Nov. 16, 2009  directed by JOHN H. AUER / written by STEVE FISHER / starring: GIG YOUNG, MALA POWERS, WILLIAM TALMAN, EDWARD ARNOLD, CHILL WILLS, and MARIE WINDSOR Last night we watched a fierce little B+ movie called City That Never Sleeps (1953). This was one of the films Herbert Yates hoped would convince Hollywood and distributors alike that Republic Pictures could produce more than programmers. The days when Gene Autry and Roy Rogers brought in millions were over. TV now gave away cowboys and old serials free.      After it was over I went to IMDb to see what some others thought of it. Thirty-one people posted opinions and nearly all of them mentioned two things—how “odd” the movie was and how wrong Chill Wills was for it.      Gig Young plays Johnny Kelly, a Chicago street cop who is cheating on his wife with Mala Powers. Their plan is to run away together. But Johnny’s father, a detective on the force, senses something wrong and pleads with him to talk about it. But Johnny won’t. Johnny needs money. He hates being broke all the time and he also hates the fact that his wife Paula makes more money than he does. He goes to a crooked lawyer, Biddell played by Edward Arnold. Arnold offers him five grand to interrupt a robbery that will take place later that night, a robbery done by one of his most trusted men, Stewart, the actor William Tallman. But there’s something about the set-up Johnny doesn’t like and he starts to walk. Then Biddell coyly mentions that Johnny’s young brother will be in on the heist, too. If Johnny wants to protect him, he’d better be there. Everything is now set in motion.      The screenplay is generally excellent but because it’s by Steve Fisher (a writer I like) it has to have a few mandatory moments of treacle and at least one weird narrative trick. The trick here is having Chill Wills (who in God’s name cast him?) do the voice over as the soul of the city or somesuch. We’re panning parts of old Chicago and Wills is intoning all the pulp cliches about cities (Tonight there will be death in the streets and birth in the hospitals, etc.) and then—Wills shows up as Johnny’s squad car partner for the night where he continues to pontificate, mostly about what swell guys cops are.      The direction by John H. Auer and the cinematography John L. Russell are excellent. This is a noir in the classical sense. Mala Powers is very good and William Tallman, a cunning and convincing actor who never got his due, makes an unsettling villain. When he goes crazy you buy every second of it.      As I watched it, I thought about Gig Young. Just about everything I’ve read about him noted that beneath the droll charm there was great anger and bitterness. He lived in the bottle. But in this role he got to drop all the bullshit. Here he is much closer to the Gig Young his biographers portrayed—bitter, self-pitying, confused, afraid.      By movie’s end I realized that even though he’d won the Academy Award (best supporting) for his too-flamboyant depiction of the dance marathon conductor [in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They], he’d been miscast. He should have played the lead. I’ve always thought that They Shoot Horses, Don’t They was a miserable film. Jane Fonda was too slick and showy, Michael Sarrazin dull and useless. Young could still have done it back then. He would have brought real neurotic depth to the drifter who takes up with Gloria. His performance in City That Never Sleeps show that.      A fine little movie. Not perfect but passionate and memorable.      And by the way, there was another piece of miscasting [in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They]. Instead of Bonnie Bedelia being fourth billed, she should have had Jane Fonda’s part. Bonnie Bedelia has been there. Click here to purchase the Blu-ray or here to purchase the DVD on Amazon. This article originally appeared on Ed Gorman’s blog, New Improved Gorman, on Nov. 29, 2009. It is reprinted here by permission. Ed wrote dozens of novels in a variety of genres, but his most popular work (and my favorite of his work) was in the crime and western genres. His ten Sam McCain mysteries—set in the fictional Iowa town of Black River Falls during the 1950s, ’60, and ’70s—are suspenseful, mysterious, and often funny excursions into small town America. The New York Times called Sam McCain, “The kind of hero any small town could take to its heart” and The Seattle Times called McCain “an intriguing mix of knight errant and realist…”      But Ed was also a tireless reader and promoter of other writers’ work. His blogs—there were three, none of them operating at the same time—are treasure troves for readers of crime, horror, and western fiction both old and new. Ed died Oct. 14, 2016. Click here to check out Ed Gorman’s Sam McCain novels on Amazon.

Review: "Pretty Girl Gone" by David Housewright

 

Pretty Girl Gone
by David Housewright
Minotaur Books, 2006

 

 

Pretty Girl Gone, David Housewright’s entertaining third Rushmore McKenzie mystery, finds McKenzie doing a favor for his old high school friend, Lindsay Barrett. Lindsay’s husband, Jack, is the newly elected governor of Minnesota. Lindsay panics when she receives an unsigned email warning her that if Jack runs for the U.S. Senate, he will be exposed for murdering his high school sweetheart, Elizabeth Rogers.
     Jack was a basketball star—he led his tiny high school team, known as the Minnesota Seven, to a state championship during his senior year—and Elizabeth was the most beautiful girl in school. The night before the championship game, Elizabeth was found strangled to death and her murder was never solved. Lindsay asks McKenzie to find who sent the email. He quickly tracks the IP address, from where the email originated, to a copy and print store in Victoria, Minnesota. When McKenzie arrives in the small town, he is stonewalled by pretty much everyone, except for the sexy interim police chief, Danny Mallinger. Along the way McKenzie decides he needs to solve the decades old murder to fulfill his promise to Lindsay.
     Pretty Girl Gone is a captivating tale loaded with duplicity, doubt, cunning—not necessarily McKenzie’s—red-herrings, bad decisions—mostly McKenzie’s—and enough action and mystery to keep almost every reader satisfied. Housewright adeptly explores the issues of race and racism in the form of immigration discontent without losing sight of the primary mystery. The setting, as always in this series, is bright and central to the narrative; this time giving the reader an experience with a bleak winter in smalltown Minnesota. McKenzie is a smart-aleck, tough, often rash, and always fallible, which gives him just the right mix for reader likability. Pretty Girl Gone is a solid entry in the series, which begs for the reader to find the next McKenzie book.

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback at Amazon.

Magnum P.I.'s Roger E. Mosley (June 5, 1983)

 

This nice profile of Roger E. Mosley (1938 – 2022) appeared in the June 5, 1983, issue of the Salt Lake Tribune. By every account I have read—and this piece continues that trend—Mosley was a terrific guy. I know I liked his portrayal of Theodore Calvin (T. C.) in the original Magnum, P.I. Click the image for a larger view.

Review: "The Summons" by Peter Lovesey

 

The Summons
by Peter Lovesey
Soho Crime, 2004

 

Peter Lovesey’s third Peter Diamond detective novel, The Summons—originally published in 1995 by Mysterious Press—is a first-rate, inventive, traditional mystery with a credible cast of suspects set in the lovely tourist town of Bath, England. Peter Diamond, formerly Superintendent Diamond of the Bath Constabulary, is living a humdrum life with his wife in a squalid basement apartment in London after quitting his job leading Bath’s murder squad. Diamond works part time recovering shopping carts from a grocery store parking lot and money is something he vaguely remembers from when he had a proper salary. Things are bad enough that he is considering a job baring his considerable girth as a nude model for extra dosh.
     Diamond’s mostly quiet desperation is unsettled when a pair of Bath police officers arrive at his door demanding he return to Bath with them. They give him little incentive since they don’t give him a whiff at the why except it concerns his nemesis, Assistant Chief Constable Tott. When he gets on site, he learns Tott’s daughter has been kidnapped by an escaped convict Diamond put away for murdering a Swedish journalist four years earlier. The convict proclaims his innocence and demands Diamond review the investigation again before he will return Tott’s daughter.
     The Summons is a marvelously entertaining murder mystery with enough action to keep the narrative lively, including some gunplay and real risk to Diamond’s health, and more than enough detection to satisfy even the snobbiest reader. And most unpretentiousness readers, too, including a dolt like me. Diamond is a rare treat: self-absorbed (but trying to be better), anti-technology, clever, and funny. The supporting cast are an eclectic bunch of oddballs—a crowd of hippies called “crusties” squatting around town—eccentrics, an obese photographer-turned-baker, stiff-upper-lip-types, millionaires (at least one), and braggarts. Diamond is a bloodhound as he questions his original investigation and then pursues the killer against what appears to be his own best interest. And the denouement is a blissful surprise, and even better, a surprise that makes perfect sense.

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the audiobook at Amazon.

Reading Roundup: March 2024

Over the past few years I abandoned using notebooks to keep track of the books I read in favor of Goodreads. A practice that came about out of laziness more than anything else, but this year, I’m back with pen and paper. Along with the change, I decided to try—at least this month—sharing my reading list.
     I track the books—fiction and non-fiction—and individual short stories I finish. Those I don’t finish don’t get recorded. In March there were two novels I chose not to finish, which is more than normal for a single month. My DNF’s were Free Fall, by Robert Crais (1993)—I was simply bored with it at the halfway mark—and Night Detectives, by Jon Talton (2013), because I felt grouchy and it didn’t catch my interest in the first few dozen pages.
     The books I read—seven in total—were all fiction and six were squarely within the mystery genre. I read an astonishing three Rushmore McKenzie novels by David Housewright: Pretty Girl Gone (2006), Madman on a Drum (2008), and The Taking of Libbie, SD (2010). All three were terrific, my favorite being Madman on a Drum. You can expect to see reviews of these three in coming weeks. My favorite book was Rusty Barnes’s Half Crime (2024), which is an excellent collection of dark tales that I reviewed here, and my least favorite was The Bastard, by John Jakes (1974). A word about The Bastard. The first half, or about 300 pages was marvelous, but the narrative dulled in the second half. It would have been a better book if it had been strategically but aggressively cut.

As for short stories, I read two—“One Eye Open”, by Jeremiah Healy (EQMM, Jul. 1989), and “I Bring Fresh Flowers”, by Robert F. Young (Amazing Stories, Feb. 1964)—and enjoyed both; however, I was a tad disappointed with the Healy story because it didn’t have the grab and thoughtful conclusion I expected from a John Francis Cuddy tale. Not to mention, I purchased the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, where it appeared, for no other reason than it had a Healy story inside. Well, that cover image of Lawrence Block didn’t hurt, either.
     So, without further ado, here is my reading list, from first to last in chronological order in my own hand, for March 2024:

 

So, dear reader, what do you think? Is this worth doing each month? 

Review: "Half Crime" by Rusty Barnes

 

Half Crime
by Rusty Barnes
Redneck Press, 2024

  

Rusty Barnes’s Half Crime collects nine original stories about small crimes, human frailties, and sorrow. The tales lean into noir with their bleak rural Pennsylvania settings, harsh portrayals of poverty, and protagonists (often pushed by circumstance) making a last bad decision. In “Bad Old Boy,” Crate Lang is trying to support his family working a low-paying blue-collar job, but a batch of medical bills sends him looking for an extra payday. He approaches an old friend, Dexter Moore—a guy Lang used to run on the wrong side of the law with—looking for a one-time low-risk job. Dexter gives Lang a package to deliver in Syracuse, New York, but, of course, it goes wrong and Lang is on the hook with Dexter now, too.
     “Wish for Winter” tells the sorrowful story of Carl Stevenson. A milk truck driver living with an angry sister, and a girlfriend with a wandering eye. But everything gets worse for Carl after a hard night of drinking leads him into an accident while picking up a load of raw milk. “The Power of Positive Drinking” is about lost potential, fallible love, and drug addiction. It is parts sad, parts angering, and entirely thought-provoking. “Ampersand” is the sweetest tale in the collection with an ending somewhere damn close to happy. Jared’s wife left with their daughters, but things begin to change when he is set-up with Ellie. And it just keeps getting better and better, in that low-key realistic way it happens in our own live action world.
     The stories in Half Crime can be difficult to read—they are melancholy, realistic, and without an easy solution for the underlying cultural problems—but each is worthy of being read. This passage from “Bad Old Boy”—

“Opioid epidemic my ass, Crate thought. What it is is a pain epidemic, and no way for most people to deal with it.”

—aptly captures the essence of what Half Crime is about. A hopeless and decaying rural America self-medicating its ills with a slurry of addiction. Do yourself a favor and get Half Crime today. It is a collection with meaning. And yeah, it is literate and stylish, too.

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback at Amazon.

Review: "Tin City" by David Housewright

 Tin City
by David Housewright
Minotaur Books, 2005

 

Tin City is David Housewright’s excellent second mystery featuring unlicensed private eye Rushmore McKenzie. When asked, McKenzie readily agrees to help his late-father’s best friend, the beekeeper Mr. Mosley, investigate what is killing his bees. It seems like a simple favor, but McKenzie quickly changes his mind when the doctoral student he hired to collect and analyze samples around Mosely’s property, looking for bee-killing toxins, is shot at by Mosely’s new neighbor, Frank Crosetti. And things turn uglier when an execution-style murder upends McKenzie’s simple favor.
     It seems obvious Crosetti is the villain, but before McKenzie can confront him, Crosetti disappears. In a hurry, McKenzie discovers Frank Crosetti is a man without a past. In fact, his name is borrowed from a former New York Yankees shortstop. A hovering FBI agent and, as McKenzie keeps investigating, a warrant for his, McKenzie’s, arrest makes it appear Crosetti is being protected by the feds. To keep out of jail and in the hunt, McKenzie goes into hiding and follows the clues to a quiet suburban trailer park where the investigation heats up.
     Publishers Weekly said David Housewright, in Tin City, “[channels] Raymond Chandler with tongue-in-cheek humor,” which is an apt comparison because McKenzie is a sharp and witty observer with a wicked, smart-alecky tongue. His observations, which are more numerous in Tin City than the other books I’ve read so far, are brief and fit nicely into the story. My favorite of the lot, probably because I agree with it so much, is about libraries:     

“I’ve always loved libraries, the very idea of them. They’re citadels of peace and quiet and intellectual freedom and civilization—commodities that are becoming increasingly difficult to come by. They are, in a word, the most ‘democratic’ places on earth, although they’ve been finding it harder to remain that way.”

But Tin City isn’t a dry, preachy tome. There is plenty of action, fisticuffs and gunplay both. A solid mystery that is sensible and with enough surprises to keep it interesting. The Twin Cities, Minnesota, setting is a major player in the narrative and McKenzie makes certain it is known he is from St. Paul rather than Minneapolis. The plotting is concise and McKenzie, flaws, ego, and all, is a damn likable character. The sort of guy we—all of us juvenile-minded males—wish we could be.

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback at Amazon.