Month: July 2005

I Am, I Said

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16_jpgAre you one of those people who can’t get enough of Neil Diamond? Cn5You know you are. I see you there, in your sequined shirt, working on your "Love on The Rocks" fanfic. Studio 360 did an entertaining segment on Super Diamond, a Neil Diamond tribute band. The segment focuses on a guy calling himself "Surreal Neil," but the best of the Diamond imitators is the unsung (pun intended) Kevin Hogan, aka  Fantastic Diamond. Please don’t ask me how I know that. Listen for yourself.

Nothing to Sneeze At

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In the LA Times Book Review today Eugen Webber, always on the dull edge, reviews Robert Parker’s COLD SERVICE and a bunch of other books that came out six months ago.  But I’ll give Eugen the benefit of the doubt and assume that the paper held his column until now. They should have kept on holding it.  The man’s reviews are cliche ridden and border on incoherent. Judge for yourself:

"Cold Service," the title of Robert B. Parker’s latest, refers to revenge, said to be a dish best served cold. Hot, cold or lukewarm, revenge is urgently called for, because Spenser’s buddy Hawk has been shot in the back and seriously injured by Ukrainian mobsters who crept into our country yearning to breathe free at someone else’s expense. Now the thugs and those behind their deviltries have to be punished. Not by agencies of the Law, which are as capricious as the Law itself, but by Hawk, once he recovers, aided and abetted by Spenser and the old gang. That alone will satisfy our friends, if not the lawbooks.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth someone or other. Vengeance is illegal, sayeth the Law: Society exacts it in hygienic, compassionate, politically correct ways. But Hawk is not convinced that murderous and greedy perps will be brought to book before they perp some more. In Hawk’s script, ruthless retribution for ruthless crimes is laconic and swift. Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan intellectual, described revenge as "a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought the law to weed it out." But Bacon was a corrupt casuist, and his thoughts do not impress Hawk. Nor Spenser either. Yet Spenser’s resolve is tested by Susan, his longtime ladylove, and their exchanges color Bacon’s argument.

Scragging Ukrainians and their allies may satisfy, but so do many trivial indulgences liable to raise our cholesterol level. Official justice, on the other hand, just like the wild variety, veers according to money, power, lies, deceptions and self-deceptions. Rancor reflects no higher moral imperative than legal or prudential prescriptions. Pending resolution of portentous questions, Spenser, Hawk and Susan will handle their quandaries deftly. Their high-velocity patter does not age. Violence is concise, alcoholic intake moderate, wrangling warmed by wit and smoothed by stimulants. Proof that Parker is near the top of his form, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Nothing to sneeze at? C’mon. Is this a joke? What’s next… "Elmore Leonard’s prose is nothing to shake a stick at?" "Michael Connelly once again sends Harry Bosch up a creek without a paddle?" "For Kinsey, this time finding the killer is like looking for a needle in the haystack." Doesn’t Eugen have an editor? The rest of his column is just as bad. He has this to say about George Pelecanos’ DRAMA CITY:

"Melodrama City" might be more to the point, but what matters is that Pelecanos is the foremost chronicler of our urban wastelands. His prose serves up vivid versions of them that we won’t find in tourist guides: drink, drugs, slaughter, random callousness, casual kindness, tuna sandwiches, sounds that currently pass for music and the rest.

These aren’t reviews. I’m not sure what the heck they are except, collectively, another dramatic example that it’s time to replace Eugen with a real mystery critic, someone with knowledge of the genre, who is respected in the field, and who can actually write coherently without resorting to cliches.

The LA Times doesn’t have to search any further than a few pages earlier in the same issue, where Dick Lochte reviews John Shannon’s latest Jack Liffey novel. Lochte’s knowledge and appreciation of the genre is deep. His opinions are respected. He’s also open to new authors who reinvigorate the mystery writing field with unconventional approaches to standard formulas. Dick is the guy who should be writing the mystery review column.

While I’m on the subject of the LATimes Book Review, would someone please tell them that readers don’t appreciate it when reviewers not only give away the entire plot of the book, but the surprise plot twists as well? That’s exactly what Jane Ciabattari does in her review of ENVY. I wasn’t planning on reading the book but still, thanks a lot, Jane.

Wasserman is gone, but the LATBR still sucks.

UPDATE (7-11-05) My brother Tod has a "conversation" with Eugen and Sarah Weinman considers Eugen as an example of how NOT to review books.

The Men With No Name

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Author Terrill Lee Lankford ruminates on the publishing biz over at Ed Gorman’s blog…and, as usual, he has lots of interesting things to say. Among them:

A LOT of mid-listers are going the name-change route because of the weird practice in many bookstores of ordering the same amount of an author’s next book as they SOLD of said author’s LAST book: not ordered, but actually sold. Since there are almost always returns – especially in a business that rewards you for NOT selling the merchandise – this is a law of diminishing results where the end number would almost always be zero if allowed to play out to the end. I know of many writers who are having to assume secret identities to hide from these old numbers. This is no longer a growth business for a certain kind of writer – mostly the new ones who have not had the time to establish themselves. I can easily see a time, in the not-too-distant future, where a writer’s career will have to consist of a string of two-book deals, all under different names to avoid the dreaded computer numbers.

I know a few of those authors, too, and it’s a strange predicament to be in.  In fact, a friend of mine was told by his editor that they’d be glad to publish another book in his mid-list series of detective novels, but not under his name… his name was dead. I thought that was a bizarre thing to say until yesterday, when I picked up James Reasoner’s blog post about an author who, back in the early 60s, wrote about the same detective, Mark Wonder, under two different names. But I doubt it was the for the same reasons my friend’s publisher wanted him to do it.

Of course, no discussion of the publishing business would be complete without mentioning Ben Affleck’s scrotum. Lankford has the latest reports from the field:

And Applegate is not the first Hollywood star to witness his racy humor, director Kevin Smith had to endure Affleck’s favorite prank – resting his scrotum on the back of the movie maker’s neck during breaks on the set of movie flop Jersey Girl.

Ben’s scrotum has a two-book deal with Bantam.

The Mystery of Mark Wonder

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Psycho I love this kind of stuff. James Reasoner stumbles onto an obscure private eye series , featuring the adventures of Mark Wonder, written by one writer but under two different names. Negative20of20a20nude

Author Warren Murphy sort of did the opposite… he wrote two book series featuring the same insurance investigator and his Asian girlfriend but gave the characters different names. One series was called DIGGER, the other was called TRACE, and they both became the basis for the TV series MURPHY’S LAW,  starring George Segal, which was my first staff job.

UPDATE (7-18-2005) James Reasoner’sliterary investigation into private eye Mark Wonder continues with another twist. This time the author is the same (Eric Thomas again) only now it’s the PI whose name changes. In STRIP FOR MURDER, Mark Wonder becomes Christopher Sly. Stripformurder

Dumb Career Moves

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Sharona I’ve been absorbed in all things MONK today… writing book #2, reading scripts for season #4, watching last night’s season #4 premiere, and catching up on some of the supplementary materials in the DVD boxed set of season 3.

And I’ve come to this c0nclusion. Bitty Schram leaving MONK is going to go Toma0down in history as one of the great dumb career moves, right up there with Tony Musante leaving TOMA, McLean Stevenson leaving MASH, Shelly Long leaving CHEERS, Valerie Harper leaving VALERIE, Wil Wheaton leaving STAR TREK, David Caruso leaving NYPD BLUE, Erica Eleniak leaving BAYWATCH, Herve Villachaize leaving FANTASY ISLAND, Redd Foxx leaving SANFORD AND SON, and George Lazenby walking away from James Bond, to name a few.

Self-Annointed Blog Royalty

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Screenwriter Paul Guyot, who recently launched his own blog, talks about the dangers of becoming, or getting too close to, the self-annointed blog royalty in the mystery community.

There are some people out there who have become such a dominant part of the blogosphere, especially within the mystery community, that they are literally defined by their blogs. Their blog presence is who they are. Without their blog they would be just another nameless, faceless part of the horde. And this kills them.  Because deep down, nobody wants to be just a blogger.  So, to compensate for this secret frustration, they immerse themselves in their blogs – becoming as well-known and prominent as they can be. And for the ones that attain this recognition they begin to believe they actually are special.

The mystery all those bloggers will be blogging about this week is which bloggers he’s talking about…

Animal House

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There were two stories in the LA Times today about sexual misconduct involving cops in the San Fernando Valley’s Devonshire division. In one case, two cops were nailed for getting blowjobs from strippers while on-duty and, in another,  a veteran officer was arrested for molesting boys in a youth program. 

In the first case, the wife of one of the cops wrangled a notorized confession from him that she later turned in to authorities after her husband beat her up.

"This case is unusual on multiple levels," said Deputy Chief Michael Berkow, head of the Professional Standards Bureau, which includes Internal Affairs. "It is unusual for officers to commit on-duty sexual misconduct. But even more unusual when a wife has her husband confess to sexual misconduct, has it notarized, keeps it an extensive time and then turns it over to us."

Tod on Rains on Rainbow Party

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My brother Tod reviews the controversial book RAINBOW PARTY in this month’s issue of Las Vegas City Life. 

The problem, however, is that Rainbow Party isn’t actually scandalous or graphic…In another time, Rainbow Party might have been a "very special" episode of "The Facts Of Life," replete with a nice moralizing sermon by Mrs. Garrett. It’s harmless in a disappointing way — there’s no sense of the very real pressures young people face regarding sexuality — but it is the controversy generated by the parents that is truly troubling, especially when one considers the ultimate message of the book: Practice abstinence. Of course, those cloistered and closed-minded enough to demand the book be banned have already spoken to this.