Happy Birthday!

I’m going to blow the four candles, my own trumpet, and cut the cake right away. 

The 3Cs completes four years this month. I’m not sure of the exact launch date because I deleted my first post some months ago. But I think it was August 24, 2009. It was a Monday, probably a rainy day. Since then I have removed numerous posts that didn’t quite fit in with the blog’s new identity, not that it has one. I narrowed down my interests to a few like books, films, and music, in the hope that a refined and redefined blog will have focus and garner more votes, honours, awards, laurels, and medals. It did more than that. It brought me in contact with a blog’s most important asset—other bloggers—most of whom are established writers or experts in literature, cinema, and music, and who have been gracious enough to visit this blog and comment with unerring regularity. Today, they're my blog friends and I’m richer for knowing them.

Over the past four years the 3Cs has accumulated 404 posts not counting the deletions, 2,066 comments that include my replies, and 176,306 visitors, hopefully, minus my own pageviews.

It has been a fun journey so far and I intend to go on for as long as there are books to be read, films to be watched, and music to be listened to.

I will leave you with that first post I wrote forty-eight months ago.

The beginning of a journey

Welcome to Chess, Comics & Crosswords! This blog is not going to be just about the 3Cs. It's going to go far beyond these happy pursuits. To give you a fair idea, it will traverse the spiritual and the mundane, in unequal measure, and everything else in between. It will convey news and views, stories and histories, verses and rhymes on topics that inspire, enliven, and even provoke. Hopefully, what you read will touch you, make you smile, even laugh, make you sad and angry, and exult... Maybe it will do nothing. Never mind, so long as you come here often—to read, reflect, and react.

From the Word file

All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards (1991)

Your mind’s playing tricks, Harry Devlin said to himself.
As he reached for the front door key, he could hear a woman laughing inside his flat.

A woman he can hear laughing inside him long after she is stabbed to death in a deserted alley and long after he begins a desperate hunt for her killer.

Lawyer Harry Devlin is the prime suspect in the murder of his beautiful wife, Liz, but it does not discourage him from going after Liverpool mobster Mick Coghlan whom he suspects of killing the woman he still loved.

Liz had left Harry for Mick. One day she leaves Mick and returns to Harry’s flat where she seeks temporary shelter from Mick.

Harry is bitter but not unforgiving. He welcomes Liz “back into his life” as he is still crazy about her and dreams of a new life together. The next day she is found dead.

The lawyer for “small time crooks, desperadoes and drunken losers,” as British lawyer and crime writer Frances Fyfield describes Harry Devlin in her introduction, drops everything and scours the lower side of Liverpool for the man who killed Liz.

Harry is not a professional sleuth but his dogged pursuit of the truth behind her mysterious death marks him out as a seasoned detective. His inquiries, often polite and respectful, and his investigations, fearless if reckless at times, reveal to him a side of Liz he’d never suspected.

Wouldn’t it have been better if you’d left it alone and moved on, Harry? You can't help asking as you read and experience his turmoil.

Martin Edwards is an award 
winning writer

British crime writer Martin Edwards has characterised Harry Devlin as a decent man, a people’s lawyer, and a caring, if estranged, husband, perhaps even as the victim in the story. On the other hand, Edwards has taken care not to paint Liz in poor light, regarding her as one misguided in her quest for the good life.

A bunch of oddball characters including friends and felons move in and out of Harry’s investigative path, none more appealing than his next door neighbour Brenda Rixton, an attractive woman with an unhappy past. She recognises Harry’s worth and lends more than a shoulder, helping him cope with the crisis without getting in his way.

All the Lonely People is Martin Edwards’ debut novel and the first in his acclaimed Harry Devlin series. It was nominated for the John Creasey Dagger for best first crime novel of the year. I liked his style of writing, which is devoid of complexity, and construction of the plot, where we move with Harry in every chapter. There are no sub-plots. Everything revolves around the Liverpool attorney. Edwards is simply saying, "This is Harry Devlin. He has a story to tell you," and it's riveting.

I hope to read some of the other novels in the series and find out how Harry Devlin’s widowed character develops.

Martin Edwards is also the author of another series, Lake District Mysteries, featuring DCI Hannah Scarlett and historian Daniel Kind. He has also written standalone novels, short stories, and non-fiction, and edited several anthologies. While he blogs on crime fiction at Do You Write Under Your Own Name? you can learn more about his books at his Website.

Recommended

‘Those were the days my friend’

I have published fewer posts this month because of my preoccupation with things which at this point seem more exciting than writing, like reading for the hundredth time all the Asterix and Tintin comics, watching standup comedies on YouTube and The Big Bang Theory, Mind Your Language, and reruns of Friends on television, and experimenting with my new tablet which has become something of an addiction. 

In between these pursuits I have been reading both books and ebooks, though at a slower pace, and listening to music. Hans Zimmer, REM, Peter Frampton, Richard Marx, and Tears for Fears are the current flavours. Next week it will be someone else.

Of the standup comedies I watched, two standups had me laughing all over the place. One was Jim Carrey's mimicking tribute to Clint Eastwood at the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1996 and the other was Ray Romano's parental jokes delivered at a show before Everybody Loves Raymond was beamed into our living rooms. Click on the links and have a good laugh.

Towards the end of his five-minute act, Romano tells us why, given a choice, he'd like to go back to being a three-year old rather than a teenager as most people want to. Apparently, one day he was driving his then three-year old daughter, Alexandra, when he caught her looking out of the car window for 15 minutes, “staring at nothing” in particular. When he asked “Ally” what she was dreaming about, she said, “Candy.” 

"Candy!" Romano cries out in his familiar nasal voice. Do adults ever sit back and dream about candy? What would the middle-aged version of thinking about candy be like? No spoilers. Again, open the link and see for yourself. To the uninitiated Everybody Loves Raymond was based on Ray Romano's life.

The candy of Ally's and our childhood reminded me of the simple pleasures I derived in my own. I came up with 10 things I enjoyed as a kid. Some of these are gone while others are still around, in new avatars that don't look or feel the same.

Rubik’s Cube was a challenge and a frustration at the same time. In spite of studying dozens of DIY booklets carefully, I never got it right. It would raise my blood pressure if I tried it today.

The Phantom cigarettes were the only ones I ‘smoked’ in all my life. They tasted good. I didn’t need nicotine patches to kick the habit. The ‘cigarettes’ simply vanished.

The jigsaw puzzle of the world map got me hooked into the atlas and finding out the capitals of various countries became a pleasant and an educative pastime. I find the atlas as engrossing as a murder mystery.

The Meccano set gave me the earliest indication that I wasn’t cut out for the construction or equipment industry. Everything fell apart. A few nuts and bolts would be missing each time I put away the set. I had better luck building a pyramid against a wall with a crisp, razor-edged stack of cards.

The jumble, which many Indian newspapers by an act of compassion still carry, was fun to solve. Grandparents were fond of it too. It used to appear in the Sunday papers and my English teacher in 7th standard (grade) got us to crack the jumble in his class first thing Monday morning. I used to top the class because I’d solve it over the weekend. He didn’t know that, of course.

What were the “candies” of your childhood or early teens? 

Note: The headline is a popular line from the sentimental song by Mary Hopkin.

Five overused words

On July 24, Allied Authors, one of Wisconsin's oldest writing collectives, published an interesting article on five overused words—Then, Also, And, Said, and Was—that "fledgling writers" like this blogger use more than necessary. The piece was written by David Michael Williams, a fantasy/sf writer and Allied Authors member. You can read it at Allied Authors or on the author's website where it first appeared on June 20, 2013.

Out of curiosity I checked the number of times I'd used the five words on this entire page. In 14 posts, not counting this one, I used "Then" 10 times, "Also" 12 times, "And" 308 times, "Said" 3 times, and "Was" 16 times. 

How many "times" does that make?!

A simple Ctrl+F tells me where I'd overused the words "Then" and "Also." I'm okay with the count for "And" as it appears almost everywhere including in words and terms like "Land," "Laurel and Hardy," "England," "Mandrake," and "Demanding." The numbers for "Said" and "Was" across 14 posts seem fair.

The next time I proofread my copy I'm going to keep a finger on "Delete" and ensure that I don't overuse it.

Vultures in the Sun by Brian Garfield (1987)

A replica of my copy of the book

They hired a town tamer named Ethan Scott, a coldly efficient gunfighter with a dark reputation. Everyone knew that some blood would be shed before there could be peace. The only question was, whose blood would it be?

Any writer who has authored more than seventy books including nonfiction requires no introduction. Like Brian Garfield (74) who has not only been a prolific writer but has also redefined the way fiction is written. He has brought a refreshing style to many popular fiction like western, thriller, espionage, and mystery. There is a perfect balance between his stories and characters. If you haven’t read his books yet then I suggest you should. Garfield is a very good writer.

Most readers identify the American novelist and screenwriter with the Death Wish series, his most prominent work, and Hopscotch, the Edgar Award winning spy thriller. There is nothing wrong with this. Every author is known for one or two major works. For instance, think Frederick Forsyth and you’re thinking The Day of the Jackal; think Kurt Vonnegut and you promptly mention Slaughterhouse Five; think John Irving and you tick off The World According to Garp; think Joseph Heller and you’re picturing Catch-22; think John le Carré and you remember The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; think Robert Ludlum and you point to the Bourne trilogy, and so on and so forth.

I consider Brian Garfield to be one of the finest writers of frontier fiction, for his westerns like Tripwire (1973) and Apache Canyon (1986), and Buchanan’s Gun (1968), his single contribution to the Tom Buchanan series created by William Ard, all of them under the pseudonym Jonas Ward. Lesser-known books usually draw my attention to an author’s work. While I haven’t read every book by Garfield, I can single out the Russia-centric suspense novels Kolchak’s Gold and The Romanov Succession (both 1974), which I have read, and The Paladin (1980), a WWII novel in my possession and waiting to be read. A lot of good things have been said about this novel.

Vultures in the Sun is one of Garfield’s latter-day westerns. At 149 pages, it tells the story of dreaded Arizona gunfighter Ethan Scott who is hired by the wealthy mine owners of Lodestar to eliminate a gang of outlaws led by Henry Dierkes who have been hijacking their monthly payrolls and ore shipments.

Guy Murvain and Tom Larabee, the two largest mine and land owners, stand to lose the most in the large town divided, down its middle, by the respectable and the seedy. While they hire Ethan Scott, they don’t bargain for his ways: the gunfighter, sporting a black moustache, deep-set eyes and two guns, stares at his opponents till they’re provoked into drawing first and dropping dead in the ensuing gunfight. The bodies soon pile up. Dierkes loses men but not the will to confront his old enemy.

Matters come to a head when Ethan Scott fires at Tom Larabee and breaks his gun arm in defence of his “friend” Krayle MacIver, owner of the largest saloon in Lodestar. Guy Murvain realises he might have bitten more than he can chew. He tries to tame the town tamer by demanding the gunman’s loyalty towards the mine owners, but in vain.

“No man can hire my loyalty. My loyalty is to myself alone. What you've paid for is not loyalty but the performance of a job—and I’m performing that job. Mr. Murvain, when I took the job it was with the understanding that I would clean up the district—my way.”

Ethan Scott cleans up Lodestar his way, in a style reminiscent of Tombstone, except he does it alone with both his guns blazing.

Most westerns have a predictable storyline; the difference lies in the way they’re told. Garfield is a past master at this. He weaves the all-too familiar plot into a tight narrative with an equal share of clean prose and dialogue that keeps the reader engaged from beginning to end. The description of the town of Lodestar and the hostile terrain of Peacock Gorge, the hideout of the toughs, an essential part of every western, is kept to a bare minimum.

The dialogue between the lead characters is straightforward. The characters, apart from Ethan Scott and the others, include Krayle MacIver, an old acquaintance who endears himself to the gunman; the beautiful Marla Searles, a partner in MacIver’s saloon and Scott’s former girl; Nita Matlock, who runs a café and MacIver’s love interest; and Sheriff Eugenio Castillo, who casts his lot with Henry Dierkes before fleeing the town. There is a quiet vulnerability about each of the unique characters, particularly Scott who much as he'd like to refuses to change his hard and impersonal existence, because the gun has made him what he is.

“I didn’t make the rules, Marla. But I've had to learn them.”

One of the milder westerns I've read in recent times, Vultures in the Sun is nonetheless a stark portrayal of hardened men in an unforgiving land called the frontier.

Reading Habits #1: 5 Questions

Q. How do you review a book? Do you take notes as you read the book and then review it? Or do you read the book first and then write about it from memory?
My answer: I don't take notes as I read because I don't know how to. The first and last time I tried I almost wrote down the entire book. I didn't know what to leave out. Taking down notes, for a book review or a newspaper report, is an art. I have better luck with the latter.

Q. Do you jump descriptions of places and landscapes and read just the operative part?
My answer  Never, not even if the lengthy descriptions threaten to put me to sleep. I can sail through a detailed sketch of the Indus Valley Civilisation, the Mojave Desert or the Savannah with ease. The first dozen-odd pages of Hawaii by James A. Michener is a good place to test your patience, or the lack of it. An uncle of mine used to read westerns inside of an hour: he'd only read parts with action and dialogue and skip everything else.

Q. Are you equally comfortable reading a physical book and an ebook?
My answer  Both work for me though one disadvantage in an e-reader is that you can't flip back pages as easily as you can in a paperback. Sometimes I need to go back a few pages to reacquaint myself with a character or incident, especially since I read three books at a time. With an e-reader you don't know how far back to go.

Q. Do you read books by the same author back to back?
My answer  I often have, with P.G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, for instance; but same-author books can get monotonous. I have recently put an end to this practice. Now I read authors 2, 3, 4 & 5 before going back to author 1.

Q. Do you read a book from start to finish or do you pick up another book midway?
My answer  Since I read three books at a time I can't afford to be bored and pick up a fourth or fifth book. However, I'm tardy in finishing the classics. It took me over a month to read up The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. I remember forgetting all about Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. I picked it up again six months after I started reading it and found I hadn't even reached page 200.

What are your reading peeves?

Fast Forward (1985)

Todd Mason has the links to this Tuesday's Overlooked Films, Audio and Video at his blog Sweet Freedom.

"When you've got one shot at the top you've got to move."

I saw Fast Forward, a musical dance drama directed by Sidney Poitier, in the cinema hall in the late eighties and the only thing I remember about this film is some good music and some terrific dancing, a lot of it on the streets of New York. There was something contagious about the way the group of youngsters danced wherever they could, even along the wayside, keeping step and rhythm with the blaring sounds from an old music system, a two-in-one I think.

I don't recall the story or the actors but I remember liking the movie a lot. Fast Forward was a simple film and streets ahead of the technically superior dance films that came later including the more recent Step Up.

The synopsis on IMDb says, "Eight young people from Ohio who are dancers, come to New York, to compete in a major talent competition. But when they get there, they learn that they have to wait some time before they take part in it. So they try to do their best to survive in the Big Apple before competition, and get some lessons about the real World." If you want to know more, read this article at Wikipedia.

I don't know how Poitier came to direct this film. It'd be interesting to find out. Try and see Fast Forward if you can. You'll enjoy it.