Public Murders by Bill Granger, 1980

A little-known author and his little-known crime fiction make their way into Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

Soon it would be over. Now she could see. There was the knife only. She could see her own terrified eye reflected in the blade. She watched her own eye staring at her.

My copy of the book. © Prashant C. Trikannad

 
If someone asked me which was the grittiest crime novel I'd read in recent times, I'd have no hesitation in saying Public Murders by Bill Granger, the late journalist turned novelist from Chicago.

The story begins with nine men watching porn in a theatre. One of the men gets up from his seat and walks out. He follows Maj Kirsten, young, good-looking, blonde, Swedish, into Grant Park, Chicago, and brutally rapes and murders her. She is discovered naked and mutilated by a black kid playing softball with his friends.

Soon, two more young, good-looking, blonde immigrants are raped and killed in and around Grant Park. One of them, famous porn star Bonni Brighton, is knifed from behind and neatly cut from back up while watching her own film inside a theatre.

There are suspects including Bonni’s German father, Frank Bremenhoffer, who has disowned his daughter for being a cheap whore. But after months of intense public, media, and political scrutiny, the hard-nosed Chicago law enforcers are nowhere close to apprehending the serial rapist-killer.

Desperate for a closure, investigators send feisty policewoman Karen Kovac, young, good-looking, blonde, as “a decoy to entice a maniac.” Kovac is a single mother who wants to be transferred to homicide.

The characters
There are no heroes, only characters, like those you'll find in an Ed McBain novel. Their names are suggestive of actual Chicago policemen. Matthew Schmidt, “the tall, cadaverous lieutenant of homicide,” and Jack Donovan, chief of the criminal division for the state's attorney’s office, are the principal investigators. They are assisted by Sid Margolies and Terry Flynn, two no-nonsense plainclothes sergeants.

Breathing down their necks are Leonard Ranallo, chief of homicide, Thomas P. Halligan, the new state's attorney, and Leland Horowitz, first assistant and chief political meddler.

Mario DeVito is in charge of trial work at the state’s attorney’s office; Maurice Goldberg is a young assistant at Area One Homicide, where the crimes take place; and Karen Kovac is out to prove her worth as sex bait.

Bill Granger gives the reader a glimpse into the rather bleak personal lives of the law enforcers which is enmeshed with their professional duties. They have serious issues but they don’t let it affect their work. Matt Schmidt has a debilitating illness and his wife won’t wake him up at night, while Jack Donovan, father of two children, is separated from his runaway wife who is insane.

Most of the men are known to one another and have worked together before. Some of them, like Jack and Mario, are friends and depend on each other. The men work on this special case as a single unit. They are tough and competent.

Final word
Public Murders is a harsh portrayal of the underbelly of Chicago, its gritty crime investigation division, and its noisy criminal courtrooms.

Again, in the best traditions of a McBain, the novel is strong on police procedurals and courtroom procedures, police jurisdictions and overzealous investigation. The entire story revolves around these elements of crime fiction. Granger does not hold back. His style is blunt, even sexist and racist at times, in keeping with the overall narrative. His description of crimes is graphic but not overly disturbing. There is plenty of dialogue, a lot of it short and coarse; the way cops talk, straight from the shoulder. His detectives appear conscientious and play by the rules, somewhat reluctantly. There is dark humour. And there is frustration as the case drags on.

This is a realistic story that isn’t real. As Granger observes in the author’s note, “Realism presents a problem in this book. The novel is set in Chicago. Chicago is portrayed as it really is… Nevertheless, the story is fiction.”

Did I enjoy it? Very much.

Crime fiction buffs such as Sergio (a sworn Ed McBain fan) at Tipping My Fedora, Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery, and Col at his Criminal Library will like this book. I just hope they haven't read it yet.

© Chicago Sun-Times

The author
Bill Granger (1941-2012) was born in Wisconsin and died in Chicago where he lived most of his life. He specialised in political thrillers and wrote some 25 novels. His first was The November Man (1979), an espionage thriller. He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Joe Gash and Bill Griffith. Prior to becoming a published writer, Granger was a journalist at Chicago Tribune and other Illinois newspapers. He also served briefly in the US Army. Public Murders won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1981.

There is very little about Public Murders on the internet. However, I read a fine obituary of Bill Granger by Dennis Hevesi in The New York Times, May 5, 2012. Among other things, he says, “Mr. Granger’s favorite, and perhaps best-known, book was Public Murders, in which the city is in an uproar as a rapist-murderer strikes again and again. Public and political pressure exacts an emotional toll on the tough, foulmouthed detectives investigating the crimes.”

Q1 review: six books short

Classic Words Free, the Android version of the classic board game Scrabble (or Spellofun as I knew it in childhood), is to be blamed for the fewer number of books I read in the first quarter, January-March. I've been addicted to the game since early February that cost me at least six books if not more. The six books I didn’t read would have covered one each of espionage, science fiction, horror, and fantasy, and two of nonfiction.

My target was 15 books and an unlimited number of short stories. Instead, I read just nine books and twenty short stories, and a dozen comics I didn’t keep track of.

The only consolation, as I see it, is that I learned new and often unpronounceable words. The built-in Scrabble dictionary is from another planet. I also played a few games online, with other sleep-deprived zombies, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did playing against my tablet. As of today I've won 80 out of 108 games, a success rate of 74.1 per cent. I was winning most of the games until I switched over to ‘Extremely Hard,’ the toughest level. So far my best word is ‘Untaxing’ that earned me a bingo and my best final score is 491. Is ‘Untaxing’ even a word? Whatever, I've added it to my Word dictionary.

Here then are the nine books I read over the past three months…

Thriller: Touch the Devil and The White House Connection by Jack Higgins

Splatterpunk: AN.AL—The Origins by Athul DeMarco

Mystery: The Rome Express by Arthur Griffiths and A Body in the Backyard by Elizabeth Spann Craig

Western: The Renos by Wolf Lundgren and A Noose for the Desperado by Clifton Adams

Humour: Beating Around the Bush by Art Buchwald

General: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

…and here are the twenty short stories.

Charles Allen Gramlich: Killing Trail, Showdown at Wild Briar, Powder Burn, and Once Upon a Time with the Dead, from Killing Trail

Ross Rocklynne: Sorry: Wrong Dimension

Philip K. Dick: The Father-Thing

Isaac Asimov: Rain, Rain, Go Away

Shirley Jackson: Charles and The Witch

Edith Nesbit: The Mystery of the Semi-Detached

Ernest Bramah: The End of the Beginning, In the Thick of It, and The Beginning of the End, from Smothered in Corpses

Dorothy Les Tina: Nice Corpses like Flowers

Evelyn Waugh: Edward of Unique Achievement, Fragments: They Dine with the Past, Conspiracy to Murder, Unacademic Exercise: A Nature Story, and The National Game, from The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh

Julia Greene: Whiffet Squirrel

There are no favourites. I liked all the books and short stories I read. They belonged to various genres and were written by gifted writers. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury was a difficult read, like climbing the face of a mountain without gear.

So what do I take away from Q1? I’m back to reading contemporary authors. This time around I read Jack Higgins, Charles Allen Gramlich, Elizabeth Spann Craig, and India’s Athul DeMarco. The review of Charles’ Killing Trail is accompanied by an in-depth interview with the author. The only book I haven't reviewed is Elizabeth’s charming mystery A Body in the Backyard and that will happen soon.

I have a feeling Q2 will be better, in spite of the Android and I continuing to engage in a war of words over Scrabble.

Graveyard shift

Click to enlarge © Prashant C. Trikannad

I took this photograph of an old cemetery at 9.37 am on my way to the office. It is located a few blocks away, next to a crematorium. I look at it every morning as I descend from the railway bridge. It is tranquil and in bloom. There is no one about the place. Sometimes I'm tempted to go there and sit quietly with my eyes closed, walk among the burial beds, contemplate on life, read a scary book, write a ghost story, hear the birds calling out or listen to Thriller. The dead inspire too. Maybe, I'll wait until dark and see what happens.

Killing Trail by Charles Allen Gramlich, 2010

Review & Interview

Under a false dawn they dumped the girl in my yard.

Killing Trail by Charles Allen Gramlich, writer and professor from Louisiana, United States, is a collection of western short stories including a flash fiction piece, and much more. Each of the four stories is a traditional western about cowboys and desperadoes, vengeance and gunfights, courage and honour, land grab and pretty women.

If Lane Holland pursues the man who nearly raped and killed the woman he loved in ‘Killing Trail,’ the flagship story, Josh Allen Boone overcomes betrayal by a woman and fights back to clear his name of a murder he did not commit in ‘Showdown at Wild Briar.’ And if Davy Bonner narrowly escapes ambush and helps the lovely Megan Cross defend her ranch in ‘Powder Burn,’ a gang of fearless and dangerous outlaws take bullets but make the villagers bite the dust in ‘Once Upon a Time with the Dead,’ the flash fiction piece.

In the telling of these action-packed stories, Charles acknowledges the influence of Louis L’Amour, one of his favourite authors, whose characters—“alone and a bit lonely” and “who did what was right”—are reflected in his own. There is little description of the characters but you can picture what Holland, Boone, and Bonner would be like, through their brave deeds and moral soundness. And so quick is the narrative pace that you'd think Charles wrote the stories sitting in the saddle and riding on the trail to Wyoming.

Killing Trail comes in a package of goodies that has more than just these stories. For example, there is a first-person vignette ‘Quint Gives ‘em Hell’ from an unpublished novel that I liked very much, particularly how it ends. The character is influenced by L’Amour and tells about a showdown between two parties of cowboys on the range. It is a tale of great integrity. In the interview I have asked Charles why he did not include it in the main collection.

The surprise package also includes an appreciation of Louis L’Amour and an essay titled A Wild West of Your Own’ in which we are told about the fascinating history behind Fort Smith, Arkansas, and the eighty-six men who were hanged there, thanks to a particularly notorious judge known as the ‘Hanging Judge.’

Killing Trail is a western at its lucid and entertaining best. My only complain is that there are only three stories and the flash fiction piece. This collection deserved a few more. A Kindle edition of the book is available at Amazon. You can also read about the author’s other published works here.

Now, without further ado, I hand over this space to Charles…

‘The soul of the writing experience
for me is to tell myself stories’

Charles Allen Gramlich spoke to the 3Cs in an email interaction which is split into three parts: the book, the characters, and the author.

Photograph provided bv the author.

THE BOOK

Prashant C. Trikannad: Charles, you have dedicated Killing Trail to Louis L’Amour who made you love the west and inspired you to write westerns. Can you talk about L’Amour’s influence in your reading and writing of westerns and other fiction? 

Charles Allen Gramlich: I suspect there is always a certain amount of luck involved with how one writer becomes an influence on another. I was a voracious reader from early on, but because we lived out in the country I wasn’t able to get to the library very often. Fortunately, my brother-in-law, Roger James, was also a big reader. He lived within walking distance so I often went to his house to borrow books. He was a big L’Amour fan and had lots of his works. I read them and loved them. I wonder sometimes, though, about what would have happened if Roger had more Zane Grey or Max Brand books. Would I now be a bigger fan of those writers? For whatever reason, L’Amour was there when I needed him and his work resonated strongly with me—first as a reader, and later as a writer myself.

What are some of the L’Amour highpoints in this collection of short stories?

L’Amour wrote most often about characters who were alone and a little bit lonely. He wrote about characters who did what was right even when faced with heavy odds. Growing up on a farm located six miles from the nearest town, I could appreciate those feelings. The heroes in L’Amour’s novels are also hard workers, courageous, and respectful of others, but they aren’t willing to be pushed around. These are the same kind of values I was taught by my parents. L’Amour’s heroic characters also have a reverence for the land and its beauty, and this was something I felt as well. These are the kinds of things I tried to put into the stories in Killing Trail.

Which are your favourite novels by Louis L’Amour? Do you think he is popular among the new and younger generation of readers of westerns?

My favourite novel by L’Amour is To Tame a Land, about a young boy named Ryan Tyler growing to manhood in the west and becoming a lawman. I reread this book every couple of years. Some other favourites are The Man Called Noon, about a man who loses his memory, Flint, about a gunfighter who only has a few months to live, and The First Fast Draw, which is about the invention of the “fast draw” and the real life figure of Cullen Baker.

I don’t know how popular L’Amour is among younger folks. I’m sure he’s not as popular as he was to my generation, but L’Amour deals with timeless topics so I doubt he’ll ever disappear entirely.

While I read Killing Trail in two sittings and enjoyed it immensely, I wanted to read more adventures. Why did you stop at only four short stories? Can we expect a second edition with more number of stories?

I tend to be a slow writer, and there aren't a lot of markets for western short stories. I don’t typically write more than about ten to twelve stories a year, and most of those are intended for the much more numerous fantasy or horror markets. I love westerns, though, and over the years had accumulated a few stories. I decided to publish them now because if I waited to write a full book’s worth of tales it might be several more years before those were done. I’m currently working on a trilogy of western tales about a gunfighter named Gabriel. When those are done I’ll probably publish them first as an ebook, like with Killing Trail, but then will combine those stories and the Killing Trail tales into a print edition.

You have compared the fourth story, Once Upon a Time with the Dead, a flash fiction piece, to the Desperado movies. I also found shades of Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter, albeit with a twist in the tale. Did that occur to you as well?

I actually didn’t think about the High Plains Drifter connection, but I can certainly see a similarity in setting, and even in the revelation of who the ‘Drifter’ really is. It hadn't occurred to me before but I have seen High Plains Drifter many times so I bet there is some influence there. Good observation on your part.

Charles, I liked all the stories but I liked the first-person vignette ‘Quint Gives ‘em Hell’ from your unpublished novel even more. Did you think of expanding it and including it in the collection?

As you mentioned, that’s a piece from an unpublished novel. It’s from the first book I ever wrote. Several years back I sat down to reread that old novel and see if I could polish it up for publication. Unfortunately, there were so many things wrong with the book that I realised it would be easier just to write a new novel than to fix the old one. That doesn’t mean I might not turn sections of it into stories. That’s what I did with the title piece from the collection. The story ‘Killing Trail’ is a revised scene from that novel with a new beginning and an ending added to it. The same could happen for ‘Quint Gives ‘em Hell.’ In fact, now you've got me thinking!

How and when did you think of adding the historical essay titled ‘A Wild West of Your Own’ about Fort Smith, Arkansas, and the eighty-six hangings that took place within its walls in the second-half of the 19th century? 

Even though I grew up about thirty miles from Fort Smith, I never knew until my late teens that it had been as wild and wooly as the boomtowns of the west I’d read about in L’Amour’s books. My first introduction was when Roger James started telling me about Isaac Parker, the ‘Hanging Judge.’ Roger loaned me a book called Winding Stair, which was set in the Fort Smith area and was written by Douglas C. Jones, who grew up in Arkansas. I never thought to write up any of my impressions of Fort Smith, though, until Richard Prosch (http://archive.is/qiZfE) asked me to do so for a feature on his blog called ‘My Personal West.’ I thought the piece fit nicely in the Killing Trail collection.

THE CHARACTERS

The initial three stories are essentially about revenge, as three young men set out to avenge the wrong done to them and to those they loved. As a leitmotif in westerns, do you think it’ll ever lose its relevance?

I think revenge is a motive/emotion that everyone understands. It’s as old as “An Eye for an Eye.” Also, at their heart the best revenge stories are really about justice. Someone has been wronged and there is no one but the hero to make it right. I value a “fair” world but the real world is seldom fair. At least in fiction we can see that justice is done. I personally tend to enjoy revenge stories, although I don’t want the person taking revenge to become as bad as those he or she is seeking to punish. That takes us into anti-hero territory. Revenge is certainly a very old trope, and one that has been featured in many other genres besides westerns. I don’t think it’ll die out as a theme anytime soon.

Were there any outside influences to the three characters of Lane Holland, Josh Allen Boone, and Davy Bonner?

There were. The character of Lane Holland is probably closest to my own personality, although I was never so tough or competent. The original version of that story was written when I was barely eighteen so I put a lot of myself into it. My son, Josh Allen Gramlich, is actually the model for Josh Allen Boone, although as far as I know my Josh has never had quite such an adventure. The story came about from imagining my son in those circumstances. Davy is different. I certainly wasn’t much like him when I was young. Davy is much more extraverted and socially adept. I always admired people like that so I imagine there’s some “wish fulfillment” going on in that story.

Who are some of your favourite characters in western novels?

Wow, there are so many. I loved the whole ‘Sackett’ thing that L'Amour did, where he wrote stories about a bunch of different members of his fictional Sackett family. He sort of told the grand story of the west through their eyes. Ed Gorman has a series of books about a great character named Guild. Guild is an older man, more mature than most of L’Amour’s heroes or the characters in Killing Trail. As I've gotten older myself I've come to appreciate those types. Will Henry created a great character named John Clayton, who appeared in his very fine book called No Survivors. Clayton was a Confederate soldier who was later adopted into an Indian tribe. He was present at the battle of Little Big Horn. Robert B. Parker created two great western characters named Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch for his excellent trilogy, Appaloosa, Resolution and Brimstone. Another favourite character is Judge Earl Stark (Stark’s Justice, The Hawthorne Legacy, etc.), created by James Reasoner (www.jamesreasoner.net). My favourite historical western character would have to be Cole Younger, with Doc Holliday a close second.

THE AUTHOR

Charles, what does writing mean to you? How would you describe the experience of writing?

As long as I can remember I've relied on my imagination to entertain me. I’m never bored because I can always disappear into daydreams of adventure. Long before I started writing I simply “told” myself stories. As I got older and the stories got more complex, I found that I needed to record elements of them in order to keep them straight. Before I ever wrote an actual short story, I printed up lists of characters and the names of cities and planets that I invented. I first began putting stories on paper to capture them for myself, so that I could enjoy them again and again. It eventually occurred to me that others might enjoy such stories as well, and I began writing more for publication.

The soul of the writing experience for me, though, is to tell myself stories. The greatest experience in that process is “discovery.”  Every day when I’m writing I discover new characters, new settings, new creatures, and new adventures. It’s the closest thing to pure creativity that humans can experience, and I sure do enjoy it.

Can you take us through your fiction and nonfiction books? Can we expect more westerns from you?

I love to write in all different kinds of genres. My first novel was a thriller with horror and SF elements called Cold in the Light. It’s still the most complicated book I've ever written, plot-wise. Then I wrote the Talera fantasy Trilogy, Swords of Talera, Wings Over Talera, and Witch of Talera. These would fall into a category called Sword & Planet fiction, which was first established by Edgar Rice Burroughs with his John Carter of Mars tales. A fourth book in that series, Wraith of Talera, is planned for publication this year, and there will be at least one more in the series, to be called Gods of Talera. I’m about a third of the way through that one. I've also written a Space Opera novella in the tradition of C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, which is called Under the Ember Star. I had a lot of fun with that one.

Besides the novels, I have three collections of short stories out from Borgo Press, now an imprint of Wildside. These are Bitter Steel, which is a collection of heroic fantasy stories in the tradition of Robert E. Howard. Then there’s Midnight in Rosary, a collection of vampire and werewolf tales, with a ghost story thrown in. I always warn readers that there is a lot of sex in that anthology. Finally, there’s In the Language of Scorpions, which is a collection of horror stories, ranging from the super gory to Twilight Zone type twist-ending tales. Some of the stories in ‘Scorpions’ were written during the Splatter Punk movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those tales are very graphic, which was an element of that movement. I consider the primary splatter punk stories in that collection to be, ‘Razor White,’ ‘Splatter of Black,’ and ‘Wall of Love.’ They are brutal and not for the faint of heart.

As for nonfiction, I have Write With Fire, which collects most of my pieces on writing up until about 2009. I did a number of articles over the years for various writing magazines, and produced a regular column on writing for several years for an online newsletter called The Illuminata. A lot of these are ‘how to’ articles. I also collaborated on a textbook called Writing in Psychology with a couple of colleagues. We use it in our departmental writing course.

For the future, I'm working on the fifth Talera novel now, which will close out the original series. One way or another, I'll be writing a novel length western in the next year or so. I've got a lot of ideas and titles percolating in my head right now and am itching to get started.

How different is writing a western from your other interests like horror, science fiction, and fantasy? Which of these do you enjoy writing the most?

I’ve realised in the past five years or so that I’m first and foremost an “adventure” writer. Adventure is at the core of all my westerns, science fiction, and fantasy. They have many elements in common. Readers have told me that you can certainly see “western” elements in my Talera series, and I think they are present in Under the Ember Star as well. My horror fiction is a bit different. Cold in the Light is adventure horror, but many of my short horror stories are not. Much of the material from In the Language of Scorpions might be called “existential horror,” which is horror that arises out of the human experience of a hostile universe. In adventure fiction, good usually triumphs over evil. In existential horror, good usually loses because it is simply overwhelmed by forces that no human could possibly defeat. The “enemy” in existential horror is often not even evil in the usual human sense. It is simply indifferent to humanity. Lovecraft is often described as writing existential horror, but the category as a whole is far broader than that.

Can you briefly take us through your writing process for both short stories and novels? Which of the two is more satisfying?

Short stories start with me from several different places. A title or scene may pop into my head—or even a single evocative phrase. For example, the following sentence occurred to me years ago on my commute: “She had the lips that Satan dreamed of in his long fall to hell.” That phrase then turned into a story called ‘Thief of Eyes.’ Once an idea takes hold, I usually type out a quick rough draft of the piece, which then goes through multiple revisions until I’m finally satisfied with it. The first ending I come up with is usually discarded in favor of something that twists the tale more dramatically.

While stories often come to me by accident, novels start with intent. I decide I’m going to write a novel and then spend quite a bit of pre-writing work figuring out the main characters, settings, and opening scenes. By the time I’m ready to go I know the beginning and have a good idea of the general ending. Then I write my way toward that ending. Often, the ending does get modified as I move along through the book.

For me, short stories are generally a lot more fun. Because I’m a relatively slow writer, I can finish a short story in a reasonable amount of time and see the fruits of my labour. Novels are not only longer, but much more complicated. The process of putting words on paper isn’t harder for novels, but they take a lot more planning. Except for Swords of Talera, I've never written a novel where I didn’t get the feeling somewhere in the middle that it just wasn’t going to work. Most other writers say they experience the same thing and you just have to push on through. That’s certainly what I've found.

To summarise it, when I finish a short story I’m usually exhilarated; when I finish a novel I’m usually exhausted.

Despite that, there are some tales that just can't be told as short stories. I do like writing novels because of the greater scope they allow you. I know I'm going to suffer for that scope, though.

What kind of books do you read, in what categories, and who are some of your favourite writers?

I read just about everything, although westerns, fantasy, and horror make up the greatest part of what I consume for pleasure. I also read a lot of nonfiction, mostly science related. I try to read about 100 books a year and there is always so much more I miss out on. Over my entire lifetime, my favourite fiction writers would have to be Louis L’Amour, Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and John D. MacDonald. Closely behind these would be C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and Kenneth Bulmer. In the last fifteen years, I've been reading a lot of Joe Lansdale, James Reasoner, O’Neil De Noux, David Gemmell, Dean Koontz and C.S. Harris. If I look up on my shelves, I also see a lot of books by David C. Smith, Sidney Williams, Will Henry, Andre Norton, and E.C. Tubb. I’m sure there are many more I’m forgetting. In the last two years I've been reading quite a bit of stuff by Bernard Lee DeLeo, and by the Beat to a Pulp writers.

Thank you, Charles.

The Entity, 1982

Check out Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom for this Tuesday’s Overlooked Films, Audio & Video. My contribution is a slightly expanded version of a general post on horror movies I wrote two years ago.

The Entity was one of seven horror movies I watched on VCR in my mid-teens. The others were The Omen and Friday the 13th trilogies, The Evil Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist, and An American Werewolf in London. I saw them all in a span of one week between 10 pm and 4 am. I can't think of any other period in my life when I was as scared as I was during that one week. I was glad I saw the horror flicks with many of my family members.

Since then and up to now I must have seen about a dozen horror movies, the last of which was The Amityville Horror (2005) starring Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George. I'm looking for an opportunity to see the 1979 version that has James Brolin and Margot Kidder in the lead. It ought to be better.

The Entity's most frightening appeal lies in the absence of an entity, unlike in The Exorcist. There is something eerie about horror films without graphic apparitions in plain sight. The other attraction is the background music, slow and haunting, that makes you feel as if someone or something is about to reach out and touch you.

Directed by Sidney J. Furie (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, 1987), The Entity was well received in India because of its unusual supernatural theme and, I suspect, on account of a young Barbara Hershey. I remember many of the scenes from the movie, particularly how her character Carla Moran's sexual molestation by an invisible spirit begins and ends. One evening Carla, a single mother, is sitting at the dressing table when she is slapped by a mysterious hand and thrown on the bed and raped by no one. What follows is a period of mental and physical agony as Carla tries to convince people of what is happening to her. The film ends with Carla daring the evil spirit to do what it wants followed by the door shutting itself, suggesting that the phantom rapist finally leaves her alone…maybe.

"All right. All right, bastard. I've finished running. So do what you want. Take your time, buddy. Take your time. Really, I'm thankful for the, uh...rest. I'm so... tired of being scared. So it's all right, it really is, it's all right. You can, uh, do anything you want to me, you can, uh, torture me, kill me, anything. But you can't have me. You cannot touch me."

I've never bought the theory that The Entity was based on a true story.

Do you have any good, or bad, memories of horror movies?

Reading Habits #7: How do you treat your books?

© Prashant C. Trikannad

“My spine is hurting,” the paperback said from the bed. “I think I may have torn something.”

“A page or two, perhaps," said the hardback sandwiched between a Dostoyevsky and a George Eliot on the bookshelf. "What happened?"

“Slept badly, I guess.”

“Wide open and face up, or down?” the hardback inquired politely.

“Wide open and face down. That’s the third night in a row I've been mishandled. This morning I heard the birds singing outside the window and when I opened my eyes I couldn't see a thing. It was pitch black. I panicked. I thought I’d gone blind. And then, suddenly, there was a dazzling light. I saw that the housemaid had lifted the pillow.”

“So you spent the night under a pillow.”

“Yes, I did. To be honest with you, I actually liked it. It was cozy and warm. The pillow was white, clean, and smelled of lilies.

“Lilies?” the hardback raised his eyebrows. “Who did you say you were?”

“I never said who I was. Anyway, since you are asking now, the name’s Scruffy. And you are?

“The Mapmaker. I belong to Frank G. Slaughter,” the hardback said. “Why lilies?”

“Oh, I don't know, I like flowers.”

The hardback straightened up. “I know who you are. You are Paul Gallico’s, aren't you? The same fellow whose Poseidon Adventure short-changed you.”

“He did not short-change me!” the paperback said, indignantly. “I came way before Poseidon. Had it not been for the movie…”

“Are you feeling better?” The Mapmaker, who was also a peacemaker, quickly changed the topic.

“Why, what’s wrong with me?”

“You said your back was hurting.”

“Oh yes, I did, and it’s still hurting and that’s because I was lying open and spreadeagled all night. It’s easy for you stiff-backs. Look at Fyodor next to you, straight as a ramrod.”

The Mapmaker was about to say something nasty but let it pass. Instead, he said quietly, “Who’s reading you, Scruffy?”

“Some college kid who doesn't know how to read me or treat me. You’re fortunate his mother is reading you. She cares for you, doesn't she?”

“She certainly does, like she cares for her plants, her cats, her children, and her husband. So how does this kid treat you?”

“Well, last night and the night before and the night before that I was flopped over his sweaty and smelly face for like an hour, maybe more, and then he picked me up and shoved me under his pillow.”

“The same pillow that smells like lilies?”

“The same pillow. Thank god, the housemaid changes the cover every morning.”

“How much has he read of you?”

“Seventeen pages! Can you believe it? I’m only 288 and I’m very funny and he’s been at me for two weeks. Why doesn't the kid just give up on me?,” Scruffy wailed.

“Scruffy, 288 is a lot for a kid who hasn't read much. I mean, you're not the best or easiest of reads.”

“And I suppose you are, Mr. Mapmaker, with your navigational nose for latitudes and longitudes,” he snarled.

“Scruffy, I’m more than latitudes and…”

“That’s not all,” Scruffy cut in rudely. “Look at me, I’m torn, I’m dog-eared, I've been nibbled at, I’m shapeless, I've been scribbled all over, and I feel like I've been dipped in ketchup. This is NO WAY to treat a book or read a book,” he shouted hysterically. 'Tell me, Mr. Navigator, would you treat your maps like this?”

“I'm not just a navigator,” the Mapmaker hissed under his breath. He stared at Scruffy and muttered to himself, “Why am I talking to a monkey?” He folded up his jackets, rested his head against Eliot's shoulder, and closed his eyes.

© Prashant C. Trikannad, 2014

Note: For previous Reading Habits, see under Labels.

Minuscule, 2006

A little known (or so I think) French animation series for Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

After a hiatus of a couple of years, I returned to the cartoon channels. For the past few days I've been watching Ultimate Spider-Man, the American animation series on Disney XD, and Minuscule, a French animation series on the private and delightful life of insects, on Nick Jr.

I've only seen three episodes of Minuscule and I loved it, mainly because there are no humans (though they appear on the periphery) and no dialogues. Just a bunch of colourful insects whose insignificant and mundane existence is occasionally roused by situations often beyond their control.

The insects are anthropomorphic. They display human characteristics through behaviour, intelligence, and quick thinking. They have big eyes but no expressions. You can sense their emotions that vary from being happy to being sad and from being brave to being scared, though it all comes out in their actions. That’s how I saw it.

In one episode, a farmer is driving his tractor toward an anthill. The ants are terrified. A ladybug, one of the main characters, comes to the rescue. She does what a human would do: she yanks out the tube from the engine and stops the tractor. The farmer climbs down and goes off to find help. The ladybug then refits the tube, turns on the ignition, puts the tractor into reverse gear, and sends it off backward.

In another episode, a centipede is delighted to find a packet of chips left by a picnicker but is soon disappointed when a couple of wasps dive in like fighter jets, with sound effects and all, and make off with the packet. The ladybug, who is watching from a tree, chases the wasps and in a brief tug of war in the skies succeeds in retrieving it for the arthropod. Together, they sit on a rock and nibble at the chips.

Each colourful episode is very short and usually features no more than one or two insects, most commonly ladybugs, grasshoppers, flies, ants, spiders, and snails. Other not so regular insects include mosquitoes, butterflies, caterpillars, dung beetles, dragonflies, cicadas, bees, and wasps. 

There are friends and foes among the tiny creatures. The setting is rural France and very scenic. A piece on Wikipedia describes the French animation series as giving "a bird's eye view of insects' day to day existence, distorted through a burlesque, yet poetic lens."

If Minuscule has a moral behind it, then it is about mutual dependence; and big or small, size has nothing to do with it. I've only seen three episodes, so obviously there’s a lot more to this series, running since 2006. I believe there is a full-length movie too. If you like anthropomorphic serials like Shaun the Sheep, then you’ll enjoy Minuscule whose tiny characters are creepy but cute…well, sort of.

Highly recommended.