Self-styled challenge: first novels

Last Friday, I reviewed The Hardy Boys No.1: The Tower Treasure as part of a self-styled challenge to read the first novels by both famous and not so well-known authors. These will also comprise writers, including pseudonymous writers, whose novels I read in my younger days. Short stories don’t count but novellas do. My goal is to read and review at least one such novel every week and retrace a part of my book route over the past four decades.. I could mention some of the authors I intend to read but it’ll take away the element of surprise, for whatever it’s worth. Nonetheless, author selection is a challenge.

I kicked off this challenge with The Hardy Boys because it was the first of any kind of fiction I read. By this time next year I hope to have read some 50 first novels by 50 different authors.

I have no rules. The first novels could be classic, vintage, golden, modern, or contemporary spanning every genre there is. I may read more novels in one genre like western, espionage or mystery. I’ll publish a scorecard every quarter. And the reviews could be as short as two paragraphs or as long as ten paragraphs. The idea is to keep it as simple as possible and in a way that suits me best. No pressure. I also reserve the right to pull out of the challenge any time I want although the excuse won’t be as feeble as a shortage of novels. That just won’t hold.

I’m fairly excited and a little scared about this challenge because I’m not the fastest of readers or reviewers and I can be easily distracted from my reading. Still, I’m looking forward to it and with your encouragement, I’m sure I’ll succeed, at least a good part of the way of first novels.

The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure, 1927

This is the first Hardy Boys adventure and it commences my plan to read the maiden works of authors in genres I usually read. I also offer this review for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

© Wikimedia Commons

Some things have stayed with me since my school days. The Hardy Boys, which introduced me to the joy of reading books, is one of them. I have read most of the imaginatively titled books. Since my teens nearly three decades ago, I have been reading the Hardy Boys off and on.

Yesterday, I finished rereading The Tower Treasure, the No.1 adventure of Frank and Joe Hardy published on June 1, 1927. Did it hold up as well as it did in the seventies? Yes and no.

Yes, because I knew what to expect and I was reading for the pleasure of it. And no, because I found the story and the characters juvenile and unrealistic, which was to be expected at my age. But it was fun.

Today, teenagers are no longer exposed to the idyllic world of Frank and Joe and their friends. Instead, they are thrown into the terrifying world of Harry Potter and his friends. The Hardy boys live with their doting parents, Fenton and Laura, in a secure and comfortable family environment. Harry is orphaned by the evil Voldemort even before he takes his first baby steps and then raised by equally evil relatives, in a cupboard under the stairs. The small ocean-side city of Bayport has been substituted by the dark and imposing Hogwarts and its dreadful secrets. Everyday thieves have made way for the Dark Lord, the Death Eaters, and the Dementors. These are the creatures that inhabit our world today. Only we call them terrorists, gunmen, and militias.

© Wikimedia Commons

With the line between the fictional and the real blurring, as often as it does, it helps to escape into sunny Bayport once in a while. My recent trip into the annals of The Tower Treasure was a pleasant experience as I retraced my youth through Frank and Joe Hardy’s maiden case—first helping their best friend Chet Morton recover his stolen jalopy, The Queen, and then assisting their father, Fenton Hardy, the famous private detective, recover thousands of dollars worth of securities and jewels stolen from the Tower Mansion owned by a rich old man called Hurd Applegate and his sister Adelia.

Frank and Joe do more than crack a robbery case. The boys, aged 17 and 16, along with their parents, show compassion towards Henry Robinson, caretaker of the Tower Mansion, and his family. Applegate charges Robinson with the robbery, fires him from his job, and removes him and his family from the mansion. Robinson, whose son Slim studies with the Hardy boys at Bayport High, is forced to leave town and find accommodation in a seedy quarter of Bayport. Slim leaves school to find a job and support his family. The detective and his sons are determined to clear Robinson's name and restore his honour and his job.

© www.hardyboys.co.uk

The Tower Treasure, written under the collective pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon and published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, is as much a story of human values as it is about solving a mystery. Those values are inculcated into Frank and Joe by their parents, Fenton and Laura. The Hardys are the epitome of a happy middle-class American family. The boys are dutiful, well-behaved, and always helpful, the cynosure of most parents. They run errands for their father and mother, attend school and do their homework regularly, and stay loyal to their friends. They are naïve and innocent in their ways. It’s what makes the Hardy Boys series still appealing for old readers like me.

Anxiety attacks in films and sitcoms

Can superheroes get anxiety attacks? Apparently, they do. Tony Stark or Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) gets a few of them in Iron Man 3. The billionaire-playboy experiences the nervy episodes both inside and outside his impregnable armoured suit. Inside the suit, Stark panics and feels claustrophobic and his AI buddy, Jarvis, coolly tells him that he is having an anxiety attack, like an indifferent butler announcing dinner is served. Outside of it, he goes weak in the knees and drops to the ground. The founding member of The Avengers doesn’t have a clue what hit him. In one scene, it takes a precocious kid to bring him out of it. 

Each time Stark has an episode, he is very afraid but still manages to joke about it. Those who have experienced anxiety or panic attacks will tell you that it is no laughing matter—it all seems horribly real at the time—even as those who haven’t will insist that it’s all in your head and ask you to snap out of it or, better still, out of yourself. Never easy. In Stark’s case, the attacks are probably understandable: the Mandarin has aerial bombed his hilltop Malibu mansion, nearly killing him, and he holds himself responsible for putting Pepper in harm’s way.

Anxiety or panic attacks are 21st century’s new urban malaise fuelled and driven by 24x7 stresses and rat races. So widespread and debilitating are these so-called mental disorders that they are beginning to find their way into films and sitcoms, perhaps to add a touch of perverse realism to the shows.

© www.raymond.wikia.com

In one particular episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Barone (Ray Romano) has his first anxiety attack when he is playing golf with his brother Robert (Brad Garrett) and his friend Kevin Daniels (Kevin James). As in the case of Stark, the reason for Ray’s episode is guilt. Ray has lied to his wife, Debra (Patricia Heaton), so that he can avoid household chores and run off and play golf. The scary episode has him scurrying back to Debra for comfort.

Similarly, in an episode of Becker, Reggie (Terry Farrell), the owner of a diner and friend of Dr. John Becker (Ted Danson), has a panic attack on top of the Empire State Building and the only person she thinks of calling to her ‘rescue’ is the misanthropic doctor who practices in the Bronx. Reggie breaks down because of low self-esteem, of having achieved nothing in her life, by way of money, men, and marriage.

In one scene in Three and a Half Men, Alan Harper (Jon Cryer) has an emotional breakdown, first in a library and then in a movie theatre, and his brother Charlie (Charlie Sheen) is off to see a therapist on how he can deal with the situation or more likely how he can get rid of his brother. If I'm not mistaken, Charlie also has an attack or two elsewhere in the series.

I was thinking, given their emotional insecurities, most superheroes ought to be prone to anxiety attacks. Batman instantly comes to mind. But, however funny it might seem even on screen, it’s never fun to watch someone go through a nerve-wracking episode. Not that you'd know in real life as most adult sufferers disguise it well owing to a sense of self-preservation.

The Red Reef by James Reasoner, 2008

In The Red Reef, a 23-page sea adventure, Captain Thomas Larkin is racked by guilt even though he committed no crime. The master of ‘The Red Reef’ is distraught with grief ever since a gale sank his ship. The shipwreck costs lives and sends Larkin, one of the survivors, into gloom. Although he can still command a ship, if he wants to, he decides to sail as an ordinary seaman, “sweating out his guilt in the blistering sun on deck” and trying to forget his past. 

But his past catches up with him. One day, as Larkin is drowning his sorrow in liquor at a port-side tavern, Giselle Beauchene, a young and sensual woman, walks up to him and asks him to take her to the spot where the ship sank. She wants to pay tribute to her father, Charles Beauchene, who was a passenger on ‘The Red Reef.’ 

Although the deep-sea journey will not bring her old man back from the dead, Larkin reluctantly agrees to take Giselle because it will in some way enable him to overcome his guilt. Giselle hires a schooner called the ‘Gallister’ captained by a dubious-looking Scotsman named MacGreevey and the trio and crew waste no time in setting sail for the Navabutu Straits.

However, once the ‘Gallister’ reaches the graveyard at sea, Giselle reveals her true colours and her hidden motive. The morning after a night of lovemaking with Larkin, she turns on the tormented captain with a gun and tells him what she has in mind. The journey of redemption soon turns into a nightmare for Thomas Larkin.

Seasoned author James Reasoner tells a classic pulp story without much fuss. There is little description of people and places. The characters of Larkin and Giselle are well drawn. It’s short and gritty, and it has some good action and an unexpected twist in the end. I liked The Red Reef as much as I liked Reasoner’s The Man on the Moon which I reviewed on October 6. Both stories are crisp and very entertaining to read.

The Red Reef was originally published in Hardluck Stories, June 2008, but you can pick up the Kindle edition at Amazon.

A Walk With Death, 2013

This Tuesday, a short but interesting docu-drama for Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

© USPS

A Walk With Death is a short Civil War film made by one Logan Fulton. It is 8.56 minutes long and quite poignant. The film shows Union and Confederate soldiers at war, to the death, in what looks like a forest area. The combat first takes place with rifles, fired with deadly aim on both sides, and then with bayonets and bare hands. There is death everywhere as soldiers, in blue and grey, keep falling to the ground.

What makes the scene so affecting is the poetic narrative and haunting music in the background. The film is set to The Blue and the Gray, the famous poem by Francis Miles Finch (1827-1907), an American judge, poet, and academic associated with the early years of Cornell University. I had not heard of Finch or his poem before.

Francis Miles Finch

© Wikimedia Commons

Finch wrote the poem in memory of all those who died in the American Civil War. Its message is clear—although soldiers fight on opposing sides in a war, they are equal in death; be it victory or defeat, death spares no one, neither blue nor grey. Logan Fulton uses Finch’s poem with telling effect.

I will end by reproducing a few lines from The Blue and the Gray, courtesy National Regiment, where you can watch this short film and read the rest of the poem. The last stanza is the recurring theme of A Walk With Death.

By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgement-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray

These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgement-day;
Under the laurel, the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray

From the silence of sorrowful hours,
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for the friend and the foe;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgement-day;
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray

Five new paperbacks

On November 3, I wrote about my visit to a secondhand bookshop (Musings on a Moody Monday) tucked away in the recesses of a glass-fronted mall not very far from my residence. I forgot to mention either the name of the bookshop or the five new paperbacks I picked up. My friend, Col Keane, who reviews novels and interviews novelists at his blog Criminal Library, wanted to know which books I’d bought. Good point, seeing as we like to know the books we buy and add to our tottering pile. 

The name of the bookshop is Bookmark whose tagline—Mark yourself with knowledge—doesn't make sense, and these are the five crime novels I added to my collection. The covers are the exact replicas of my paperbacks.

Eighty Million Eyes (1966) by Ed McBain: In No.21 of the 87th Precinct Mystery series, Stan Gifford, America's most beloved comedian, dies on camera in front of eighty million eyes. Enter the persistent detectives of the 87th Precinct.

Darker Than Amber (1966) by John D. MacDonald: In No.7 of the Travis McGee novel, the salvage consultant, who lives on a houseboat, and his friend Meyer get involved with the death of Evangeline. The woman with “darker than amber eyes” lured men onto her boat, robbed them, and threw them overboard when she was done with them.

My Fawcett edition of the novel, as pictured alongside, was printed in 1966, the year it was published, but it’s not a first edition. The back cover has a small colour portrait of Travis McGee and a black-and-white picture of JDM with a brief profile.

The Case of the Sliding Pool (1981) by E.V. Cunningham: I have read many novels by the prolific Howard Fast but none under his E.V. Cunningham pseudonym. In No.5 of the Masao Masuto mystery series, the Nisei detective with the Beverly Hills police department investigates a thirty-year old crime after a swimming pool weakens and gives way, sending tons of concrete crashing into the canyon below, and unearths a corpse. A Nisei is a person born in the United States of parents who emigrated from Japan.

Mack Bolan: The New War Book by Don Pendleton: In No.63 of the Executioner series, credited to Wiley Slade, Aaron Hill, and Judy A. Newton, one-man action hero Mack Bolan takes on the evil Hydra who is “out to rape the world and eat it whole.” This illustrated novel is short but it has plenty of add-ons like Bolan’s combat catalogue, a gallery of characters from Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan, Able Team, Phoenix Force, and Stony Man series, and the various terrorist organisations in all four series, among other features. 

Split Image (2010) by Robert B. Parker: In No.9 of the Jesse Stone series, the last and final instalment, Chief Stone investigates the murder of a man found crammed into the trunk of an abandoned car. The corpse turns out to be Petrov Ognowski, a tough guy for a local mob boss. Stone gets involved in the high-ranking crime even as he grapples with his personal life, his failed marriage and his battle with the bottle.

I didn’t realise I had bought five series novels till I was halfway through writing this post. Since I have never read E.V. Cunningham and Robert B. Parker before, I’ll probably start with either of their novels. Mack Bolan is an old favourite and although his stories are stereotype, I never tire of reading about his vigilante war. Originally created by Don Pendleton, the series has been kept alive by other writers. The hardcore noir of Ed McBain and John D. MacDonald requires no introduction. 

I miss the days when I borrowed just one book from the library, read it over a couple of days, and went back and borrowed another. There was a simple pleasure and a quiet satisfaction in reading like that.


Source of JDM cover: www.johndmacdonaldcovers.files.wordpress.com

Hemingway in Space by Kingsley Amis, 1960

Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

© Creative Commons

The absence of humour in science fiction, apart from his liking for the genre, appears to have prompted Kingsley Amis to write Hemingway in Space in the December 21, 1960, edition of Punch. The story was published in the satirical magazine as part of a series of parodies.

This is the impression one gets after reading American-Canadian sf writer Judith Merril’s introduction to Hemingway in Space which she included in her anthology 6th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S-F a year later.

“One of Mr. Amis's sharpest criticisms of science fantasy in general was the lack of good humorous writing in the field. From the examples he cited, and those he did not, I suspect we do not always laugh at the same jokes. Not always; at least one exception (and probably several more) appeared in the series of parodies published in Punch last year,” Merril noted in her 1961 Dell anthology.

I'm relatively new to sf and especially humour in sf. I didn’t see it either in the title, Hemingway in Space, however amusing it sounds, or in the story which reads like any other sf tale.

The story is set around Mars. Philip Hardacre, the main character, a young man and his annoying wife Martha, and Ghlmu, an old, grizzled two-headed Martian, are hunting for a space monster with their Wyndham-Clarke blasters. The monster is xeeb, a large and ferocious creature prowling that part of the galaxy. After spotting the phosphorescent creature, Philip insists on stepping out into space without his Martian friend. He takes the young man along with him. In the end, however, Ghlmu is killed while saving Philip and the young man.

Other readers might see humour in the story where I didn’t; perhaps, in the dialogue between Martha, “the boring, senseless bitch,” and Philip and Ghlmu, whom she and her husband hired to take on the monster. Philip Hardacre can’t stand her and would gladly get rid of her and xeeb together. In the story Earthmen and Martians seem to be friends and Venus is inhabited. In short, it’s a decent sf story.

The 6th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S-F contains more than thirty short stories. Other writers include Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, Howard Fast, Anthony Boucher, Isaac Asimov, Henry Sleser, and Brian W. Aldiss, among others. It also includes an essay ‘How to Think a Science Fiction Story’ by G. Harry Stine, ‘The Year in S-F’ by Judith Merril, and ‘S-F Books — 1960’ by Anthony Boucher.

If you’d like to read just this story, you can click here.

In his biography The Life of Kingsley Amis (2006), writer and academician Zachary Leader has described Amis as “the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century.” Amis has parodied sf on more than one occasion, including in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (1960) where he looks at the genre in a lighter vein as well as in Something Strange, a short story that first appeared in Spectator (1960) and later in his first collection of stories My Enemy's Enemy (1962). Clearly, I need to read more sf humour by Kingsley Amis.