My reading in January

Instead of writing about the books and short fiction I read over a whole quarter, as I have been doing for the past couple of years, I thought I’d post about them for each month, preferably on the first of the following month. This way I’ll realise how little I’m reading which will hopefully encourage me to get more novels and short stories out of the way every month. Figures for a quarter can seem deceptively impressive.

Today is February 1 and here is what I read in the first month of the new year. Again, I have listed them by year of publication and not in the order I read them.

Novels & Novellas

1915 - The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - Horror

1958 - The Accused by Harold R. Daniels - Hardboiled

1981 - Air Force One is Down by John Denis (Alistair MacLean) (John Edwards and Denis Frost in real life)  - Thriller

1998 - Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, 1998 - Nonfiction

2007 - Me Tanner, You Jane by Lawrence Block - Espionage

Short Stories

1891 - The Sheriff and His Partner by Frank Harris - Western

1941 - The Secret Sense by Isaac Asimov - Science Fiction

1994 - Cages by Ed Gorman – Horror? Fantasy?

So far, I have only reviewed The Accused by Harold R. Daniels and the three short stories. I’ll be reviewing Air Force One is Down in a day or two. Later, I may review my first novel by Lawrence Block.

I’m going slow on my reviews because I’m devoting more time to my other writing, at this point a novella and a collection of short stories that are still in the works. However, I’ll continue to blog and visit other blogs too. 

Another reason why I’m reviewing fewer books is because I have been hooked to two television series between 9 pm and 11 pm—Monk and Downton Abbey. That’s the time I usually post on my blog. I like Adrian Monk for I see a little of myself in his obsessive-compulsive character. Among other things, I have this habit of straightening books, or putting them in their place, in a bookstore. I do it free of cost. It’s annoying to see non-serious readers take out books and not put them back. Even if they do, they put them back on the wrong shelf.

The theme song of Monk—It’s a Jungle Out There—by Randy Newman is pretty good too.

I like the idea of an obsessive-compulsive detective. Without OCD, I doubt fictional sleuths would have been as successful as they are. Look at Poirot.

What about you? Do you like Monk?

Downton Abbey, 2010-

Last weekend, the family watched a new British television series called Downton Abbey (2010 and running). Episode 1 of Season 1 was very interesting and we’re waiting to see what happens next.

Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) plays the Earl of Grantham who must contend with a distant cousin as the next in line to his family heritage, including Downton Abbey, now that his first cousin, the original heir, and his son, have died in the Titanic mishap.

Crawley decides to follow his conscience and tells his family that his distant cousin will inherit everything after his death.

However, Crawley must also contend with his wife Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), Countess of Grantham, and his mother Violet Crawley (Dame Maggie Smith), Dowager Countess of Grantham, who are equally determined to retain Downton Abbey, including his wife’s dowry, within the Crawley family. This would have been possible when the eldest of their three daughters married the original heir’s son who, as mentioned, was on the ill-fated Titanic with his father.

Now the Crawleys are suddenly staring at the prospect of losing everything to a stranger.

These are still early days and Downton Abbey promises much familial drama, stiff upper lip and dignified behaviour, not to mention gossip and intrigue, the latter generously supplied by the Abbey staff led by a conscientious butler who along with the footmen, chambermaids, and cooks add colour to what promises to be a delightful series.

I was struck by the peculiarity of British aristocracy, the necessity of a male heir and how the entail must pass on to a male progeny, however distant a relative he may be. Something similar was practiced by the erstwhile royal families of India. Even today, in many Indian communities it is taken for granted that the son inherits most, if not everything, after the death of his parents. Times are changing, however, and daughters are increasingly getting a share in family wealth and property.

The only thing that goes against Downton Abbey is its timing—10 pm to 11 pm, Monday to Friday—which is a little late for us working people. Each episode is re-telecast next afternoon when we’re actually at work. It might be possible to catch the series on the weekend when the channels usually repeat all five episodes. The series has been created by Julian Fellowes, actor, writer, and producer.

P.S.: Since writing and posting this piece, I have corrected "Downtown" to "Downton" as it should be. I didn't realise my mistake till I sat down to watch the second episode Monday night.

The Accused by Harold R. Daniels, 1958

Crime and courtroom made this an interesting read for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

They said he murdered his wife. They didn’t say why…

The plot, the atmosphere, and the characterisation in The Accused (1958) by American crime writer Harold R. Daniels are so realistic as to make the story seem plausible. The writing is clean and evenly paced and the narrative holds your interest. The end is unusual, almost disappointing, but it works for the novel.

The Accused begins with the trial of Alvin Morlock, 35, a reasonably handsome English teacher at Ludlow College in the small town of Warfield, Massachusetts. He stands accused of murdering his wife, Louise, an attractive woman addicted to sex (with other men), booze, and gambling. The prosecution acknowledges that Louise Morlock was no paragon of virtue but that was still no reason for Alvin to kill his wife, even if he’d enough reasons to—their failed marriage, Louise’s extravagance and promiscuity, a $1,000 life insurance policy on his wife, mounting debt, and public humiliation. A jury buys the charges and sends Alvin to death.

“…I would impress on you that whatever his motives for murder, they in no sense mitigate his guilt. It is not the dead Louise Morlock who is on trial here. It is her husband, and the charge against him is the taking of a human life.”

What happens next, or in the end to be precise, is what makes this novel tick in my opinion. I thought it was incredulous and innovative at the same time. It leaves you muttering, “What the hell…?”

The other reason I liked The Accused is the manner in which Harold R. Daniels weaves his typical fifties noirish story in and out of the courtroom, the trial preceding and following each chapter in the dysfunctional lives of Alvin and Louise caught in an unhappy marriage. In that sense it’s a fine courtroom drama where, at one point, the prosecutor and the court-appointed defence counsel actually rue over Alvin’s fate.

Elsewhere, I could accept Louise’s character of a tramp, which fits into the narrative. However, I couldn’t digest Alvin’s character who in spite of being simple, decent, an introvert, and conscientious is still characterless. By that I mean he comes across as pathetic from the moment he decides he’s done being lonely, makes a stupid mistake and marries Louise, and eventually pays for it.

The Accused is a fine crime story made finer by the courtroom trial. Recommended.

Veteran reviewer and blogger George Kelley, who blogs at GeorgeKelley.org is back., did an excellent review of six crime novels of Harold R. Daniels, including this one, over at Mystery File. The other five novels are In His Blood (1955), The Girl in 304 (1956), The Snatch (1958), For the Asking (1962), and House on Greenapple Road (1966). Click on Mystery File to read George's piece.

How the West Was Written, Vol.2, by Ron Scheer

David Cranmer, writer and editor-publisher of Beat to a Pulp has announced on his blog, The Education of a Pulp Writer, the publication of the second volume of How the West Was Written, Frontier Fiction, Vol.2, 1907-1915, by Ron Scheer. 

© Beat to a Pulp

Volume 1, which was released last April, looked at frontier fiction during the period 1880-1906. You can read about it in this post.

Together, the two volumes of How the West Was Written follow the historical trail of frontier fiction spanning thirty-five years beginning with the origins of the cowboy western which, as Ron tells us, “was only one of many different kinds of stories being set in the West.” From there he goes on to trace the evolution of frontier fiction and its “rich legacy” as a genre that is both an entertaining and an educative experience for avid readers of Wild West literature.

Volume 2 of How the West Was Written is described thus:

“During the years 1907-1915, frontier fiction boomed with new writers, and the success of Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902) began to make itself felt in their work. That novel had made the bestseller lists for two years running. With the continued popularity of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, and the appearance of one-reeler westerns on movie screens, many featuring the adventures of Bronco Billy Anderson, the cowboy hero was becoming an established mythic figure in the public imagination. 

“For writers of popular fiction, the frontier was also a subject for exploring ideas drawn from current public discourse—ideas about character and villainy, women’s rights, romance and marriage, democracy and government, capitalism, race and social boundaries, and the West itself. With each new publication, they participated as well in an ongoing forum for how to write about the West and how to tell western stories. Taken together, the chapters of this book describe for modern-day readers and writers the origins of frontier fiction and the rich legacy it has left us as a genre. It is also a portal into the past, for it offers a history of ideas as preserved in popular culture of a century ago that continues to claim an audience today.”

Author Ron Scheer

© Buddies in the Saddle

To regular visitors to this blog, Ron Scheer needs no introduction. To others, Ron is an authority on frontier fiction. I enjoy reading his penetrating reviews of early western novels and films at his blog Buddies in the Saddle. He examines a western novel or a film in a way that only one well versed in the genre can. David Cranmer has rightly described him as “the premier reviewer of Western literature.” Ron has set a new benchmark of quality and style for reviewing frontier fiction.

David tells us that How the West Was Written: Frontier Fiction, Vol. 2, 1907-1915, is available in print and Kindle formats.

Cages by Ed Gorman, 1994

‘Cages’ just happened. I’m not sure why or how. I’m not even exactly sure what it’s about. But I do know that it’s a metaphor for how I've felt most of my life.
— Ed Gorman, Author's Note

© Cemetery Dance
Publications

Sunday morning, I woke up to a pitiful sight. A shabbily dressed man beat his dishevelled wife in front of their half-naked kid and a few roadside spectators. The man was consumed by rage and was probably high on booze or drugs as he abused, slapped, punched, and kicked his wife. He wanted her to go back and when she refused he dragged her by the hair and slapped her again. She clung to his legs. He punched her some more and tried to chase her away. The kid sucked on his little dirty fingers and quietly watched his father beat his mother who was silent and submissive throughout her ordeal. It didn’t last long. They disappeared somewhere.

I thought of this disturbing scene in context of the opening scene in Cages, a short story by well-known American author Ed Gorman. A small freakish boy with only one arm suffers the mental agony of listening to his parents fight over money, to his “dreamdusted” father slamming his mother into the wall and hitting her, to his mother shrieking and screaming and abusing as his father forces himself on her, till all is quiet again.

The boy is seething with anger. He wants to kill the man who created dreamdust which has destroyed his family, even his dream of a happy family. He knows that money, or the lack of it, is the reason why his father and mother fight every night. He decides to do something about it. He sets out with a sack filled with something unimaginable, along the way braving abuse and harassment by street bullies who call him “faggot” and “mutant.”

Cages is a dark, disturbing, and depressing tale. Some might read it as a horror story. It is set in a futuristic society addicted to a strange drug and distorted by mutants and androids. The mere idea that a society such as the one drawn by Gorman could exist someday is terrifying. Yet, in a way it already does. Shades of it are visible, for instance, in Indian society, especially in the lower echelons, where wife beating, sexual molestation, and rapes are common; where female foeticide and infanticide, though long outlawed, are still prevalent; where female foetuses and newborn girls are found dumped in garbage bins. ‘Cages’ would be an apt title to describe the sad plight of many a woman and girl child in India.

Well, this is just my take on the story which could be interpreted in so many dystopian ways.

Ed Gorman brings a unique style to Cages, one that I don’t read often. His writing is bare, he fires from the hip, there is almost no punctuation, and profanities are galore, none of which diminishes the value of this 21-page narrative. Cages makes for a chilling bedtime story. Or you could read it during the day and still shudder.

I believe Cages was part of a collection of stories published in 1995, the year it was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection. In 2009, Cemetery Dance Publications came out with an electronic edition of this gritty tale. You can pick up your copy at Amazon.

Recommended

L.A. Confidential, 1997

I want to watch L.A. Confidential from the beginning. I have only seen the last half-hour or so of this gritty and hardboiled detective flick set in 1950s Los Angeles. Directed by Curtis Hanson (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle), the film revolves around corruption in police, series of homicide, conspiracies and cover-ups, drug rackets, pimps and prostitution, and Hollywood and sex. 

Three hardnosed police detectives—Detective Sergeant Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), Officer Wendell ‘Bud’ White (Russell Crowe), and Detective Lieutenant Edmund ‘Ed’ Exley (Guy Pearce)—use their own methods to investigate a series of murders and expose corruption in their ranks. One cop is sleazy, another is short-tempered and brutal, and the third, more reputable than the other two, plays by the rules. Their paths cross and the encounter is volcanic, partly thanks to Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), a prostitute who sleeps with at least two of the cops, but it’s not really about her.

There is much violence and shootout, between cops and gangsters, and even between good cops and bad cops. There were three surprises for me: one, a young Russell Crowe who behaves like a thug and uses his fists with brutal effect; two, the villain of the show played by an actor I have long admired; and three, the film is based on the namesake noir novel by James Ellroy, a writer I have never read.

What little I saw of L.A. Confidential I liked partly because of the 1950s setting where cops and gangsters wear suits and fedoras and strut their stuff around. The film has a classy noir atmosphere about it.

Recommended

The Secret Sense by Isaac Asimov, 1941

Review of a nice science fiction story for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

The Martians couldn't taste and their hearing was bad, but they had a secret sense all of their own.

In The Secret Sense, renowned sf writer Isaac Asimov narrates the story of an interplanetary friendship between Earthman Lincoln Fields and Martian Garth Jan.

Fields, who hails from New York, is living with Jan in an underground city on the Red Planet. The two unlikely friends are close enough to debate over sensitive issues without ill-feeling. So when Fields boasts about the superiority of the five senses possessed by earthlings, as opposed to the apparent lack of any by Martians, Jan is visibly amused.

Unfortunately for the Martian, he lets slip about a secret sense that his highly developed and cultured race possesses and which is far superior than the single or collective sense of sound, touch, sight, taste, and smell experienced by earthmen.

Fields doesn’t believe it but he is so overcome by curiosity that he misuses a Martian law to force his friend into revealing the secret sense to him. Garth Jan does so most reluctantly but warns Fields that he’ll be able to experience it only for five minutes after which the secret sense will be lost to him forever. 

Done Vol, a Martian physician injects Fields with a hormone that activates the secret sense and when it does, after a ten-minute interval, the snickering and unsuspecting New Yorker is exposed to the most amazing and profound experience that neither he nor any earthman has ever experienced. When the five minutes are up, he wakes up dazed and bewildered, pleading with Garth Jan not to take it away from him and to let it go on forever.

Excerpt — Garth Jan was smiling—a smile of dreadful malice, "I had pitied you just a moment ago, Lincoln, but now I'm glad—glad! You forced this out of me—you made me do this. I hope you're satisfied, because I certainly am. For the rest of your life," his voice sank to a sibilant whisper, "you'll remember these five minutes and know what it is you're missing—what it is you can never have again. You are blind, Lincoln, blind!"

It takes great imagination to conceive of a story like The Secret Sense and even greater imagination to put it down lucidly on paper. Asimov was a past master at this. The Secret Sense appeared in Cosmic Stories, March 1941, and was reprinted in The Early Asimov collection, 1972.

If you’re an sf reader, you will enjoy this story. You can read it at Archive.