Observations from the Balcony

What I AM saying is that the critical work on crime fiction needs to develop of and through its own metier, that the Johnsons of the crime / mystery community require their Boswells, and that I believe heart and soul that crime / mystery fiction needs and deserves the kind of widespread, top-to-bottom critical work that would in turn inspire the writers to strive towards ever-higher standards of work.

–Declan Burke

“Reviewing should hold the field to the highest standards. Not everything is “the best,” but by measuring the gap between what is and what could be, we can suggest a way forward.”

–Karen Burnham

So apparently I’m the last person in the world to make the connection between In Bruges and Harold Pinter’s play The Dumb Waiter.

I don’t know if Martin McDonagh, the writer and director of In Bruges, has ever acknowledged the influence of The Dumb Waiter but clearly it was one especially when taking McDonagh’s theater background into account.

This is one of those instances where the influence should be clearly pointed out, as much as possible, because both works benefit from it. Especially the play because the movie could direct more people towards it.

The first clip is the trailer of In Bruges which goes down in recent history as one of the worst trailers. So don’t watch it unless you really feel the urge. Following the trailer is the entire Harold Pinter play, The Dumb Waiter, in five parts.

If you do watch the play (or have already seen it) and have seen the movie drop a line in the comments.

…or a brief, incomplete and informal history presented without commentary…

…or you say tomato I say carpet bagging; I say tomato and you say transcending the genre.

If a genre is constantly, over the course of its history, having an ongoing debate/dialogue with itself then the to be or not to be of “transcending the genre” is one of mystery/crime fiction’s longest running.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane.

[Any bolding is mine and all of the posts should be read beyond the quotes provided.]

Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote the following about Sherlock Holmes in an article written for Colliers in 1923:

“At last, after I had done two series of them, I saw that I was in danger of having my hand forced, and of being entirely identified with what I regarded as a lower stratum of literary achievement.“

The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, a 1948 essay written by WH Auden in Harper’s magazine:

“For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol. The symptoms of this are: Firstly, the intensity of the craving–if I have any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story for, once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it. Secondly, its specificity–the story must conform to certain formulas (I find it very difficult, for example, to read one that is not set in rural England). And, thirdly, its immediacy. I forget the story as soon as I have finished it, and have no wish to read it again. If, as sometimes happens, I start reading one and find after a few pages that I have read it before, I cannot go on.”

***

“Mr. Raymond Chandler has written that he intends to take the body out of the vicarage garden and give murder back to those who are good at it. If he wishes to write detective stories, i.e., stories where the reader’s principal interest is to learn who did it, he could not be more mistaken; for in a society of professional criminals, the only possible motives for desiring to identify the murderer are blackmail or revenge, which both apply to individuals, not to the group as a whole, and can equally well inspire murder. Actually, whatever he may say, I think Mr. Chandler is interested in writing, not detective stories, but serious studies of a criminal milieu, the Great Wrong Place, and his powerful but extremely depressing hooks should be read and judged, not as escape literature, but as works of art.“

Kurt Vonnegut in a 1985 letter to Charles Willeford:

“Your publisher asked for a blurb, but I don’t do those anymore having given thousands in the past, and thus having laid myself open to requests for thousands more. However, please count me among your great admirers. You are an absolute first-rate ethnographer in describing survival schemes within chaos which only politicians would be cynical enough to call a society. You have written an important book, and must know it — and must know, too, that you are in a ghetto. What are you? A writer of thrillers, right? Meanwhile, there are all these serious writers, describing America as it really is. Shall I name some of them? Would you like me to send you some of their wonderful books?

[The postscript:] Here’s a trade secret maybe nobody ever told you: The more highly educated and powerful your characters, the more popular your books will be.”

From 2004 we find this line from The New York Times review of Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution.

“A genre that is by its nature so constrained, so untransgressive, seems unlikely to appeal to the real writer.“

Here is a quote from a piece by Jeff Vandermeer over at Omnivoracious in 2008 where he wrote about some niche mysteries that he had received:

All of this is light, harmless fare for readers looking for some entertainment, especially on vacation–on the plane, at the beach, while getting a pedicure. Mystery purists and lovers of brutal noir fiction need not apply. But never fear–a Ken Bruen or Tom Piccirilli novel can’t be far around the corner. In the meantime, have a little fun–read a niche mystery in your particular area of interest. You might be surprised at what you find.

John Banville’s now (in some circles) infamous remarks from an interview in 2008:

“Now, looking back I think the invention of Benjamin Black was John Banville’s ploy to find his way out of what was suspiciously like a rut. I took the pseudonym to indicate that the venture was not an elaborate, post-modernist, literary joke. It is straightforward. I simply discovered I had this facility for cheap fiction.”

From a 2009 post on the Mysterious Matter blog

Of all the manuscripts that cross my desk, it is the hardboileds to which I hold the highest standard of writing.

From a 2009 forum post by Max Allan Collins in reference to Inherent Vice:

I say it’s spinach and I say to hell with it. Another slumming literary boy.

Mr. Declan Burke from a 2009 post

The truth about the difference between crime fiction and literary fiction, even if it’s an unpalatable one for most crime fiction fans, is that literary fiction tends to be written with more style and panache; and for those who are offended by the fact that crime novels don’t win the Booker Prize, say, well, that’s because the Booker is generally given to writers who are eloquent stylists.

A recent post from Oline Cogdill

So elevate the genre, showcase the genre and let us see how rich and deep the genre is.

Just don’t transcend it.

Sarah Weinman from a 2004 post (plus read the comments):

Maybe the problem is that “transcending genre” implies going beyond a group form, when writing is so very individual and comprises a volatile mixture of craft, talent, technique and imagination. That last one, imagination, is the most important thing of all. Some people’s ideas are wide-ranging and barely tamed; others are smaller and require stretching. No person is created equal, and hence no book is created equal. Instead of saying one voice or style is inferior to another’s, why not celebrate those who make the most of what they do while encouraging others to challenge themselves further because they are able to?

In other words, maybe transcending the genre isn’t such a bad thing: so long as we’re clear on what it truly means.

And finally, because this type of exercise could go on forever, go read Matt Cheney’s entire post from 2005

I’ve already read some 200 releases and have some more on my shelf. So these books are the ones that I want to read the most that I don’t have or haven’t read.

The Underneath by Tom Piccirilli

a crime-suspense crossover about a family of thieves who have to deal with a possible serial killer. — From

another one that deals with the bent life. It’s about a guy who returns home to his family of career thieves on the eve of his murderous brother’s execution. There’s a lot of unanswered questions about his brother’s killing spree, and my protagonist has a lot of regrets and remorse about abandoning his pregnant ex-girlfriend. It’s as much a family drama as it is a crime tale, and in some ways its my most ambitious book yet. — From

It’s the story of a young thief named Terry Rand who returns home after a number of years when his manipulative brother, a death row inmate, asks him to come for a visit. That visit sends Terry on a strange journey to find a possible killer and to face up to events from his past, including the abandonment of his pregnant girlfriend, now married to his former best friend. As I’ve said in other places, it’s as much of a dark family drama as it is a suspense novel. — From

Collusion by Stuart Neville

COLLUSION features some returning characters from The Twelve, but has a different protagonist - the father of Marie McKenna’s child. He’s a cop who starts digging into the events of the first book when he realizes his child and former lover have gone missing. But when he gets too close to the truth, his superiors tell him to leave it alone. — From

I.O.U from Concord Free Press

In the spring of 2010, the Concord Free Press will publish IOU, a multi-genre collection of new writing about money—earned and spent, given and taken, remembered and imagined, stolen and gifted. Small town money, globalized money. Our times seem ripe for writers to open up on the subject.

Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski from Minotaur Books

In this neighborhood, make a wrong turn…

… and you’re history.

Mickey Wade is a recently-unemployed journalist who lucked into a rent-free apartment—his sick grandfather’s place. The only problem: it’s in a lousy neighborhood—the one where Mickey grew up, in fact. The one he was so desperate to escape.

But now he’s back. Dead broke. And just when he thinks he’s reached rock bottom, Mickey wakes up in the past. Literally.

At first he thinks it’s a dream. All of the stores he remembered from his childhood, the cars, the rumble of the elevated train. But as he digs deeper into the past, searching for answers about the grandfather he hardly knows, Mickey meets the twelve-year-old kid who lives in the apartment below.

The kid who will grow up to someday murder Mickey’s father.

Choke Hold by Christa Faust from Thomas Dunne Books

Angel Dare. Former pornstar. Vigilante killer. One by one, she took out the men who violated her and destroyed her life. After testifying against the key players in an international sex slavery ring, Angel went into Witness Protection to escape her past and create a new life.

But now her anonymity has been compromised and she’s on the run, relentlessly hunted by the one man she allowed to live.

When a chance meeting with former co-star ‘Thick’ Vic Ventura devolves into a bloodbath, Angel is left babysitting Vic’s illegitimate teenage son Cody, a hot-headed aspiring Mixed Martial Arts fighter. Cody’s in up to his neck, embroiled in a murderous conspiracy of drug smuggling and underground fighting, but all he cares about is making his big debut on a reality television series. Together with Cody’s trainer, Hank “The Hammer” Hammond, a punch drunk ex-grappler with a dark secret, Angel must find a way to help Cody escape his own demons while staying one step ahead of her own.

Pursued through the unforgiving Arizona desert, shady Mexican bordertowns and ultimately into the seductive neon mirage of Las Vegas, Angel is in for the fight of her life. Can she go the distance or will she wind up on the other end of a no-holds-barred vendetta?

Audition by Murakami from W. W. Norton & Company

In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don’t intend to produce. As the résumés pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama’s attention—Yamasaki Asami—a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. Blinded by his instant and total infatuation, Aoyama is too late in discovering that she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be. The novel’s fast-paced, thriller conclusion doesn’t spare the reader as Yamasaki takes off her angelic mask and reveals what lies beneath.

Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella from Stark House Press

Johnny Porno is his first venture into the past as it takes place in 1973 when the New York mob was at the height of its power, disco was king and the business of pornography was about to explode across America after a New York City criminal court banned the most famous of all porn flicks, Deep Throat.

Johnny Porno is set in 1970’s New York when Deep Throat is being hustled around town by the mob and a guy named John Albano is just trying to get by. This book’s got it all: gangsters and wannabes, cops both crooked and not, hustlers and informers, crazy ex-wives and resourceful girlfriends; and crackling dialog that’s so real you can hear it.

Gutshot Straight by Lou Berney from William Morrow

When Charles “Shake” Bouchon, professional wheel man, walks out of prison after a three-year stretch for grand theft auto, he’s got only two problems: he’s too nice a guy for the life he’s led and not nice enough for any other.

So he says yes when he’s asked to run a simple errand for his former boss and lover, Alexandra Ilandryan, the formidable pakhan of the Armenian mob in Los Angeles. All Shake has to do is deliver a package to Las Vegas and pick up a briefcase.

Only the package turns out to be a wholesome young housewife named Gina whose husband has run afoul of Dick Moby, aka “The Whale,” an unpleasant four-hundred-pound Vegas strip-club owner. Shake hates to think what’s going to happen to Gina when he delivers her to The Whale, so in a move that’s as noble as it is boneheaded, he decides to set her free.

Now Shake and Gina are on the run to Panama, hoping to unload the very valuable—and highly unusual—contents of The Whale’s briefcase. Shake could end up a rich man, but first he’ll have to outmaneuver two angry crime bosses, a murderous Armenian thug plagued by erectile superfunction, a former pro football player who blames Shake for his romantic woes, and a billionaire swindler with a flair for the theatrical. Not to mention, and not the least, Shake will need to survive his own heart, since he’s going to discover that wholesome housewife Gina is even more intriguing, and a lot more complicated, than he ever imagined.

Full of blindsided double-crosses and hard shots to the head, Gutshot Straight is a tale of love, luck, and larceny against the odds.

Sleepless by Charlie Huston from Ballantine Books

What former philosophy student Parker Hass wanted was a better world. A world both just and safe for his wife and infant daughter. So he joined the LAPD and tried to make it that way. But the world changed. Struck by waves of chaos carried in on a tide of insomnia. A plague of sleeplessness.

Park can sleep, but he is wide awake. And as much as he wishes he was dreaming, his eyes are open. He has no choice but to see it all. That’s his job. Working undercover as a drug dealer in a Los Angeles ruled in equal parts by martial law and insurgency, he’s tasked with cutting off illegal trade in Dreamer, the only drug that can give the infected what they most crave: sleep.

After a year of lost leads and false trails, Park stumbles into the perilous shadows cast by the pharmaceuticals giant behind Dreamer. Somewhere in those shadows, at the nexus of disease and drugs and money, a secret is hiding. Drawn into the inner circle of a tech guru with a warped agenda and a special use for the sleepless themselves, Park thinks he knows what that secret might be.

To know for certain, he will have to go deeper into the restless world. His wife has become sleepless, and their daughter may soon share the same fate. For them, he will risk what they need most from him: his belief that justice
must be served. Unknown to him, his choice ties all of their futures to the singularly deadly nature of an aging mercenary who stalks Park.

The deeper Park stumbles through the dark, the more he is convinced that it is obscuring the real world. Bring enough light and the shadows will retreat. Bring enough light and everyone will see themselves again. Bring enough light and he will find his way to the safe corner, the harbor he’s promised his family. Whatever the cost to himself.

It is July 2010.

The future is coming.

Open your eyes.

Swap/Let it Ride by John McFetridge from ECW Press

When Toronto’s shadow city sprawls outwards with its vicious and encompassing criminal economy, all the local detectives can do is watch, grimace, and drink, sweeping up detritus left in the wake—dead hookers, corrupt cops, and people too slow or weak to keep up or too stupid to get out of the way. Detroit-born, projects-raised, former soldier Get feels right at home here, having returned from the business opportunities he sought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Selling guns to biker gangs and hiding in a veneer of respectability, he soon finds himself wavering because of stick-up girl Sunitha. She wants him to help her rob the bikers’ gold bullion drug money and escape with her, swapping this life for another.

Do They Know I’m Running? by David Corbett from Ballantine Books

Roque Montalvo is wise beyond his eighteen years. Orphaned at birth, a gifted musician, he’s stuck in a California backwater, helping his Salvadoran aunt care for his damaged brother, an ex-marine badly wounded in Iraq. When immigration agents arrest his uncle, the family has nowhere else to turn. Roque, badgered by his street-hardened cousin, agrees to bring the old man back, relying on the criminal gangs that control the dangerous smuggling routes from El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, to the U.S. border.

But his cousin has told Roque only so much. In reality, he will have to transport not just his uncle but two others: an Arab whose intentions are disturbingly vague and a young beauty promised to a Mexican crime lord. Roque discovers that his journey involves crossing more than one kind of border, and he will be asked time and again to choose between survival and betrayal—of his country, his family, his heart.

Wolves of Fairmount Park by Dennis Tafoya from Minotaur Books

The book centers on the shooting of two boys in front of a dope house in Philadelphia, and it follows a young detective and the addict uncle of one of the boys as they each try to uncover what actually led to the shooting.

Empty Mile by Matthew Stokoe from Akashic Books

When Johnny Richardson comes home to the town of Oakridge, California, he has one thing on his mind—putting right a terrible mistake he made eight years ago. Revisiting the past, though, is a dark and dangerous game in small-town America. A searing meditation on the futility of trying to right the wrongs of the past, Empty Mile blends elements of thrilling urban noir with the wide-open spaces of outdoor adventure.

Dark Rain by Mat Johnson from Vertigo

In the days after Hurricane Katrina, two men who fell through society’s cracks travel to evacuate New Orleans to pull off the bank heist of a lifetime. Up against the clock and eluding armed competitors, the men find themselves in the middle of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in American history. All around them, the institutions that form the pillars of our society are falling apart. Surrounded by death and misery, the men face a moral challenge greater than any other obstacle they’ve had to overcome. Is it possible to beat the system, even when it lies in ruins? Can they save even one person–or themselves? Or will those institutions come crashing down right on top of them?

Short by Cortright McMeel

It’s about commodity traders and it makes for quite the ride. You get the sort of inside look, behind-the-scenes stuff that, for better or worse, male readers seem to love. You get the ins and outs of a particular business and American finance in a larger sense, but, along with that, it’s just very well written in a way that few, if any, of those books, ever are.

It’s very strong. It’s just got a mixture of black comedy, fine prose and truly in-depth looks at certain milieus that you just don’t see in contemporary literature or more popular writing . . . ever. There are some sort of sleazy people in it and some, well, there are some just incredibly sleazy people. It’s very funny. A lot of times people will say something is funny when it’s sort of whimsical or aspires to humor, but isn’t actually all that amusing. This, oh, is genuinely very funny. Charles Bukowski meets Honoré de Balzac. Makes having dealt with Cort’s madness almost worthwhile. — From

Bye Bye Baby by Alan Guthrie - I couldn’t find any synopsis info online.

Two recent reads have provided me with examples of characters who have traits, both positive and negative, that are highlighted because of where they are from.

“Listen. I’ve been doing a bit of thinking, Naomi. I’ve made arrangements for you to stay with a family friend of mine,down in Dublin. Just until all this shit blows over. We can leave anytime you’re ready.”

“That’s nice of you. Say hello to your family friend for me, when you meet.”

“Naomi –”

“I don’t know which is the bigger insult. I’m a Donegal woman and you’re asking me to hide in Dublin, or that you have the audacity to ask a member of the Kirkpatrick clan to run. The Kirkpatrick clan never ran from anything. Do you really think I’m going to start now?”

“Alex,” said the older and more suave of the two, “and this is my colleague Grant.”

Grant had a buzz cut and a sunburned face. He was also extremely pissed and gaped at the dancers, eyes glazed and mouth hanging open.

“He’s originally from Queensland,” Alex explained.

“Ah,” I said.

I once had a co-worker say about her husband that “he’s from Pennsylvania he doesn’t know better.” So what about you? What traits can be identified from your area and where you’re from? Can you think of any more like the ones quoted above?

Burr’s manner was such that even the very young John Lourdes knew the statement was meant in a malicious way to taint him. And now, all these years later, beyond the restless hours and mysteries that afflicted him, beyond all aims, objectives and intentions there was this need as final as final could ever hope to be, that he, John Lourdes, would be the one to bring about his father’s bloodletting, that he would be the cause hand behind his death. — The Creed of Violence by Boston Teran

An old Mex meth chef even showed him the bones in the ground and he saw for the first time the enormity of what he had begun. He saw iniquities without end, as a procession of days, and to these he had added other and greater iniquities in which his father had played no part and of which he would not speak, neither then nor now, yet he knew himself for what he was, his father’s son, and he vowed to finish what he had started the night he’d gone to beat the truth out of the old man, if only to rid the planet of them both, for in this crime he had no concern with perfection. — Tijuana Straits by Kem Nunn

I’m reading Balzac of the Badlands by Steve Finbow right now and I’m just loving it. I should be finished this evening.

The opening paragraph, especially the opening line, should make some crime readers smile.

Some writer somewhere wrote something about never opening a book with the weather. And that’s true if you live where I live. I mean, what would be the point? If I’d looked out of the window at the start of this story, I could have told you about the overcast sky heavy with the threat of rain. I look out of the window now and it’s sunny with a mild breeze. And by the time you read this, it could be a nuclear winter or a globally warmed perpetual summer. But, hold on, you’ll be looking out of your window or your hole in the wall or your gap in the yurk, so god knows what the weather’s going to be like where you are. Anyway, when I woke up and looked out of the window, the sky was light pink and watery blue. And the sun was up there somewhere, inevitably.

On the page before Finbow even has an Elmore Leonard epigraph.

What other references in a book have made you smile or laugh?

When I was watching the second to last episode of the first season of Brotherhood there was a moment that literally made my jaw drop.

Freddy Cork, the local Irish gangster, is talking to his dead son’s lover. His son had just recently committed suicide and Freddy didn’t know that he was gay. At this point all of the characters have been portrayed with so many facets that you believe that Freddy is coming to accept the presence of this young man sitting across from him (and it’s to the actor’s credit that you see so much and so little play out across his face). But his complex emotional reactions to his eldest sons death channels his grief into one of his prime modes of self expression, violence. I sat in wide eyed horror when he broke the serene nature of the scene by jumping up unexpectedly and choking the boy to death. He wasn’t even angry at him. But everything just came exploding out.

It’s one of the most emotionally complex TV deaths of all time.

It made me think about the intimacy of death in TV shows and the lack of such deaths in general.

Breaking Bad is another show that deals in the intimacy of death. That it too uses choking should probably be noted, but it isn’t the method of death that contributes to it’s complexity and intimacy its the emotional currency and investment that leads to the payoff. A lesson for most writers could be stated as simply as this — don’t be afraid to put some skin in the game.

Most shows cheaply strum our heart strings and manipulate us in to caring in that moment only. One of the great emotionally complex TV deaths was the suicide of Crocetti and it breaks you in ways that the melodramatic and softly, back lit death of Bobby Simone never could.

I’ve been watching another show that deals in death a lot, The Sopranos and the bottom line is that you could kill one hundred Big Pussy’s and it would never even come close to matching the deaths of these other characters.