Death, Where Is Thy Sting? Oh, There It Is

Michael Collins’s The Death of A Writer – aka The Secret Life of Robert E. Pendleton – gets a paperback reprint in the US this month, hardly surprising given the stack of big-ups it’s received to date. “Michael Collins tears into literary academe with great comic gusto,” reckoned Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times, although Publishers Weekly was a tad more circumspect, to wit: “The philosophical and literary digressions may annoy some readers, but all should appreciate the fully-realized characters, lyrical place descriptions and dark, circuitous plot.” As for Mr and Mrs Kirkus, they could hardly restrain themselves: “Mystery, tragedy and farce converge in this engaging novel of considerable psychological depth … The suspense makes this a page-turner until the climax, as Collins’s plot combines academic satire, philosophical speculation and tragedy.” Hurrah! Sorry, folks, we’re kind of busy this week, so you’ll have to insert your own ‘Death, where is thy sting? It’s in the tale’ gag here …

The Best Things In Life Are Free ... Books

Slide, the latest collaboration between Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, is published this week by Hard Case Crime, and to celebrate Crime Always Pays is diving head-first into a vat of Pimms. Before we slip into the Speedos, however, there’s the matter of the free copies being given away by Hard Case Crime, one of which could be yours if you just answer a simple question, to wit:

What is the name of the first Ken Bruen / Jason Starr collaboration?

To be in with a chance of winning a copy, just email us the answer at the address in the top right of this blog, with ‘Bruen / Starr competition’ in the subject line, before noon on September 25. Meanwhile, here’s a sample chapter to get you onto Slide’s slippery slope …

This Week We’re Reading … The Vengeful Virgin and The Wounded and The Slain

“I knew I’d never get enough of her. She was straight out of hell.” We’re having a bit of a Hard Case Crime binge this week, folks – first up is Gil Brewer’s The Vengeful Virgin, first published in 1958 and a cracker in the mould of Brewer’s patented amour fou, in which TV salesman-on-the-make Jack hooks up with Shirley, a 17-year-old chafing with frustration at having to take care of her rich, bedridden stepfather (“She looked hot enough to catch fire, but too lazy to do anything but just lie there and smoke.”). Delivered in Brewer’s precise, deadpan tone, the best laid plans of vengeful virgins and men quickly spiral out of control as one murder leads to another and Jack finds himself split between the allure of a vast pile of cash and the psychotic charms of a woman who should really be entered under the dictionary definition of ‘all or nothing’. Cain meets Jim Thompson, reckoned Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, and we’re not here to argue. Meanwhile, David Goodis, he of the novel-length suicide notes, sets The Wounded and The Slain (1955) in Jamaica, where James and Cora Bevan have gone in an attempt to rescue their marriage, a shell just hollow enough to accommodate alcoholism, self-loathing, simmering sexual dissatisfaction and bleak thoughts of ending it all. Naturally, Goodis avoids the palm-fringed beaches and sultry sunsets, dragging his characters into the slums of Kingston and face-to-face with their worst nightmares. “He did it to himself. He brought it on by slow degrees and then faster degrees and finally it blew up in his face and knocked him for a loop. For many loops. For endless loops. To send him sailing far away to some dizzy, goofy place where every day is Halloween.” You like your noir dark and psychologically twisted? The Wounded and The Slain is a black, bloody corkscrew.

Landy: Of Hope And Glory

Yet more good news for Derek Landy, folks. According to The Bookseller, Skulduggery Pleasant has been chosen as a contender in a one-off Richard and Judy children’s books special, to be aired on October 28th as part of Channel 4’s literacy season. Nominated in the third of the ‘Early’, ‘Developing’, ‘Confident’ and ‘Fluent’ reading sections, and with two winners to be announced from each section, the broadcast should see Skulduggery Pleasant go huge in the UK, where the Richard and Judy Show has become arguably the most important opinion-former. The full list of nominees is available at Beattie’s Book Blog. Meanwhile, Landy will be putting in an appearance at the Children's Book Festival, which takes place in County Clare from October 3rd-26th. To paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson on Treasure Island: “If this don’t fetch the kids, they’ve gone rotten since I knew ’em.”

Baa Humbug

Much as we hate to be territorial about Irish crime writing – it is, after all, a pretty broad church – Leonie Swann is testing our limits. Is it because she’s a German author who sets her novel, Three Bags Full, in the fictional Irish village of Glennkill? No. Is it because she’s much more successful at what she does than us, and has garnered a glowing review from Carl Hiassen? Well, only in part. But mainly we’re peeved because Leonie has added to the growing menagerie of cat-and-dog detectives with a rather outrageous twist, to wit:

“On a hillside near the cozy Irish village of Glennkill, the members of the flock gather around their shepherd, George, whose body lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George has cared for the sheep, reading them a plethora of books every night. The daily exposure to literature has made them far savvier about the workings of the human mind than your average sheep. Led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world), they set out to find George’s killer.”

Like, sheep? C’mon, people ... “It’s rather as if Agatha Christie had re-written The Wind in the Willows, and I ended by loving it,” says Jane Jakeman in The Independent. That whirring sound you hear? Yep, it’s Dashiell Hammett perning in his eternal gyre …