Bookgasm (Free subscription) | 06/18/2008
Long before we had Hard Case Crime and Stark House, the only real source for original and reprinted crime and noir was good ol’ Black Lizard. The imprint allowed me to read my first Jim Thompson, David Goodis and, of course, Charles Willeford. I still have my old copy of COCKFIGHTER in my vast archives, [...]
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine (Free subscription) | 06/04/2008
Two arrested after alleged attempt to burglarize fumigated house -- Police, Fort Lauderdale -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com : "FORT LAUDERDALE - A would-be thief who covered his hands with socks was arrested moments after he tried to burglarize a home draped by a fumigation tent on Monday night, authorities said."
Euro Crime (Free subscription) | 04/20/2008
I prefer this list to the one in The Telegraph a while back. Links on the author's name take you to the Times's page about the author (which gives a suggestion as to which book to try); bibliographies are linked to their Euro Crime page: 1. Patricia Highsmith 2. Georges Simenon - Bibliography 3. Agatha Christie - Bibliography 4. Raymond Chandler 5. Elmore Leonard 6. Arthur Conan Doyle - Bibliography...
Bill Peschel (Free subscription) | 03/27/2008
B orn today: Comte Alfred de Vigny, poet, playwright, novelist, Loches, France, 1797; Henri Murger, novelist, Paris, 1822; Thorne Smith, comic novelist, Annapolis, Md., 1892; Ai Qing, poet, Jinhua, China, 1910; Budd Schulberg, author, essayist, New York City, 1914; Shusaku Endo, novelist, Tokyo, 1923; Louis Simpson, poet, Kingston, Jamaica, 1923; Anthony Lewis, columnist, New York City, 1927; T. R....
Bookgasm (Free subscription) | 03/11/2008
Point Blank Press aims to offer a real treat for Charles Willeford fans with a book that has not been reprinted since its original publication: 1958’s MADE IN MIAMI. Originally titled LUST IS A WOMAN, this slim novel bristles in the world of lurid, but never getting to the point of graphic. The story centers [...]
CRITICAL MASS (Free subscription) | 03/04/2008
Each week, the National Book Critics Circle will post a list of five books a crime novelist believes are worth owning and rereading. We recently heard from Edgar and Shamus Award winning creator of the Harry Bosch series, Michael Connelly . These are the books he pointed out. The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler – The grand-daddy of them all. This book set the early standard for the loner detective...
Secret Dead Blog (Free subscription) | 02/20/2008
No, not that kind of work. (Doing fine on that front, thankfully.) No, I mean Gun Work . Charles Ardai just posted the cover and and a sample chapter of David J. Schow's sure-to-be-awesome Hard Case Crime novel, due out in... egads, November. I'm dying to read this now. Now, damnit. As I've mentioned previously, I've been a huge Schow fan since the old school late 1980s splatterpunk days, and if you...
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine (Free subscription) | 02/16/2008
Made in Miami is the Point Blank reprint of Lust is a Woman , a Beacon Book from the '50s. According to the blurb, this is the first time the novel has been reprinted (not counting the Softcover Library edition, I guess). It's a pretty sleazy story about an art student named Ralph Tone, who takes a summer job in a hotel in Miami, where he meets Maria Dugan, a beautiful young woman who goes a long...
Bookgasm (Free subscription) | 02/13/2008
Brothers and sisters, I’m here to preach to you about the good book. Just give me that ol’ time religion … or maybe just three tales that will get you to jump and scream and shout. Who am I kidding? The last religious thing I still know is my Bar Mitzvah part. THE BLACK MASS [...]
Jahsonic (Free subscription) | 12/17/2007
Miami Blues (1990) - George Armitage “With only bottles of spaghetti sauce…” The main character, Fred Frenger, played by Alec Baldwin, fits the profile of a psychopath. His girlfriend is Jennifer Jason Leigh. Very violent and terribly funny. Based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford. The song in the background is “Spirit in the [...]
Do the Math (Free subscription) | 11/19/2007
Steve Smith on Tim Berne. Ben Ratliff on Stevie Wonder. Matthew Guerrieri on the late Craig Smith. Woody Haut on Charles Willeford. (What Willeford read and recommended!!!)
TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home (Free subscription) | 09/13/2007
So what do you think of Munseys.com, the successor to the old Blackmask site, which vanished when owner David Moynihan tangled with Conde Nast in a copyright dispute? David says he’ll do a “five-figure hard launch” after having fixed various problems such as database leaks. He hasn't, if my impressions are correct. But even in its [...]
linkfilter.net - fresh links (Free subscription) | 08/09/2007
Have you ever ridden a trolley? Yes No on Aug 9, 2007 02:24pm. (+230XP)Here is our selection of the 100 (actually 111, to allow for ties) best hard-boiled characters (in literature). Although there are several many of us would not consider hard-boiled, most of our ballots had a large majority of characters who made it into the top 111... Of those authors who had more than three characters in the best...
Sunset Gun (Free subscription) | 08/01/2007
You can't quite get your hands around The Woman Chaser, and that's all for the good. It's a heap of contradictions that absolutely refuses to be compartmentalized. You'll either love this slice of humorous sociopathic angst (and yes, in The...
Maoxian (Free subscription) | 06/27/2007
An appreciation of Charles Willeford by Jesse Sublett … couldn't agree more with him on this point: “I wish I had a dollar for every crime novel I’ve ever picked up that had a dust jacket blurb excitedly pronouncing the book’s author as being the successor to the Chandler and Hammett legacy — a bit of [...]
