Author Archives: Keith West

One Monday MacDonald Killed Them All

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This blog has been dormant for a while, and that’s been due to time constraints. I’m bringing it back online. More on that later.

Today, July 24, is the birthday of John D. MacDonald (1916-1986). MacDonald wrote for the pulps and transitioned to paperbacks when the pulps died. (I wish someone would collect all his science fiction.) For today’s birthday post, I want to look at One Monday We Killed Them All.

Dwight McAran beat a girl to death and went to prison for it. He’s about to get out. Dwight is Fenn Hillyer’s brother-in-law. Fenn is a cop. They don’t get along.

Dwight’s sister Meg, Fenn’s wife, thinks Dwight has made some bad but is basically a good person. He just needs the police and powerful businessman whose daughter Dwight killed to get off his back and give him a chance. She’s said he can stay with her and Fenn and everything will eventually be fine.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

Do you think Fenn’s family life is about to get…complicated? Continue reading →

John D. MacDonald at 102

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John D. MacDonald was born on this date, July 24, in 1916.  I’ve written about him before (see here, here, and here).

Although he’s probably best remembered today as the author of the Travis McGee series of men’s adventure thrillers, MacDonald learned his chops in the pulps, albeit during the tail end of the pulp era.

MacDonald’s work is lean and crisp, whether it’s a Travis McGee novel, a stand-alone thriller, or one of his few (but excellent) science fiction tales.  His work is worth seeking out.  And while some of the attitudes expressed may seem dated to anyone who thinks literature began sometime after the year 2000, there’s plenty of philosophy integrated into the action to raise his work above that of pulp hackwork.  This is literature, and deserves to be kept in print.

Raymond Chandler at 130

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Mystery writer Raymond Chandler was born on this date in 1888.  Chandler was, of course, the creator of private eye Phillip Marlowe.

Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, were the two writers most responsible for developing the noir school of detective writing.  Chandler’s influence is still felt today.

Times and tastes have changed since the 1930s and 1940s, when most of Chandler’s work was published, and in some circles he’s fallen out of favor with those who feel that people from the past should have the same enlightened views as those of today.

I’m not one of those folks.  I can take the good with the bad.  After all, I’m a big boy and am capable of seeing through eyes not my own.

Chandler’s short fiction was recently collected in hardcovers in Raymond Chandler:  Collected Stories.  (Unfortunately there is no ebook.)  Check it out.  There was no one who wrote quite like Chandler.

Happy Birthday Humphrey Bogart

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Humphrey Bogart was born on Christmas Day 1899.  He passed away from esophageal cancer on January 14, 1957.

Although he made his name starring in now classic films such as Casablanca (still my favorite), Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep, he started out playing hoodlums in many of his early films.  It’s the tough-guy characters he played, both good guys and villains, for which he is best remembered today.

In spite of his reputation as a star of gangster films and film noir, Bogart starred in a number of other roles.  He was married to Lauren Bacall.  They met on the set of To Have and Have Not.  He was 44, and she was 19.  It was her first and his fourth marriage, and would last until Bogey’s death.

Take a moment from your holiday celebrations and raise a glass to his memory.  Bogey’s films are worth watching, even as many acclaimed pictures made by other actors during his lifetime have faded into obscurity.

Here’s a classic scene between Bogart and Bacall from To Have and Have Not:

 

Happy Birthday, Ross MacDonald

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Kenneth Millar, who wrote under the pen name Ross MacDonald, was born today (December 13) in 1915.  He passed away in 1983.

MacDonald is best remembered as the creator of the Los Angeles based private investigator Lew Archer, although he also wrote stand-alone novels as well.  His early work was somewhat derivative of Raymond Chandler, but he soon established his own take on the lone investigator.

MacDonald has been on my radar a long time.  I read the Lew Archer novel The Galton Case when I was in graduate school.  I liked it enough to pick up copies of his books when I came across them in second hand shops.  Over the last few months, I’ve been dipping into The Archer Files, the collected Lew Archer short fiction.

I’m hoping to read more PI fiction next year, and MacDonald will definitely be in the rotation.

A Piratical Mystery

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The Bloody Black Flag
Steve Goble
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper $15.99
ebook $9.99

The Bloody Black Flag is Steve Goble’s debut novel, and it’s definitely worth a read. It’s a historical mystery set onboard a pirate vessel in 1722. I covered the historical adventure aspect of the novel in my review over at Adventures Fantastic. Since this is a mystery and crime blog, I’ll look at the mystery component of the novel here.

The story starts out with Spider John and his friend Ezra joining the pirate crew of the Plymouth Dream.  They had attempted to start an honest life on land, but they were recognized. Being wanted pirates, they decided to go back on the account and head to sea.

Spider and Ezra both had women in their families who were accused of witchcraft. Remember, this was 1722. The Salem witch trials were fresh in people’s minds. One of the crew recognizes Ezra and accuses him of being bad luck because of this. Later that night Ezra is found dead. At first glance it appears he had fallen and hit his head in a drunken stupor. The problem with this idea is that Spider knows Ezra didn’t drink. His friend was murdered. Continue reading →

When a Murder is Welcome

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A Welcome Murder
Robin Yocum
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paperback $15.99 US/$17.99 CAN
Ebook $9.99 US/$11.99 CAN

Robin Yocum’s A Brillian Death was probably my favorite book last year.  He returns with another tale of murder in set in a rustbelt Ohio town.  A Brilliant Death was a coming of age story wrapped in a murder mystery.  As such, the profanity and sexual content were pretty minimal; its content would not be inappropriate for younger readers.  This one deals with what happens when the dreams of youth and high school turn to disappointment and death.  The content in A Welcome Murder is much more raw than that of A Brilliant Death and may not be appropriate for readers under twenty-one eighteen.

The books are both well written, with compelling stories that knocked all other reading commitments aside, but they are told in such different ways that I was quite impressed with Yocum’s versatility and range.  Permit me to elaborate. Continue reading →

Be Careful or You’ll Get Snatched

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Snatched
Gregory Mcdonald
in Snatch
Hard Case Crime
Trade Paper $12.95 US $17.50 CAN
ebook $7.99

Snatched is the first of two kidnapping novels by the late Gregory Mcdonald in the latest omnibus from Hard Case Crime, Snatch.

It’s a…What’s that?…No, that’s not what the book is about.  Try to keep your mind out of the gutter….Yes, I have to admit you do have a point.  I can see how putting a picture of a voluptuous redhead wearing only a sheet and the corner of a newspaper on the cover of a book entitled Snatch might be a bit misleading…May I continue?…Thank you.

As I was saying…what was I saying?  Oh, yes.  This isn’t a dark noir novel, but it’s not exactly a light humorous novel either.  Here’s the setup. Continue reading →

Trouble in Brighton

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latewhitsuncoverLate Whitsun
Jasper Kent
paperback $9.99
ebook $2.99

I really liked the first three volumes of Jasper Kent’s The Danilov Quintet, which I consider to be a  thinking man’s vampire hunter. The last two volumes haven’t been published in the US, so I’ve not read them yet.  Emphasis on “yet”.  You can read my reviews here, here, and here.

With Late Whitsun, Kent turns his attention to the historical mystery.  Set in Brighton in 1938, the novel concerns Charlie Woolf.  He’s a sometimes private investigator who earns a meager living by making sketches for the tourists.

When he’s approached by his former partner, Alan O’Connor, and asked to act as a courier, it’s a chance to earn some easy money.  All he has to do is take an envelope to London and give it to a man by a certain bench in a certain park at a certain time.

Of course it’s not that easy.  The envelope contains incriminating photos.  The man he meets is wearing a gas mask.  And when Charlie returns home, there’s a surprise waiting for him in his apartment. Continue reading →

Moonchasers by Ed Gorman

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moonchasers-ebookMoonchasers and Other Stories
Ed Gorman
ebook $3.99

This isn’t a review of the whole book, just the short novel that’s the title story. I’ll read the rest of the stories throughout the autumn and into the Christmas holidays. We lost Ed Gorman this past weekend, or at least that’s when the news of his passing became public. As of this writing, I’ve not seen formal obituary with the exact date of death.

I’ve had a print copy of Moonchasers for years, but I’ve only read a few of the stories in it and none recently.  So after hearing of Ed’s passing, I wanted to read some of his work.  I chose Moonchasers because I had always wanted to read it.  It was the perfect story for the mood I was in.  Continue reading →