FFB: Fire Will Freeze – Margaret Millar

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Forgotten Books, Margaret Millar

It’s Margaret Millar week on Forgotten Books this week and my submission is this 1987 Crime Classics edition of the novel originally published in 1944.

You’ve seen this before. A group of people stuck in an isolated spot and they start dying. An assorted group: a young couple run off to get married, she not quite cut Mother’s apron strings. A middle-aged married couple, she not at all happy about the ski trip, let alone being stranded. A poet and his benefactor, a rich woman used to waving money around and getting what she wanted. A father and his college daughter, she with just enough education to be sure of her pronouncements on human behavior. And two singles: Isobel Seton, a thirtyish woman and Charles Crawford, a middle-aged man who on in the book cheerfully admits Crawford isn’t his real name and Isobel has already noticed a clink when he bumps the bus that tells her he probably has a gun in his pocket.

Here’s the set-up:

This group of folks are on a bus headed toward a ski lodge up in the Canadian Mountains. The bus breaks down, in this case one of the snow chains snaps. The driver gets off to fix it and it takes fifteen minutes before anyone notices he’s disappeared. One passenger tries to crank the bus and the engine is dead.

They get off to follow the footprints while they are still visible. A blizzard has started up. The trail leads to an old mansion and two shots are fired over their heads before Charles Crawford waves and hollers.

There appears to be only two people and a cat in the three story mansion. Miss Frances Rudd and her nurse, a competent looking woman named Floraine. Miss Rudd, called imaginative by Floraine, nutty by the others in short orde,r is the owner of the house. Her family doesn’t want her institutionalized.

Floraine doesn’t want them in the house. “There’s no food and not much fuel to heat the house. You will have to leave in the morning.” She claims to know nothing of the bus driver.

The third floor has been closed for years, the locks and doorknob are rusty, the seams around the door puttied shut. Bedrooms are on the second floor. The power goes out, “the diesel generator acts up often.”

As things quiet down for the night, Isobel Seton takes the opportunity to borrow a flashlight and look around. Contrary to what the nurse said, she finds plenty of food and a bin loaded with coal.

And she finds something else.

A jacket and hat, the bus driver’s name on the jacket, the bus line emblem on the hat.

The next thing is a scream from one of the passengers. She’d found the cat on her bed, it’s throat cut. They’d heard an earlier argument between Miss Rudd and Floraine about a pair of scissors. Miss Rudd is locked in her room.

The crowning end to the night is a scream that wakes the house and Floraine turns up missing. The house is searched and she can’t be found.

Margaret keeps the reader guessing and throws in a number of twists that keep one off-balance. Those twist go all the way to the end . This was my first exposure to Millar’s writing. Hopefully more will follow now that I’ve got a taste.

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May 2012 Book Round-Up

102: CR: Never Live Twice – Dan J. Marlowe

103: TH: The Third Gate – Lincoln Child

104: WE: The Dangerous Days of Kiowa Jones – Clifton Adams

105: WE: The Family Jensen: The Violent Land – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

106: TH: Bloodman – Robert Pobi

107: HR: Kolchak, The Night Stalker: The Lost World – C. J. Henderson

108: CR: Whom Gods Destroy – Clifton Adams

109: TH: Spy Hunt In Dixie(ebook) – Max Connelly

110: CR: Lady, Go Die! – Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

111: WE: The Lone Ranger: Vendetta – Howard Hopkins

112: SP: Arctic Wargame(ebook) – Ethan Jones

113: CR: Crosscut – Jude Hardin

114: TH: Getting Dunn – Tom Schreck

115: CR: One Endless Hour – Dan J. Marlowe

116: TH: The Last Refuge – Ben Coes

117: CR: King City(ebook) _ Lee Goldberg

118: WE: Bodie: Trackdown(ebook) – Neil Hunter

119: HR: The Dead Man: Freaks Must Die(ebook) – Joel Goodman

120: SF: The Wind Through The Keyhole – Stephen King

121: CR: Fire Will Freeze – Margaret Millar

122: PU: Beat To A Pulp: Round 2 – edited by David Cranmer & Matthew P. Mayo

123: CR: The Lost Ones – Ace Atkins

May 2012 Movie Round-Up

The Last of The Mohicans(1920)

They Won’t Remember(1937)

Gun Belt(1953)

The Dangerous Days of Kiowa Jones(1966)

The Night Strangler(1973)

I Am Omega(2007)

Concert of The Week: The Who

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The Who

Keith Moon had passed a few years before the Who came into the area. Kenney Jones was drumming for them by the time I caught the show. Entwhistle is gone now and the band is a pale shadow of what they once were.

One amusing bit I read recently, it may have been a link on Bill’s blog, I don’t remember, organizers of London’s Summer Olympics reached out to the Who management, asking them to prevail upon Moon to rejoin his band mates for the opening ceremonies. Now THAT would be a hell of a show. It just shows how clueless these people are. They know little, and probably care less, about rock music. They just want something to attract people to the show, whether it be television or in stadium.

Still, it was a great concert back then.

New King Coming From Hard Case

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Hard Case crime, Stephen King

New Stephen King Novel Coming
from Hard Case Crime

JOYLAND to be published in June 2013

New York, NY; London, UK (May 30, 2012) – Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of pulp-styled crime novels published by Titan Books, today announced it will publish JOYLAND, a new novel by Stephen King, in June 2013. Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, JOYLAND tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever. JOYLAND is a brand-new book and has never previously been published. One of the most beloved storytellers of all time, Stephen King is the world’s best-selling novelist, with more than 300 million books in print.

Called “the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade” by Neal Pollack in The Stranger, Hard Case Crime revives the storytelling and visual style of the pulp paperbacks of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The line features an exciting mix of lost pulp masterpieces from some of the most acclaimed crime writers of all time and gripping new novels from the next generation of great hardboiled authors, all with new painted covers in the grand pulp style. Authors range from modern-day bestsellers such as Pete Hamill, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block and Ed McBain to Golden Age stars like Mickey Spillane (creator of “Mike Hammer”), Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of “Perry Mason”), Wade Miller (author of Touch of Evil), and Cornell Woolrich (author of Rear Window).

Stephen King commented, “I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.”

King’s previous Hard Case Crime novel, The Colorado Kid, became a national bestseller and inspired the television series “Haven,” now going into its third season on SyFy.

“Joyland is a breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book,” said Charles Ardai, Edgar- and Shamus Award-winning editor of Hard Case Crime. “It’s a whodunit, it’s a carny novel, it’s a story about growing up and growing old, and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their time. Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved. When I finished it, I sent a note saying, ‘Goddamn it, Steve, you made me cry.’ ”

Nick Landau, Titan Publisher, added: “Stephen King is one of the fiction greats, and I am tremendously proud and excited to be publishing a brand-new book of his under the Hard Case Crime imprint.”

JOYLAND will feature new painted cover art by the legendary Robert McGinnis, the artist behind the posters for the original Sean Connery James Bond movies and “Breakfast At Tiffany’s,” and by Glen Orbik, the painter of more than a dozen of Hard Case Crime’s most popular covers, including the cover for The Colorado Kid.

Since its debut in 2004, Hard Case Crime has been the subject of enthusiastic coverage by a wide range of publications including The New York Times, USA Today, Time, Playboy, U.S. News & World Report, BusinessWeek, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Houston Chronicle, New York magazine, the New York Post and Daily News, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Parade and USA Weekend, as well as numerous other magazines, newspapers, and online media outlets. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Hard Case Crime is doing a wonderful job publishing both classic and contemporary ‘pulp’ novels in a crisp new format with beautiful, period-style covers. These modern ‘penny dreadfuls’ are worth every dime.” Playboy praised Hard Case Crime’s “lost masterpieces,” writing “They put to shame the work of modern mystery writers whose plots rely on cell phones and terrorists.” And the Philadelphia City Paper wrote, “Tired of overblown, doorstop-sized thrillers…? You’ve come to the right place. Hard Case novels are as spare and as honest as a sock in the jaw.”

Other upcoming Hard Case Crime titles include The Cocktail Waitress, a never-before-published novel by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity, and an epic first novel called The Twenty-Year Death by Ariel S. Winter that has won advance raves from authors such as Peter Straub, James Frey, Alice Sebold, John Banville, David Morrell and Stephen King.

For information about these and other forthcoming titles, visit www.HardCaseCrime.com.

About Hard Case Crime

Founded in 2004 by award-winning novelists Charles Ardai and Max Phillips, Hard Case Crime has been nominated for or won numerous honors since its inception including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Anthony, the Barry, and the Spinetingler Award. The series’ books have been adapted for television and film, with two features currently in development at Universal Pictures and the TV series “Haven” going into its third season this fall on SyFy. Hard Case Crime is published through a collaboration between Winterfall LLC and Titan Publishing Group.

About Titan Publishing Group

Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981, comprising three divisions: Titan Books, Titan Magazines/Comics and Titan Merchandise. Titan Books, recently nominated as Independent Publisher of the Year 2011, has a rapidly growing fiction list encompassing original fiction and reissues, primarily in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror, steampunk and crime. Recent crime and thriller acquisitions include Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins’ all-new Mike Hammer novels, the Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton and the entire backlist of the Queen of Spy Writers, Helen MacInnes. Titan Books also has an extensive line of media and pop culture-related non-fiction, graphic novels, art and music books. The company is based at offices in London, but operates worldwide, with sales and distribution in the US and Canada being handled by Random House. www.titanbooks.com

Beat To A Pulp: Round 2

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Beat To A Pulp. David Cranmer, Matthew P.Mayo

Twenty-nine tales in the old pulp style offered up in this new book from BEAT TO A PULP press. They run the gamut from SF to westerns to crime to horror, not to mention a splash of mix along the way. David Cranmer and Matthew P. Mayo have produced another winner.

I’m not going to list all the stories here, just a few favorites:

LOST VALLEY OF THE SKOOCOOM by Matthew P. Mayo, a Bigfoot tale.

THE QUICK…AND THE DEAD by Bill Crider, a really weird zombie tale.

SKYLER HOBBS AND THE COTTINGLEY FAIRIES by Evan Lewis: our hero mixes it up with some real life terrors.

THE LAKE BOTTOM BONES: a short story by Wayne Dundee featuring Joe Hannibal.

A WORLD YOU DON’T KNOW: James Reasoner got me going on this one.

I’d read Ed Gorman’s THE OLD WAYS somewhere down the line. A good one though.

Larry D Sweazy takes his Texas Rangers down the generations for SHADOW OF THE CROW, a story set squarely in the middle of the pulp era.

Make no mistake though. All the stories in this volume were good, tough reads that I found myself having trouble stopping until I hit the end.

And an article on pulp art by Cullen Gallagher where he gives a bit of history on the development of pulp cover and where it might be headed these days. He mentions some favorite artists, while at the same time forcing himself to stop because it could go on forever.

I know the feeling.

If one likes hard-hitting stories, grab this one.

Movies That Need To Be Overlooked: Curse of The Swamp Creature(1966)

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John Agar, Overlooked Movies

The author is back once again with a public service post. Yes, I’ve taken another bullet for the team as I’ve found a new competitor for the all time worst movie ever made. I found one reviewer that claimed this one made PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE look like Citizen Kane by comparison. He may not have been wrong.

How John Agar ever got hooked up with this mess I’ll never understand. perhaps he needed the money. He plays geologist Barry Rogers. He’s to meet Driscoll West in a small hole in the wall and be lead to an area deep in the swamps where surface evidence of oil is to be found. At the beginning of the movie Driscoll West is hitting on a woman, Brenda Simmons, in a bar called the Fish ‘N’ Fly. All she and the bartender are doing is distracting him while a cohort, a young man named Ritchie, is rifling his room for maps to the location of this oil. They want to find this “treasure” so they can get out of this burg. West breaks away for some reason, returns, and catches the kid in his room. A fight breaks out and Ritchie pulls a big knife and kills him. No blood anywhere of course.

And Ritchie says, “He shouldn’t have tried to stop me.” In old parlance, Ritchie is not the sharpest knife in the drawer., a can short of a six pack, the elevator doesn’t go all
the way to the top floor. He thinks he has a “thing” for Brenda Simmons. Or rather that she does for him.

Now the plan becomes Brenda is Mrs. West, Mitchell was ill and couldn’t come, and they await the arrival of Rogers. The body is gotten rid of, chopped to bits by a logging device(not to worry, the actor gets to return later in the film as the swamp creature).

Agar arrives in a small plane, landing on a dirt road and pulling into the parking lot of the Fish ‘N’ Fly. Hey, we’re deep in the backwater here. You didn’t really expect an airfield did you?

Our troop sets off with their guide, Rabbit Simms, in a boat. A word here about two of the actors. They may have been married. Both those that played Brenda and Rabbit had the last name of McLine, Shirley and Charles. We get about a minute and a half of scenes of them plowing different waterways, one assumes to show how deep they were getting into the swamp. Then they had to go on foot from there and we get scenes of them hacking their way through brush with a machete. A word about Brenda’s clothing. She wore a big safari hat, a jacket and pants, and boots, all snow white and we never, at any time of their slogging through the swamp, see any dirt or muddy water on her outfit.

Then there’s the mad scientist of this piece. Dr. Simond Trent(Jeff Alexander). He’s investigating human evolution, believing in the theory that humans were descended from reptiles and not mammals. Never mind that we have no characteristics of reptiles and so many of mammals. He’s working on a process to reverse evolution and he’s using the people of the swamps for his experiments. Here is another hilarious direction. The film is supposed to be set in the swamps of Texas, yet the black folks are referred to as natives, worship snakes, do the snake dance(a stupid looking jumping around, arms waving). As these “natives” get restless toward the end of the picture, there’s a constant back beat of African sounding drums.

The doctor has a wife, played by the lovely Francine York, that he keeps locked in a room. She’s terrified of him and thinks he’s become a little crazy.

Our crew arrives at the doctor’s abode. Here, deep in the swamp you remember, we have a house straight out of suburbia with a neatly trimmed lawn and bushes. A swimming pool in back with a greenhouse built over it holds a bunch of gators that he dumps his failures and the several murders that happen. He stands on the diving board and drops them in, but it’s obviously stock footage of gators in streams they show chomping on white sheets.

The Doctor’s, I guess you might call him head of security, is an older black man named Valjean. He is really a witch doctor type, wearing robes and a really ugly mask for the climactic scenes of the snake dance and urging his people to extract revenge on the doctor for the evil he’s brought on them. Watching from concealment is our boy Ritchie, brought there by Tracker, another of the Doctor’s staff, and he decides to have a little “fun” with the young black woman doing the dance when things break up. We know what will happen when Tracker warns him to watch out for the quicksand(here you go, Bill). As he ends up sinking to his help, he begs for help from the young woman, his voice never getting above a low monotone.

The Doctor’s wife has spoiled his latest experiment, an assistant who “volunteered” his services for science. He takes Brenda Simmons from her bed and says she’s perfect for the next stage. The latest protocols provide instant transformation.

As in all good monster movies, I use the term good here loosely, the “natives” descend on the compound, the doctor’s monster emerges, he urging it to kill them, and John Agar rescues the beautiful wife while the monster turns on the good doctor and take both into the pool full of gators(Bill would love that part), flying off together at the end in his little plane.

CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE was directed by Larry Buchanan, who seems to have something of a reputation, though I never heard of him. The location shooting is listed as Uncertain, Texas, USA. Some of the music played as background, the recording pretty low level, would seem more at home at times in a porn film. The acting is pretty abysmal throughout the film. Even Agar seemed to be going through the motions. This sanp of one of the actors might give you an idea just how bad.

If there are those among you that have a “stupid” streak like me, here’s a link to this classic. Enjoy.

For more, and better, overlooked movies, drop in Tuesdays on Todd Mason over at his blog, SWEET FREEDOM.

Remember…

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Memorial Day

All those folks serving, those who have served, and most especially those who gave their lives in defense of our country and us.

New In The House

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New In The House

A dry week this time around. Last week, every used book I’d ordered, at different times of course, all landed in the mailbox during the same week. At this point, the only uncompleted order is one pre-order from Subterranean Press and that is a few months down the road. Next week will be a bit better as I know of two ARCs that will arrive. There’s a couple of more promised, when they get more in house, but haven’t heard anything lately on that front. It could be they’ve forgotten. Who knows?

King City – Lee Goldberg

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crime, Lee Goldberg

Tom Wade had committed an unpardonable sin. He’d worked with Federal authorities to expose corruption in the King City police force. It made him a pariah and, if the chief could have worked it without repercussions, it would have gotten him fired. As it was, it got him a “lateral” transfer to the Marvin Gardens side of town. It also cost him his marriage.

The worst part of King City, forgotten by all but the people who lived there. A lot of good people, a lot of bad people, none with any faith in law enforcement. The Chief hoped he’d quit over it.

He didn’t understand Tom Wade at all.

A new substation in a former porn movie store, two rookies shunted off on him, and a promise of no back-up. Ever. They were on their own.

Tom went at it with a will. The police needed respect from both the good people and the bad.

The first week he gets a dead body, a young woman killed elsewhere and dumped, and a series of murdered women, all shot over the past couple of years.

Lee Goldberg has created a memorable character here, the loner with a sense of value that can’t be compromised, and put him in a pretty good novel. One hopes it will lead to more down the road. KING CITY can be ordered here. Lee, along with his writing partner William Rabkin is also the creator of the DEAD MAN series, another worth checking out if you like adventure/horror tales.