Sun 23 Nov 2014
A Movie Review by David Vineyard: SUSAN SLEPT HERE (1954).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews[29] Comments
SUSAN SLEPT HERE. RKO Radio Pictures, 1954. Dick Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Anne Francis, Glenda Farrell, Alvy Moore, Horace McMahon, Les Tremayne. Screenplay by Alex Gottlieb, based on his play with Steve Fisher Directed by Frank Tashlin.
This surprisingly open sex farce squeaks by for inclusion on this blog because it stars a former Philip Marlowe, Honey West, and is based on a play co-written by Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming) — and yes, it as about as tentative as a connection to this site as I could find, but I came up with one anyway. You don’t have to buy it, just accept it.
I don’t think you could sell this one today or make it, but somehow with Dick Powell and Debbie Reynolds and narrated by Powell’s screenwriter character’s Oscar, this one skates all over its premise, never quite going too far or letting you really consider what is going on here.
Powell is Mark Christopher, screenwriter and novelist, whose career is headed south for the pole in double time. On Christmas Eve his cop pal Horace MacMahon shows up on his doorstep with juvenile delinquent Susan Landis, Debbie Reynolds, in tow. Christopher once considered writing a movie about a JD, maybe if he spends the evening with her he’ll get some ideas.
Ideas he gets. Not for a screenplay, though.
Powell is none too happy, but he can’t throw her back in reform school on Christmas Eve, so after they calm her down a bit, he arranges for his secretary Maud, Glenda Farrell (keep an eye out for Red Skelton in a cameo as her long lost boyfriend Oswald — “You’ll get another Oscar, I get an Oswald”), to keep her, but Maud is on a bender, and his old Navy pal Virgil, Alvy Moore, who was his lieutenant in the war, leaves him in the lurch. His fiancee Isabella, Anne Francis, isn’t the forgiving sort either when Susan answers his phone.
After a night that includes a long gin game, an uncomfortable couch and Susan sleeping with a rolling pen under her pillow in his bedroom, Powell calls in lawyer Les Tremayne with the bright idea of marrying Susan — she has a paper from her mother in Peru on her honeymoon allowing her to marry — to keep her out of reform school. Of course in name only. When she is 18 and safe in four months, they’ll get her an annulment, some money, and a job.
So it’s off to Vegas, and a honeymoon night spent on the dance floor, and the next morning Mark takes off to work in Sun Valley as Hurricane Isabella hits. Susan plans to leave, but Maud persuades her to take some motherly advice.
Maud: I typed the script for “Stella Dallas.”
So Susan stays and spider lady Isabella gets thrown out, though she’s not through.
Mark can’t get a divorce because they never consummated the marriage and Susan lets his lawyer know in no uncertain terms Mark can’t have an annulment, but he can a divorce. Then she very publicly lets everyone think she is pregnant and Mark assumes it was Virgil.
Then his lawyer’s analyst convinces him that he’s in love with Susan.
Doctor: You seem to be a delinquent husband.
Of course the age difference does come up, a determined Mark no match for an even more determined Susan.
Susan and Mark together: I’ll (You’ll) never be over 30.
As Virgil informs him: You accidentally married the right girl.
Of course Reynolds had a career at this point as the sexy wholesome outspoken but practical virgin (Tammy) and film makers of the era were experts at the tease, but this one teases hard with a difficult subject, and it could go so wrong so easily and doesn’t.
Other than Cary Grant, I can’t think of any actor by Powell who could bring this off half so well.
I suppose some one will find this offensive, but this is Hollywood and not the real world, a romantic comedy, and not a police blotter or a case for a social worker. Lighten up, recognize this has no connection to reality, and enjoy some fine players, finely playing their assigned rolls.
This was Powell’s last film, and ironically includes a musical fantasy sequence from Susan’s dream, though he doesn’t croon. Don Cornell does the only song in the film other than the brief title song (“So This is the Kingdom of Heaven”). It’s fitting Powell that should go back to his roots for his last screen outing. He even wears a sailor suit in the fantasy sequence.
To give this full credit, maybe no one in the world but Debbie Reynolds and Dick Powell could have pulled off how sexy this film is without offending anyone, and Frank Tashlin is one of the few directors who could have brought it off. (Tashlin had a great touch with humor and sex for someone who started out directing cartoons and made his live screen debut with Bob Hope and Trigger in Son of Paleface.)
Susan Slept Here is bright, funny, sexy, gorgeous to look at, and deftly done at all points. Reynolds and Francis are at their most attractive and it is always fun to see Francis get a shot at comedy, something she was quite adept at. There is a very funny and at the same time sexy scene when teen Susan compares herself to Francis’s sexy photo and tries to rearrange things to better recreate it. It’s a perfect showcase for what Reynolds did better than almost anyone else. It’s fine and funny final nod to the medium for Powell, and its nice to see Farrell still funny and sassy this late in the game.
It’s the kind of thing Rock Hudson and Doris Day would later do to great success, but lacking in the rather tasteless sniggering attitude to sex of those films.
November 23rd, 2014 at 1:55 pm
I don’t know if you think the ratio of movie to book reviews is out of whack on this blog, but I kind of do. While I’m away from home as I am now, I can’t do much about it, as I’ve been restricted to what’s on hand or what I prepared ahead of time. I’ll be back tomorrow, and there will be more book reviews in the offing, once I’m caught up again.
I’ll also work on cleaning up some of the images I’ve been using. I’ve had to improvise while I haven’t had access to my Photoshopping software, and that’s another task I’ll work on once I’m back in my usual routine again.
David began this review by apologizing for the lack of connection of this review with the intended focus of this blog, and I liked the links he came up with. I used to do the same whenever I posted something that wasn’t mystery related, but I finally gave up the pretense. What’s posted here is anything that interests me, nothing more nor anything less.
November 23rd, 2014 at 3:52 pm
I haven’t seen this since 1954, when I was 12 or 13, but I remember it pretty well. I thought it was swell.
November 23rd, 2014 at 3:59 pm
It must have been on TCM at one time, since I remember watching the first 20 minutes and enjoying it, but I had to leave without having set the DVR so I could watch it later, and the first 20 minutes are all I’ve ever seen.
November 23rd, 2014 at 3:59 pm
It is one of Tashlin’s most pleasing and accessible films — for those put off by some of his manic silliness. Me. As for David’s review, I agree with every word but one observation disturbs — that it would not be made today. There is nothing smutty, or vulgar, in this production. Just meet cute for apparently inappropriate folks. From t hat point of view, making a prostitute the heroine of Pretty Woman, or a similar offender, dressed up as Barbara Stanwyck’s shop lifter in Remember The Night, makes it clear, to me at least, that these stories are always filmable, with the power of pc thought police replacing the predictable and often commercially constructive, if silly, Breen office of days gone by.
November 23rd, 2014 at 6:15 pm
Barry
I meant it could not be made today as a light frothy comedy. Today it would be a serious study of pedophilia with a heavy handed message — at best it would get the LOLITA treatment. I don’t mean they could not physically make it (it would be ideal for Clooney) but that the protestors, talking heads, and moral outrage would not be worth the effort. I can think of a dozen groups from the right and left that would crucify anyone making this story this way.
November 24th, 2014 at 12:31 am
For what it’s worth, here’s a link to a contemporaneous review in the NEW YORK TIMES:
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E02E0D71438E23BBC4850DFB166838F649EDE
November 24th, 2014 at 12:53 am
Typical TIMES review, Steve, arch, snide, and bitchy, clever but useless. Great paper but most of the critics in this era were jerks.
November 24th, 2014 at 3:56 pm
I generally have to go back to the past to review books here because I frankly don’t run across many new mysteries that I am that impressed with. Much of the genre suffers from television drama plotting and while I read a good hard boiled, crime, or suspense novel once in a while it has been forever since I read anything I consider to be an actual detective story even when the protagonist is an amateur sleuth.
Between romantic suspense and the cozies detection and mystery are in distant third place to sex or whatever the hero/heroine of the cozy does other than detection. If I pretty much know who did it and how as soon as the murder is done I don’t find most of them well enough written to continue just so I can find out if the quilt gets finished in time for the fair.
I would like to review more new books but saying Bah Humbug! becomes redundant, and how many different ways can you say that the writers have no concept of suspense or mystery story construction and TV series shorthand doesn’t work in a novel where there is no restraint but the writers imagination.
It isn’t that there is nothing good or interesting, but more often than not it is on the edge of the genre or in the literary thriller category. The day when you could go to the mystery section and have a good chance of finding something good by someone you don’t know seems over. I’m just not willing to experiment at todays prices when I have been disappointed so often.
Sorry for the tirade, but I suspect I’m not in the minority on this here. You would think someone would have at least come up with a decent vampire or werewolf detective.
November 25th, 2014 at 8:17 pm
No need to apologize. Very few crime novels written today have more than a nodding acquaintance to either mystery or detection fiction, as we used to know it. Like yourself, I sample a few. but when even the most highly touted bestsellers (Catherine Coulter’s latest, for example) have sentences that don’t make sense and/or contradictory statements three pages apart (that used to be a clue in John Dickson Carr novels, but not anymore) I just know that they’re no longer writing books for me.
Another problem is how long mysteries are today, creeping up on 400 pages as a norm. I don’t have time. It’s easier to watch a 60 to 75 minute movie and write up some comments on it than it is to spend three weeks reading a book that’s over 300 pages long, and having to go back and re=read ten pages every time you have to put it down and catch up again later.
You say and I really enjoyed this sentence:
“If I pretty much know who did it and how as soon as the murder is done I don’t find most of them well enough written to continue just so I can find out if the quilt gets finished in time for the fair.”
Not only that but every cozy I’ve tried to read lately, including some possible choices while standing in Barnes & Noble, comes with a detective with a good friend and her good friends, an ex-boy friend, a current maybe yes maybe no boy friend, usually on some kind of police force, and the parents and or children of all of them, all introduced in the first 12 pages, well it goes right back on the shelf.
And if either quilts or cats are involved, forget it altogether.
November 25th, 2014 at 10:25 pm
No cats unless its the North’s Martini — every rule has an exception.
Another thing I’ve noticed that when I do find a decent detective or suspense novel it is usually in hardcover or trade paperback but virtually never in mass market paperbacks anymore. I don’t know when I’ve read a good new mystery in mass market paperback (well some at HARD CASE but that’s a specialty and I’m speaking in general)
As for the writing there are several causes. To begin with, you have people writing who don’t appear to read, or at least not deeply. Unless they are imitating someone like Chandler or Macdonald, I see no sense that they enjoy or care about language and voice, and dialogue reads as if it was written for a Middle School play.
You cannot write good novels if all you know of writing is movies and television. Writers who mastered both genres like William Goldman and his brother James tended to be educated and well read. They did not grow up on a fare of nothing more challenging than TV series drama. Even if you watch really good TV drama it won’t translate to good novels if you don’t know books themselves.
No one good ever wrote in a vacuum without multiple influences.
I look at today at Cussler, Rollins, Berry, McDermott, and many of the other thriller writers, and while I enjoy some of them I don’t reread them the way I did (and do) Ambler, Greene, Hammond Innes, Household, Canning, Alan MacKinnon, P.M. Hubbard, or for that matter Dick Francis, Lawrence Block, Westlake, or John D..
And the problem is the writing, because frankly they can’t write a good line. I don’t know when I’ve read a modern book with a line comparable to Chandler comparing LA to a Dixie cup, or even Fleming explaining it reads better than it lives.
Writing like that has a life of its own. It breathes, it comes off the page and catches you by the collar and demands to be paid attention to.
Though only borderline in the genre I’ve been rereading Simon Raven, both the stand alones and the Alms For Oblivion series and there is nothing like it today, his icy, sharp, funny, bitter, gossipy, even bitchy voice very much one out of his life, education, and observational skills.
I don’t know when I’ve read a book I’ve felt was keenly observed in popular literature. Even if they are writing cozies they should have as savage an eye for observation as Agatha Christie did in the Miss Marple tales (I’ve always thought Jane was probably considerably tougher than Mike Hammer if it came down to brass tacks). Writing a cozy or romantic suspense is no excuse for fuzzy writing, thinking, or excessive cuteness.
One reason I am working on the Maxim Gunn series now with Nicholas Boving is that we both appreciate a well crafted sentence, a memorable passage, there is no reason to sacrifice that for cinematic. I can think of dozens of writers who managed both in the past. Thriller or not I would still like the reader to feel.
Today it seems too often the worse you write the more you will sell. There were always prolix or artless writers on the bestseller lists, but they were often great storytellers like Irving Wallace or Harold Robbins, and when you are complaining no one comes up to Harold Robbins standards, writers should be hanging their heads in collective shame.
There are obviously good writers now, I’ve reviewed a few, mentioned others, but the quality has gone down in general. I’m not sure today you could find enough young writers with the talent to do the equivalent of the Gold Medal line. It’s not that there aren’t any MacDonald’s — there aren’t any Prathers, Hamiltons, Stephen Marlowe’s, Dan Marlowe’s, Peter Rabe’s, or even Philip Atlee’s, or if there are they aren’t putting pen to paper.
This isn’t true across the board. There are some highly literate and gifted science fiction writers now — particularly the Brit new Space Opera lot like Alistair Reynolds or Peter Hamilton, but the mystery/thriller genre seems in the doldrums. What was once my favorite genre is now the section of the book store I visit last and which I seldom find anything I want to read in that isn’t a reprint.
November 26th, 2014 at 2:08 am
Once in a while — but infrequently — I am pleasantly surprised. Liza Marklund is a good storyteller and a clever plotter. Then there is the wonderful world of Fred Vargas, which gets a bit repetitive at times but is excellent and engrossing at its best.
And most of all there are the brilliant thrillers of Deon Meyer, whom I regard as the greatest living thriller writer (of those I’ve read). Perhaps one simply needs to look outside U.S. national boundaries!
November 26th, 2014 at 2:40 pm
David A.
Glad to know you found some current authors whose work you enjoy reading. I don’t know Deon Meyer and will have to look for more about him. Tastes differ, though. I tried a Fred Vargas novel and quit about half way through. It just got too strange in the way it was going for me. I don’t know but maybe it’s the general economic malaise in Europe, but I find almost all European crime fiction to be too dark and gloomy for me to even ope them up. I read the Lisbeth Salander trilogy and enjoyed all three, but those were the last three from Europe I was pleased with when I’d finished them. Louise Penny gets a lot of accolades, but after I read one, I wondered what the fuss was all about.
November 26th, 2014 at 2:37 am
You certainly could not find enough writers with the talent to publish an equivalent of the Gold Medal line in any of its genres, and I include the Western here, because I have a particular interest.
Writers, young or old, have no enouragement to write Gold Medal style material. The big publishers haven’t been interested in tightly paced genre fiction for ages. And maybe that’s because enough readers haven’t either.
Some genre writers have looked to the ebook for a way out. But even this answer doesn’t work other than for a few. You apparently have to be prepared to price ebooks of equivalent length to the old “mass-market” paperbacks at no more than 99 cents. Having bought an e-reader, it seems Joe and Jane Citizen believe they are entitled to extra-low book prices for life, even if that also means mainly low quality, author-published fiction.
At least one respected reviewer of Westerns has compared the Chap O’Keefe books, originally published in library editions, to the Gold Medal paperbacks. But as ebooks at a surely inexpensive $2.99 they are hard to sell.
Earlier this month, I released another Kindle ebook of one of my western titles, The Lawman and the Songbird, after revising and re-formatting it and providing a new cover. So far it has sold ONLY TWO DOWNLOADS, despite being favorably reviewed and featured on four different blogs or websites. Reissuing a backlist title generally involves no more than two or three days’ work, but at my stage of life, I’d prefer not to work at all if I’m going to earn only $4 for the time and effort.
Ghost Town Belles, set to come out as an ebook on December 24, has so far received no Amazon pre-orders whatsoever, despite its “highly recommended” line for the library editions from Midwest Book Review.
Keith (Chapman aka Chap O’Keefe)
November 26th, 2014 at 3:00 pm
Chap
Thanks for the long detailed account of how the ebook business is going, or not, as far as you are concerned. Four dollars? I kind of suspected that selling ebooks is not all that it’s cracked up to be but I didn’t know it was that bad.
I don’t know what the answer, but if I were to hazard a guess, I suspect that the people who might want to buy one of your westerns are the same people like me who don’t have a Kindle, don’t want one, and I suspect will never have one. If you could self-publish paperback copies of your books at a price in the five or six dollar range, I’d buy them all, and every other western published by Robert Hale in the UK. They all sound interesting, but in hardcover they’re way too pricey.
I know westerns are a tough sell to anyone under fifty or so, so maybe writers in other fields are doing better. Or maybe the guys selling ebooks at 99 cents each are selling thousands of them. It’s more than I know anything about.
November 26th, 2014 at 3:10 pm
Chap
Just so you know, I’ve just purchased a copy of The Lawman and the Songbird in hardcover from Amazon for $5.26 plus shipping. It’s an ex-library copy, so I know you’re not making any money on it, but it was the description that sold me:
“Pinkerton detective Joshua Dillard went undercover to a lawless Montana boom-town peopled by avaricious gold prospectors, ruthless bandits, fancy-pants rogues, and scheming dance-hall girls. In Cox City, he set his sights on arrogant, skull-faced Blackie Dukes and his bunch. But Alvin “Aces” Axford’s safe at the Magnet saloon was robbed right under Joshua’s nose. Who had spirited away Axford’s haul of gold? Joshua had to buy that plucky songstress Kate Thompson had double-crossed the dangerous Dukes gang, luring him into a futile dance in a raging blizzard across the Bitterroot Mountains. It was one of luckless Joshua’s most conspicuous failures. Not until seven years later did he return to Cox City, as town marshal. The time had come to solve the mysteries … and to lay the ghosts of failure with a blazing six-shooter!”
My kind of western, and a detective story, too.
November 26th, 2014 at 6:20 pm
Chap
Will look for the book, sounds great.
David A.
I read more European tec stories than American now, but they tend to be more novelistic and less detective stories per se. I don’t know Meyer (will look) and the Lisbeth Selender books were a rarity in any kind of fiction — something with the quality of the past married to an entirely new and startling idea.
I’m talking in general about a type of book that was common here, in England, and Europe when I started reading in the genre and writers as diverse as Stanley Ellin, Margaret Millar, Dorothy Dunnett, Dorothy Hughes, Charlotte Armstrong, and others as well as the big bestselling names like John D., Dick Francis, P.D.James, Ruth Rendell, and Ken Millar.
Don’t get me wrong, Max Collins, Bill Pronzini, Bill Crider, some of the Brits and many others are still writing and producing good books, but there was a period at least into the eighties when the field was crowded with good writers who were not writing generic genre fiction, writer with differing voices, backgrounds, and skills. Even the gothic craze was as diverse as Phyllis Whitney, Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, and Norah Lofts (not to mention Dorothy Daniels, Edwina Noone, and Madeline Brent — that’s a joke, they were all men).
I see many more westerns than mystery novels on the shelves at Walmart, maybe its the area I live in though. Stores like that don’t even have a mystery section, it is crowded in with the big thrillers, and as Steve said 400 + pages is generally too much for most mystery plots. I’m a fast reader so length doesn’t bother me, but padding does and too often what would have been a taut 70,000 word novel is a flabby 150,000 word novel or a solid 150,000 word novel turned into a literary sieve at 350,000 words.
Though I used Gold Medal as an example it was a type of book and writer very much of its time, when I spoke of doing it today I did not mean the specific type of fiction Gold Medal produced but the general idea of a publisher trying to produce a line of popular fiction of the same general quality that appealed to todays audience.
Juvenile fiction currently is the closest I can see to the kind of market that once existed, and while there is a sameness there are excellent writers in those fields like Anthony Horowitz, Eoin Golfer, and Rowling who produce entertaining and sometimes serious books. Frankly the best spy thriller series of the last twenty years other than Barry Eisler’s John Rain was Horowitz teen age Alex Rider.
Most new writers I encounter in real or e-book form simply cannot write. They are ignorant of syntax, they write clumsily, they use television and cinematic shorthand with cardboard characters out of central casting, their dialogue is pitiable, their attempts at black humor (or any humor) fall flat, and they suffer from what John Gardner (the American one) called dis-Pollyana, an unearned cynicism gathered from watching films or reading books and not from life. You cannot do film noir or write noir fiction from having watched noir movies on DVD — something has to come from the writers themselves — even if you have to dig deep to find it. Why do you think so many great writers are alcoholics? Happy content dull people write happy content dull books generally. Sanity, normality, and stability are not particularly rich characteristics for artists.
What I have against bestselling writer Lee Child is that his work is superficial, borrowed from the screen and other writers and shows no sign of experience or any relation to reality. His want to be Travis McGee is in reality a dangerous sociopath, which works with Dexter, but not Child.
In the past writers wrote from life experience in terms of voice even if they were writing fantasy. That gave their work depth you cannot get from experiencing life from a movie screen. Maybe the books were juvenile daydreams for overgrown boys, but they were the juvenile daydreams of overgrown boys who were well read, canny, intelligent, and understood that a book should mean more than something to wrap fish in after you’ve read it.
And as I said before todays writers are not deeply read and they seem unable to do more than superficial research. In a western they might tell you every detail of how a stagecoach was constructed, but they don’t seem able to convey the dust, heat or cold, inadequate suspension, and sheer discomfort of that mode of travel — because they only experience that as television or movie viewers and don’t have a deep enough connection to the genre to imagine it from life. In fact lack of imagination may be the major problem because as their experience comes from television and film they conceive everything in terms of those genres. Nothing in their books is any deeper than a screen.
I keep picking up books that have big set pieces in warehouses or on the docks — just like movies and television — but they do that in those media because those places are empty and cheap to film in. In books you could as easily have your shootout on the Eiffel Tower — they don’t because their imaginations only know what they see on screen.
Where cinema and television should expand your horizon and introduce you to different cultures and settings all they get from it is mental constipation.
You can’t write about London from having watched ALFIE or Paris because you saw THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS. You can’t watch a NASCAR race and recreate the tension and heat down in the pits or behind the wheel. You can’t even create a superhero just by watching a movie or TV series because the iconic ones came out of the lives of the creators and their exposure to myth, legend, and pulp fiction which in turn came from other sources.
The other day I picked up a book at the Dollar Store that billed itself as a mystery set in the Regency era. It was a romance book, but the set up sounded interesting, a proper school for young ladies that was a front for British spies. It sounded as if it would be fun — and it might have been if the author had bothered to know anything about the age other than they wore funny clothes. It was so anachronistic, the characters so stock, and the author knew so little she could not even use actual dates so that it read like a bad Big Little Book more than a novel.
To me that’s symptomatic of the problem in the genre today. Reading Georgette Heyer or Barbara Cartland (if they bothered to do that) or watching an old James Mason movie from the Gainesborogh Studios does not mean you are ready to write a book set in the Regency even if a publisher is dumb enough to buy it. Watching an episode of MURDER SHE WROTE on NCIS does not mean you understand enough to write a mystery novel, not a good one. Before you reject the past you need to at least know what you are rejecting. If you read Raymond Chandler’s letters and essays you quickly see he was well read in the kind of book he rebelled against.
Fine, many of the writers I complain of are bestsellers with huge audiences — but their books are read like bubble gum and they are not treasured and reread because even their audience knows they are nothing more than momentary distraction. They’ve turned books in Kleenex, disposable once you’ve used it.
Re-e-books
The Gunn series is in paperback and e-book form, and while its no great deal Nick has had some luck and his first six books are available in omnibus form in paperback, getting reprinted by someone other than yourself is a major achievement in self publishing. He has a little following which I hope I don’t kill off. I’m on Facebook (which I loathe) so I can promote the damn things. Even with a major publisher writers do much of their own promotion these days.
There is a big debate among writers and publishers about whether the price of e-books is too high. Frankly even though I am writing the damn things and wrote commercial e-books for advertising earlier I hesitate to pay close to $16 for a new book in electronic form.
It’s a different market, and the only way to bring in more readers is going to be to bring prices down where it draws in some of those readers Steve is talking about. I am very seldom willing to pay $6 or more for an e-book that is DRM’d and can’t even be transferred to another format or device. If something happens to my hard drive or I buy a new laptop I can’t download it to my new one without trying to get permission from where I bought it in the first place, the copy saved in backup will not reproduce from backup on DRM’d books and they are lost much more easily than actual books.
I would not buy a DVD that I could only watch one time on only one machine. I don’t know who would. There has to be a better way to protect creative rights than punishing the people who do buy your book.
November 26th, 2014 at 7:56 pm
Thank you, Steve, for running the blurb of The Lawman and the Songbird. I hope you’ll enjoy your ex-library copy and that the shipping cost wasn’t crippling. That’s the problem with your suggestion of paperbacks perhaps being better suited for Westerns. Reissues or originals, if you do POD paperbacks, getting them to your customers can be double the production cost. I tried a couple of originals through Lulu and would have lost money were it not for one of the Ulverscroft imprints buying the large-print rights, which also got the titles into the libraries.
David V,
As always, your wide knowledge impresses, and your opinions are mostly ones I share.
Re Gold Medal: Although my Westerns have been compared to books published in that line, I like to think that they are also aimed at today’s audience. For example, a publisher in the 1950s or ’60s, even Fawcett, would almost certainly have turned down Ghost Town Belles. Although incest was present on the 19th century American Frontier, the world wasn’t ready to read about it in Western fiction. Similarly, one of the books I self-published in its first edition contained lesbianism, which was enough to get it rejected by Robert Hale Ltd in 2009. They said the libraries wouldn’t accept it because they would have no way of keeping it out of the hands of children. How strange that Ulverscroft, who also sell mainly to the libraries, were happy to take it on!
Re ebooks: Although I’ve read about 70 ebooks on my Kindle this year, that’s mainly because the shipping cost to New Zealand of the titles I’ve wanted, new or secondhand, would have cost more than I could afford to pay whether buying through a local supplier or an international online store. I much prefer a “real” books for the reasons I enumerated in an interview this month on Tom McNulty’s blog, Dispatches from the Last Outlaw. I’ve priced all my Western novels reissued for the Kindle at $2.99, except the one which sells for 99 cents in the hope (vain) that it will perform as a sampler and lead to properly rewarding sales. As you may know, Amazon halves the royalty it pays when a self-publisher prices an ebook at less than $2.99. Nowadays I also tick the box that tells Amazon not to apply DRM.
November 26th, 2014 at 10:31 pm
Just seconding the Deon Meyer books, just finished his new one and enjoyed it like all his other titles. In the first couple of books, a minor character in one book would become the lead character in the next. The last couple of books have been Benny Griesell stories. To me, he is comparable to Michael Connelly (he actually looks like him) and his stories move at breakneck speed.
November 27th, 2014 at 1:10 am
I agree that Fred Vargas is one of those either ‘really love’ or ‘just-don’t-get’ writers. She can drone on a bit, and be a bit too eccentric, especially at the beginning.
“Louise Penny gets a lot of accolades, but after I read one, I wondered what the fuss was all about.”
Amen to that, brother! And her latest one is truly dire.
I’ve just read Ice Station Zebra by Alastair MacLean in an old paperback. It was slow to get going but once it warmed up, the tension, suspense, action was unrelenting, the characters great, the plotting clever, the setting claustrophobic. I can’t seem to find that kind of thriller being written today.
David V. has a good point about juveniles. I picked up one of the Charlie Higson ‘Young Bond’ novels, Double Or Die, a few weeks ago. It looked interesting so I thought I’d read a few pages. I was soon engrossed and finished it in about three days. One very pleasant surprise was the quality of the prose and the good old-fashioned storytelling. The lack of gadgetry was a big plus too.
Doen Meyer, in my opinion, is far better than any of his U.S. equivalents, including Connelly. Seven Days, Thirteen Hours, Trackers, Cobra, Devil’s Peak, Blood Safari — they’re all great. No padding in these thrillers — just compelling characters and driving plotlines!
November 27th, 2014 at 8:56 am
I’ve been reading genre literature for over 60 years now and I have to admit that there is not much being published now that can compare to the fiction that was published during the pulp era(approximately 1900-1955) and the digest/paperback era of 1950-1980.
Much of my disappointment may be due to nostalgia or the “Good Old Days” but I suspect the art of writing genre fiction is in serious decline(I can’t get into the subject of mainstream literature which is another of my gripes).
The newsstands used to groan under the weight of dozens of fiction magazines and now we are down to the 5 remaining fiction digests. You can’t even find them on the stands and have to subscribe. New writers just don’t have the fiction market that used to publish and encourage writers. The e-book and self publishing efforts do not impress me and for the most part are not on the level of the pulp or digest fiction eras.
Lately, I’ve been rereading much of my back issue collection and I have to admit that I prefer the fiction that was published decades ago. This probably is evident from my Collecting Pulps memoirs. I have not given up on recent mystery, western, science fiction, but I’m getting older and don’t have the time to spend on mediocre fiction.
I’ve been rereading some stories in the golden age of ASTOUNDING and am presenting enjoying Asimov’s FOUNDATION series for the second time. Today’s SF lacks something that used to be present in the forties and fifties. The same thing applies to the mystery and western genres.
I’m also rereading the poems of Philip Larkin and I’ll be damned if I can find any poetry being published today that can compare to him.
Now for my Thanksgiving statement. I’m lucky to have my book and magazine collection!! Happy Thanksgiving to Mystery*File.
November 27th, 2014 at 9:24 am
I wonder if it just a change in the times. If you had a writing ability and were born in the early part of the 1900’s, your career choice would have probably been either journalism or fiction (in digests or books). If you were born in the later part of the century, the jobs and money (generally) would be in writing for television or movies. And I do think there are some very talented and entertaining authors working today.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
(Since we have a few Davids thought I should add the P)
November 27th, 2014 at 2:28 pm
I will grant that some of my complaint could be creeping old fogeyism (hey, don’t say another F word is more accurate), and I was a curmudgeon at a young age — precocious type — but I think the blame for bad writing falls on our schools who don’t inspire students to love books (or try for the handful who would get it) and on a lack of ambition on the part of writers who think writing books is analogous to film and television.
The two forms are not the same despite the number of people in the past who mastered both. The pictures the camera paints on the screen need words in print, and frankly I do not understand how anyone who would want to write could fail to hear the flow of good dialogue. If they are truly film fans they should at least know Howard Hawks work.
Much of what I read today is as stiff and flat as Victorian and Edwardian era fiction and about as convincing.
Walker
I don’t think it is just nostalgia or too old to get todays style. Today has no style, that’s the problem. I’ll get in a trouble today and say a huge problem with the mystery genre is a great deal of it is being written by bored housewives who took ‘write what you know’ too literally. Don’t get me wrong, some of the great books in the genre were written by bored housewives like Craig Rice, but the ones writing today have no real love or understanding of the genre and even when they are on the bestseller list and could afford to experiment they either don’t have the chops or confidence to do so. They love seeing their name in print, but not writing.
To further stretch my neck, Connally, Pearson, Patterson, Baldacchi, Grisham, Child, Cornwell, and that whole bestselling lot are writers I tried seriously to read and found unreadable writing Dick and Jane prose, obvious mysteries, and with simplistic characters all better suited to television. Writers used to put more effort than that into novelizations (considerably more considering THE THIRD MAN, THUNDERBALL, WHERE EAGLES DARE, and HOW THE WEST WAS WON are all novelizations of screenplays). For me the new lot proved unreadable because they are writing for a disposable audience.
In the past writers understood that many of their readers — especially paperback originals — read and tossed their work, but they still respected their craft and themselves enough to write for themselves and that small appreciative audience. Either through their own obsessions, self respect, personal demons, or whatever reason they cared enough to go that extra distance that makes a genre book more than just a throwaway. Even prolific writers like Aaron Marc Stein, Richard Lockridge, Hilary Waugh, John Creasey, and others from the mid list and just above it would stretch once in a while, and never just churned out product. Even Harlequin Romance authors tried to do something more than churn out assembly line fiction.
And as Steve and I commented part of the problem is making 150,000 word novels out of 70,000 word ideas.
David A,
Higson and the YOUNG BOND books are a good example of well written juvenile fiction that has something for adults as well as young readers. They are actually good literate thrillers. Nick Boving (and my) Maxim Gunn series is aimed at primarily a juvenile and up audience.
Ironically MacLean was known for cinematic fast paced plots so it says something that even he spent more time in set up than writers do today. You have a lot to look forward to, but I wouldn’t read anything after THE WAY TO DUSTY DEATH. After WHERE EAGLES DARE he tended to come up with screen scenarios and rather thinly flesh them out to short novels of varying quality. His talents still show, but first read the good stuff like THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE SECRET WAYS, THE SATAN BUG, WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL, GOLDEN RENDEZVOUS, NIGHT WITHOUT END (a favorite), FEAR IS THE KEY, PUPPET ON A CHAIN, and the like — but watch him, he’s tricky as Agatha Christie when he chooses to be. They are all the way you describe ZEBRA, and if you care to Hammond Innes, Victor Canning, Geoffrey Household, Allan MacKinnon, and Geoffrey Jenkins are all better writers doing similar books.
David P
We do seem to have a Davidian thing going on this post.
I’m not sure your hypothesis is entirely true because there were always writers who mastered both in the past, Hammett, Chandler, Ben Hecht, James Warner Bellah, Leo Rosten, William and James Goldman, Evan Hunter, Sterling Silliphant, Richard Mathieson, Charles Beaumont, Robert Bloch, to name a few.
And I don’t buy that no one will publish a good book if one is written. I don’t think many are coming across the transom to begin with. Sad to day what is getting published is likely the best of the lot. I will grant you cannot write a tight 70,000 word novel right now, but writers with the talent and something to say can write tight 350,000 word books that never let you take a breath.
But I never thought the day would come when I missed Robert Ludlum or came back to Jack Higgins and Ken Follett. I even miss Richard Doyle (Sir Arthur’s grandson) who only cracked the American market once with IMPERIAL 109.
November 27th, 2014 at 7:31 pm
Is it as simple as this: authors will write what sells best? Take my fellow Canadian David Morrell as a prime example. I consider his second novel Testament an extremely important novel and one of the top three “man on the runs” I’ve read (it’s also probably the bleakest novel I’ve ever read). It’s a brilliant thriller with tremendous pace and tons of exciting action scenes. But it’s a hell of a lot more than that. It haunted me for days after I finished it, and I still think about it regularly. As I say, one of the most important thrillers ever written, in my view.
But as far as I know, he never wrote anything remotely as good ever again. However what he *did* write sold millions of copies, whereas Testament probably sold poorly.
As writers have to make a living, it’s understandable they’ll produce whatever shifts in large numbers. I still yearn for another Testament though.
November 28th, 2014 at 2:56 am
David A
Granted writers have to write what sells, but they don’t have to write crap. It is perfectly possible to write a good cozy replete with cats, middle or older aged boyfriends, and helpful buddies. My complaint isn’t the subject matter, its the crappy writing. I’ve never been able to finish a John Grisham or Lee Child because the writing is so bad. They have no feel for the written word, nothing of the feel a good writer has for a well written sentence.
Nothing in there work ever pulls me up short or reminds me what good writing can do for any book.
On top of that no one can plot. They serve up unoriginal un-intriguing non mysteries, fit to be solved by someone’s cat and if you are lucky create a little false suspense that isn’t really suspenseful because suspense requires brevity and precision. Not only to I feel no compulsion to turn the page, a large percentage of the time I put them down so disappointed I don’t have the heart to pick them up again.
Nothing much happens in a Simenon Maigret really, but I never put one down and didn’t finish it even the least of them had Maigret himself and usually wet cold Paris.
There are good writers new and old still writing. But good writers were much more common when I first started reading in the genre.
Right now I don’t see much hope that anything interesting is going to happen anytime soon. The Americans are hung up on cozies and the Brits mostly seem to be turning out brutal Dis-Pollyana crime novels that are flat, empty, and derivative.
This isn’t everyone, but the Brits that are any good aren’t getting published here and the cozies rather than evolving the way the detective and suspense novel did seem to be suffering hardening of the arteries. I would like to read just one where I felt they were inspired to write by more than an episode of MURDER SHE WROTE.
The classic fair play detective story was artificial — some quite dull — and some purveyors of the form wrote dozens of books featuring Scotland Yard inspectors never knowing Scotland Yard is nothing but the detective branch of the London Metropolitan Police and not a national police force who can take over any case anywhere in England they choose, but they believed in their work. They created little worlds where we were willing to wink and nod and turn the page. The sheer numbers of competent writers and books was pretty amazing for all the tripe.
Most writers today sprain my willing suspension of disbelief before I get to chapter two. Even if they can write, like Daniel Silva, they fall into a rut — he’s used the exact same plot for his last five books. I didn’t read the ones before so for all I know he’s has never varied the plot.
There is no reason someone can’t write a good romantic suspense novel replete with the semi pornographic scenes so popular today. They just don’t try. There is no reason they can’t have smart sexy characters panting all over the place and give them a little depth. There is nothing stopping them from churning out really good books for their readers.
Except we all know why they don’t do that, and it isn’t publishers, readers, trends, or the demands of the genre — its because they are typists, and not writers and many of them aren’t even aware of important little things like grammar and where the commas are needed.
If you can’t properly use a comma then you should have the good grace not to write books. Success isn’t just sales, it should also be in writing good books no matter what you are writing.
I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect people who write books to have a working knowledge of grade school grammar.
November 28th, 2014 at 2:18 pm
I wonder how much of this is down to the lack of good editors. I recall reading how Stephen King’s first editor, Bill Thompson, took the time to question certain creative decisions, even to the point of asking him to remove certain scenes, as well as attempting to make sure that he didn’t get typed as a ‘horror author’. By the time he was famous, some of King’s editors were doing nothing more than turning up to collect his new book and send it to the printers. I’ve always felt that some of the most interesting genre products come when ‘literary’ writers come off their perch and try something popular, or workaday hacks try and stretch themselves to produce something a little deeper. If no-one is bothering to push authors to try something outside of their comfort zone, can we be surprised at the result?
November 28th, 2014 at 7:49 pm
Bradstreet
What editors? There are none today. I’m not sure they even read what they publish much less work on it. Thomas Wolfe would never have been published if not for Maxwell Perkins and Fitzgerald and Hemingway respected him so much they made the changes he suggested. Joe Shaw virtually invented the Hard Boiled school of writing.
I’d kill just to have a good copy editor to catch my typos and mistakes. And that may well be what is missing though I still hold no good writer ever made the mistakes with commas these clowns do.
The role of a comma is to separate and create a pause in a continuous sentence.
The role, of a comma, is not, to, make a sentence, impossible, to read.
November 28th, 2014 at 10:43 pm
I agree about the low quality of the writing. The first Lee Child novel I tried to read, I got to the bottom of page 2 before setting it aside in disgust. Eventually I did manage to read another one of his. A few days ago I tried to read a Faye Kellerman, one of her latest. Hard to believe, but she’s even worse than Child. She’s barely able to string half a dozen grammatical sentences together in a row. I gave up after a few pages of hers as well.
There are good writers around, such as Canada’s Peter Robinson (though I find his novels slow and boring). Same as Louise Penny really.
What seems to be lacking is the combination of good prose AND good plotting/pacing.
December 5th, 2014 at 6:41 pm
Our chum Mike Ripley says in his latest Shots Mag column: “Cobra by Deon Meyer [Hodder]. An excellent South African thriller featuring one of the best ensemble casts of policemen currently pounding the crime beat. Makes most Scandinavian crime fiction taste of freezer burn.”
I heartily agree with that!
November 4th, 2022 at 12:18 pm
Found this site because I could not recall the movie that features the “This Is The Kingdom Of Heaven” song! Great review of a movie that never fails to make me smile. Yes, yes – problematic in one very big way, but as you noted – Powell and Reynolds manage to pull it off. The supporting cast is amazing – really love Alvy’s character!