Frederick Nebel“Rough Justice”1930
Gerald So is founding editor of the poetry journal The Lineup: Poems on Crime. A distinguished poet in his own right, So holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Queens College/CUNY.
1. Edgar Allan Poe wrote that “Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem,” which raises this question: Can a poem about crime be beautiful?
Crime repulses me, people assuming they have the right to hurt others. To write the honest reactions to crime The Lineup seeks, poets have to deal with hurt, fear, and other forces that would keep them silent. That act of bravery is what I find beautiful.
2. Can a crime poem achieve something that a crime story (or novel) cannot?
Yes. Fictional crime stories and novels are structurally bound to beginning, middle, and end. Any story must establish expectations and meet them. A poem about crime doesn’t have the limitations of fiction. It can spend more time evoking a moment and show most intimately what it means to the people involved.
3. Are there any crime novelists whose writings you find to be particularly poetic?
I’ll go with Hammett, Chandler, Robert B. Parker, Reed Farrel Coleman, and S. J. Rozan.
4. Do you think that The Lineup has attracted readers who otherwise would never have picked up a poetry journal?
I hope so. Crime fiction hooked me on fiction in general, and I hope poetry about crime hooks a new audience on poetry.
5. In your opinion, what’s the single best poem to have appeared in The Lineup?
It’s difficult for me to think of each poem individually after they’ve been published in an issue. I can tell you I like the flow of poems in each issue.
Erle Stanley Gardner“Hell’s Kettle”1930
Carroll John Daly“Three Gun Terry”1923
David GoodisThe Blonde on the Street Corner1954
I’m spending my spring break in Laramie, Wyoming, at the American Heritage Center working in the Gil Brewer Collection. A couple of tidbits folks might find interesting:
1. On November 26, 1956, Brewer signed a contract with Lion Books to write four novels for them. I have no idea why Brewer never actually wrote anything for them. I have not seen Lion mentioned anywhere in the Brewer papers other than on this contract.
2. On July 17, 1958, Brewer signed a contract with Tower Publications to write a book titled Backwoods Bikini under the pseudonym of Zack Holland. This is more exciting than the Lion business because I suppose it’s just barely possible this book is actually out there somewhere. As with the Lion contract, however, I have not seen this mentioned anywhere else in the Brewer papers, and a quick check of online sources has not turned up the existence of any such book. Nevertheless, I thought I should make everybody aware of it, just in case. (And if you’ve got a copy, shoot me an email, and I’ll tell you where to send it.)
Max Allan CollinsQuarry [a.k.a. The Broker]1976
Kill yourself
into a hole,
and the chances are
a time comes
when you have to
kill yourself out.
Dashiell Hammett
The Dain Curse
1929
W. T. BallardDealing Out Death1948
Sara GranDope2006
Stories included: “Three Gun Terry” (1923) by Carroll John Daly; “Bodies Piled Up” (1923) by Dashiell Hammett; “Hell’s Kettle” (1930) by Erle Stanley Gardner; “Sal the Dude” (1929) by Raoul Whitfield; “Rough Justice” (1930) by Frederick Nebel; “Frost Flies Alone” [original title: “Frost Rides Alone”] (1930) by Horace McCoy; “Gundown” [original title: “Murder Done in Blue”] (1933) by Paul Cain; and “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” (1933) by Raymond Chandler.
William F. Nolan gathers eight representative stories from Black Mask’s heavy-hitters and seasons the mix with a history of the magazine, biographical overviews of the writers, and bibliographies of their work for Black Mask. Unfortunately, by almost any critical yardstick, Black Mask fiction is pretty bad. Joseph T. Shaw, who edited the magazine during its glory years, was interested in good writing, but he was more interested in series characters who would build and keep a base of loyal readers. (Thus, the many, many appearances of Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams, whom even Shaw knew to be terrible.) On the whole, the best story here (no surprise) is Dashiell Hammett’s “Bodies Piled Up,” which manages to be brilliant even if it doesn’t add up to much as a story. And this is the perspective from which Black Mask fiction is best enjoyed: as collections of moments rather than as unified narratives. Approached in this way, even Carroll John Daly’s “Three Gun Terry”—the world’s first hard-boiled detective story—can be fun. Grade: B
In the second installment of 5 Quick Questions with Max Allan Collins, M.A.C. gives answers about his friend and collaborator Mickey Spillane. Of the many Spillane/Collins publications, two new ones to be aware of: (1) M.A.C. contributes an essay on Spillane’s One Lonely Night to Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads (2010; edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner), and (2) M.A.C.’s completion of Spillane’s unfinished manuscript for The Consummata (the sequel to Spillane’s 1967 novel The Delta Factor) will be published in October by Hard Case Crime.
1. What was the first Mickey Spillane novel that you read?
One Lonely Night. Changed my life. My world. The private eye as crazed avenger, the private eye writer as noir poet. It belongs on the short list of great P.I. novels with The Maltese Falcon and Farewell, My Lovely.
2. What do you most admire about Mickey Spillane as a writer?
The surrealistic, fever-dream world he creates in the first six Mike Hammer novels is a unique, compelling creation. I would also cite Hammer himself as a voice/character.
3. True or false: Mickey Spillane is America’s most underrated hardboiled novelist.
Probably true. I say “probably” because those who love him really love him. Some major players consider him hugely important—Otto Penzler for one, Ed Gorman for another. And hundreds of millions of readers.
4. Which is more challenging: co-writing a novel with a living co-author, or completing the work of a deceased author?
I find the process quite similar, because with both Barb Collins (my wife and collaborator on the Antiques novels) and Matthew V. Clemens (collaborator on the forthcoming No One Will Hear You), I work from their rough drafts. The back-and-forth comes at the plotting stage. With Mickey, I work from unfinished manuscripts, which I treat as rough draft, and sometimes notes. Obviously the Spillane collaboration is tricky, but I have been unwittingly training for that role since about 1960.
5. What is your favorite Mickey Spillane novel?
One Lonely Night. Hands down. But the first six Hammer novels combine to make an epic hardboiled fantasy.
Gil Brewer
Angel
1960
Langston Hughes"Prize Fighter"1927
Richard StarkThe Seventh1966
Max Allan Collins has cut a wide swath through the noirboiled world (and many other literary worlds, for that matter) as a prolific author of novels (graphic and otherwise), stories, screenplays, movie tie-ins, comic strips, and on and on. He is perhaps best-known to noirboiled fans for the Nathan Heller novels, which blend the private eye genre with historical fiction, as well as his series featuring Quarry (the assassin) and Nolan (the thief).
1. What is the first crime novel that you remember reading?
I read a lot of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and loved the Saint novels—I particularly remember The Saint and the Sizzling Saboteur making an impression. And the Dick Tracy comic books are a very vivid memory—the first story I read was about Junior Tracy’s girl friend, Model, who died as a result of her juvie brother’s misdeeds, quickly followed by a book collecting the Brow sequence, in which the sympathetic Summer Sisters drowned in a car. But the crime novel that kicked off everything came in the seventh grade—The Maltese Falcon. Still my favorite private eye novel.
2. Which crime novelist do you consider to be your biggest influence?
I have to dodge this, at least somewhat. Everybody thinks I would say Mickey Spillane, but he is only one of a quartet of great mystery writers I discovered when I was thirteen—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, and James M. Cain. I learned 90% of what I know about crime writing from Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, and Cain.
3. Which non-crime novelist do you consider to be your biggest influence?
Probably William March, author of The Bad Seed, which inspired my films (and novels) Mommy and Mommy's Day. My other favorite mainstream writers during my impressionable years were Calder Willingham, who wrote End As a Man, and Willard Motley, who wrote Knock on Any Door. Not your standard picks, I’ll grant you. Later I came to like Mark Harris, author of The Southpaw.
4. Which crime novel (that you didn’t write) do you most wish you had written?
There aren't any. I only want to write my novels.
But I am very thrilled to be collaborating with Mickey Spillane—contributing real entries to the Mike Hammer series is an honor I wish I could share with my thirteen year-old self. Well, I guess I do.
5. What is the best novel by Max Allan Collins?
I don't know. I would suggest that the Nathan Heller novels, taken as a whole, represent my best work and major contribution. Of those I might pick The Million-Dollar Wound as the best representative example, and Flying Blind as the best atypical entry.
Dave ZeltsermanPariah2009
If you visit this series of cover galleries of Turkish translations of noirboiled novels, you will quickly discover that the standard practice of Turkish translators/publishers was to change titles. I am still trying to imagine which Mickey Spillane novels have been published in Turkey as Battle of the Giants, Murderer of the Full Moon, Guns Won’t Talk, The Revenge Claw, Teenager Hell, I’m Afraid of the Blondes, You’ll Spit Blood, Alive Target, Hands of Dark, and Murderer with Green Hand. I’m the Judge is obviously I, the Jury, but beyond this, I’m baffled.
So which Peter Cheyney novel do I have? This is the opening paragraph in Turkish:
Yasamak bazan ne kadar zevkli oluyor. Fakat ben su anda hayatin tadini alamayacak kadar efkârliydim. 1945 Martinda Pariste hemen bütün erkekler ekfârliydi. Bu efkârin da bir tek sebebi vardi: Yosmalar.
And this is the glorious translation that I get from Google Translate:
How much fun is going to live sometimes. But right now I get to enjoy life efkârliydim. Ekfârliydi in Paris in March 1945, almost all men. There was also the thoughts of a single reason: Yosmalar.
This may be gibberish, but it provides enough information for me to be sure that this is not a Peter Cheyney novel that I own. The Cheyney books I have eliminated are:
Can Ladies Kill?
Cocktails and the Killer
Dance Without Music
Dark Duet
Don’t Get Me Wrong
He Walked in Her Sleep
Poison Ivy
The Stars Are Dark
This Man Is Dangerous
Uneasy Terms
The Urgent Hangman
You Can Call It a Day
You Can’t Hit a Woman
You’d Be Surprised
Is there anybody out with the resources to eyeball a few more Peter Cheyney opening paragraphs? Any help figuring out which book this is will be much appreciated!
