I am very happy to announce that I am a finalist in the Best First P.I. Novel category for this year’s Shamus Awards! Many, many thanks to the good people of The Private Eye Writers of America for this great honor.
Good luck to all the other nominees, especially my friends Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson and Henry Wise. I hope one of us wins. And I really hope it’s me.
Okay, let’s get this out of the way: Something Wicked this Way Comes is not a science fiction novel. It’s dark fantasy, and, in my opinion, a precursor to many famous books in that genre from the likes of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Erin Morgenstern, and others.
However, Ray Bradbury’s books were always sold in the science fiction aisle when I was a kid. And I read all his books thinking they were science fiction. (I didn’t read fantasy back then.) So, I’m shoe-horning him into my classic sci-fi book covers thread.
Having said all that, let me add that this is one of my favorite novels, not to mention Bradbury’s best. It’s the tale of two 13-year-old boys, Will and Jim, who have grown up next door to each other in 1930s Illinois. Will and Jim are almost exactly the same age, with Will being born one minute before midnight on October 30th and Jim being born one minute after midnight on October 31st. Yes, one boy is born a minute before Halloween begins and the other born a minute after. (Guess which one is the “bad” kid?)
It might seem like clunky symbolism, but in Bradbury’s prolix hands, it works. The duality between the introverted, good-natured Will and the adventurous, mischievous Jim—that is, between light and dark sides of our being—is repeated throughout the novel. Both boys are forced to confront their darker impulses when a demonic carnival arrives on the edge of town in the middle of the night. Will and Jim soon discover that the carnival is a vehicle for a bunch of malevolent, vampire-like beings who want nothing more to lure innocent people onto the midway and tempt them into evil.
The only person who believes the boys when they tell what they’ve seen is Will’s father, an older man who doubts his own strength and courage. Together, they challenge the men who run the carnival, Mr. Cougar and Mr. Dark (another light/dark duality) for the soul of the town.
I really like this cover—created by veteran illustrator David Grove—because it captures the nostalgia, magic, and dark wonder that are the great strengths of the novel. Specifically, it refers to a moment in the story when Mr. Dark wanders through the town looking for Will and Jim. He has the images of the boy tattooed on his palms, and he shows them to passersby to see if anyone recognizes them. It’s an extremely creepy scene in an amazing book. (It’s also the first moment when Will’s father shows his courage and guile in besting Mr. Dark.)
My appreciation for the cover is in no way diminished by the fact that it appears to be a poster tie-in with the film adaptation produced by Disney in 1983, depicting the likenesses of some of the actors (most notably, the great Jonathan Pryce, who performance as Mr. Dark is worth the price of admission all by itself).
Also, not long after Mr. Grove passed away, Tor.com published a tribute to him and his career. You can see it here…
It’s time for another entry in my ongoing series Synchronicity for Bookworms. In this episode, I will describe the incredibly tenuous and yet undeniable connection I found between the great stage and film actor Jeremy Brett and George Eliot’s classic Victorian novel Middlemarch.
As you might recall, I recently did a blog post on Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic mystery novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. In that post, I mentioned that my favorite actor to ever play the role of Sherlock Holmes was Jeremy Brett. While I was writing the post, I browsed various Internet pages pertaining to Brett. Brett was primarily a brilliant and prolific stage actor, appearing in everything from Shakespearean Tragedy (check out his performance as Macbeth on YouTube) to comic theater.
On one page, I found a photo of Brett standing in front of a billboard advertising a play in which he was appearing. As I looked closer at the image, I saw that Rex Harrison was also in the play. (As I later discovered, the production was a revival of Frederick Lonsdale’s “Aren’t We All?” that ran on Broadway in 1985.) This revelation made me smile because I am also a fan of Rex Harrison, ever since I read a biography of him a decade ago.
Naturally, I immediately went to the Wikipedia page for Rex Harrison and browsed through his biography. This included his great filmography. One of the more famous films he starred in was Blithe Spirit, a supernatural comedy based on a play by Noël Coward. I clicked on the link to the Wikipedia page for Blythe Spirit (the play) and discovered that Coward took the title from a poem by the great British romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Naturally, I then clicked on the link to Shelly’s Wikipedia page and browse through his biography. Reaching the bottom of the page, I saw to my amazement that George Eliott had based the character of Will Ladislaw from her great novel Middlemarch on Shelley.
And there you have it, a cosmic filament connecting two of my recent topics—Sherlock Holmes and George Eliot. When my eyes settled on this last reference to Middlemarch, a little spark of amazement ran down my spine. That’s the sensation one gets when stumbling upon the sublime, hiding in the common-place.
Note that this was not some Six Degrees of Seven Bacon thing. That is, I was not looking for any connection. In fact, Middlemarch wasn’t on my mind at all when I started Googling Jeremy Brett. And yet, there the connection was.
I don’t know if it means anything or not. But it made my day.
Frequent readers of this blog might remember a post a did some years ago called “My Rex Stout Shout-Out,” and will therefore already know of my long and abiding admiration for Rex Stout. Specifically, for his Nero Wolfe novels, the best of which is perhaps The Doorbell Rang.
It’s one of Stout’s later novels, published in 1960, and it was also the most controversial, involving as its central, unseen villain no other than J. Edgar Hoover himself. And, yeah, that’s one reason I like it. Stout’s detestation of the American right-wing’s tendency toward fascist behavior reached a fever-pitch level, which I share. But the main reason I like the book is for its story, which is actually two interlocking plot lines, each of which complements the other in inventive and surprising ways. The central line involves a very rich widow, Rachel Bruner, who suspects that the FBI is tapping her phones and generally harassing her. She wants Wolfe—the most brilliant man in New York City—to figure out a way to stop them. (Fun fact: this is an example of a little-known sub-sub-sub-genre of detective fiction in which the P.I. serves as a kind of fixer for some rich person’s critical problem.)
Through the intervention of NYPD Inspector Cramer (a highly intelligent but belligerent recurring character, who serves as a frequent foil for Wolfe throughout the series), Wolfe learns that FBI agents are suspects in the murder investigation of a journalist. Thus, Wolfe (and Stout) sees an opportunity to connect these two lines of inquiry. That is, by solving the mystery of the murdered journalist, Wolfe might be able to get some leverage on the FBI, and thus stop its harassment of Mrs. Bruner.
It’s a devilishly clever story, and made even more entertaining by the ways in which Wolfe and his loyal “leg-man,” Archie Goodwin (the narrator of all the Wolfe novels), contrive to outwit the dunder-headed FBI agents. This involves hiring actors to copy the dress and mannerisms of both Archie and Wolfe, so that the actors can impersonate both men and lure the agents into a trap.
Every good story is, in my opinion, a kind of whodunit, if only in a psychological or philosophical sense. Every successful novel asks a question, which the reader must keep reading to discover. With actual mystery novels, this question is explicit—who did the murder and how will the P.I. catch them—but that’s the only real difference. What always amazes me about Rex Stout is how good he is at asking this essential question. In fact, in The Doorbell Rang, he essentially poses it in the opening lines of the book…
Since it was the deciding factor, I might as well begin by describing it. It was a pink slip of paper three inches wide and seven inches long, and it told the First National City Bank to pay to the order of Nero Wolfe one hundred thousand and 00/100 dollars. Signed, Rachel Bruner. It was there on Wolfe’s desk, where Mrs. Bruner had put it. After doing so, she had returned to the red leather chair.
Already, the reader is sucked in. We have to find out what’s the deal with that check, which leads us to the crux of the entire mystery.
This passage also illustrates another great strength of the Nero Wolfe novels—and it ain’t Nero Wolfe. Rather, it’s Archie. Archie’s voice. Smart. Sharp. Sardonic. But a bit noble, too. Take this example from a few paragraphs, later:
After she was in the red leather chair I put her coat, which was at least a match for a sable number for which a friend of mine had paid eighteen grand, on the couch, sat at my desk, and took her in. She was a little too short and too much filled out to be rated elegant, even if her tan woolen dress was a Dior, and her face was too round, but there was nothing wrong with the brown-black eyes she aimed at Wolfe as she asked him if she needed to tell him who she was.
I love that bit about Brunner’s eyes. Archie is, of course, an avowed heterosexual, with some kind of romantic exploit in every book. Yet here he finds himself taken with a woman (an older woman, at that) not for her looks but for her obvious intelligence and determination. It’s a great detail, of the sort Stout always delivers.
It’s also a great example of how vividly drawn Stout’s characters are, especially the recurring characters. The snarky and slightly amoral newspaper editor Lon Cohen. The fastidious and unflappable chef, Fritz Brenner. The cool and precise leg-man Saul Panzer. All of them become as familiar to us over the course of the series, like old friends.
Naturally, Wolfe and Archie manage to pull off the caper, trap the FBI agents, and solve the murder, all simultaneously. I won’t spoil it by giving away the climax of the novel, but trust me…it’s a dozy.
Check it out…
Well, the 2025 Edgar Awards Ceremony is over. I didn’t win my category (that honor went to Henry Wise for his excellent novel Holy City, but I still had a blast. I met a lot of cool people, including my new editor at Crooked Lane, Sara Henry, CLB founder Matt Martz, and others. Best of all, I made some new friends in writers Kerri Hakoda, Audree Lee, and Carol Floriani.
And, for a bonus, Cathy and I got to spend some time in the greatest city in the world, Manhattan. (I am writing this post from inside a Starbucks on 7th Ave.) I used to come here pretty often in the early 2000s, when I was working for software consulting company on Prince Street, and I always loved it. I was last here for fun in 2017 with my son Connor, doing the tourist thing. The city hasn’t changed that much as far as I can tell. It’s still a rambling, teeming, kinetic barrage of sights, sounds, and languages. Manhattan is one of the few places on earth where you can step into a crowded elevator and hear Spanish, French, German, Russian, Hausa, and several others being spoken.
It’s also got the best museum in the world, the Met, which Cathy and I visited, of course. We got to see the John Singer Sargent exhibit, with Sargent’s masterpiece Portrait of Madame X on prominent display. I first learned about this amazing picture (and the scandal it caused) from David McCollough’s excellent history The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, in which Sargent is one of the Paris-bound artists discussed. (Sargent painted Madame X in Paris with a well-known socialite as his subject; hence the scandal.)
So, all in all, a damn fine trip so far. I don’t know if I will ever get another Edgar nom, but if I do, you can bet I will be back.
For anyone who is a mystery fan and happens to be in N.Y.C. this Wednesday, April 30, you should check out the Edgar Awards Symposium. It’s going to be chock-a-block with guest panels and speakers.
(Fwiw, I will be on a panel at 10:00!)
I’ts not too late! Click here to register!
When I saw Michael Mann’s brilliant film The Insider in 1999, one of the many highlights, for me, came in a pivotal courtroom scene. The film’s co-protagonists, Jeffrey Weygand, is trying to testify against the tobacco industry with the help of a Mississippi attorney, Ron Motley, played by Bruce McGill. McGill gives a great, over-the-top performance, but it’s matched by that of the guy playing the evil tobacco attorney. When I realized who this second actor was, I almost shouted at the screen, “That’s Wings Hauser!”
It thrilled my heart to see Hauser in an A-list movie, at last. And he was giving an A-list (if brief) performance! On this blog, I write a lot about great B-Movies, and Hauser appeared in more B-movies than any other actor I can think of (except, perhaps, Michael Caine in his “I-need-money” phase). With his country-boy good looks and imposing physique, Hauser ended up playing a lot of villains. Most notably, he played the psychopathic pimp Ramrod in 1982’s Vice Squad with sadistic panache. (Fun fact: that film also features Season Hubley, Kurt Russel’s then-girlfriend, who also appeared in Escape from New York.)
Whatever role he played, though, Hauser was always great. As an actor, he had that rarest and most coveted of gifts—the ability to seem completely real. That is, you never noticed he was acting. He was always convincing, and magnetic, too.
He also did a great turn in 1987’s noir film Tough Guys Don’t Dance, which was critically panned but which I really liked; it’s one of the most gleefully perverse films ever released by a major studio.
Sadly, Hauser passed away last week. He was a great character actor. I’ll miss him.
My privious entry in this continuing “Classic Sci-Fi Book Covers” series was also devoted to Roger Zelazny, so please forgive me for double-dipping into the Zelazny well. But I couldn’t resist talking about one of Zelazny’s other great novels, …And Call Me Conrad—published in 1966 as This Immortal. Most people have never heard of it, but it’s an interesting book for several reasons.
For one, it was Zelazny’s first novel, and it has many of his signature obsessions (e.g, ancient mythology mixed with science fiction; a wise-cracking anti-hero who is also an Übermensch; epic fight scenes; etc.). For another, it actually won a Hugo Award, tying in 1966 with a slightly better-known book…Frank Herbert’s Dune. And finally, it’s just a hell of an entertaining adventure tale.
I chose this cover (by fantasy artist Rowena Morrill) because it really captures the sense of the book’s main character, Conrad Nomikos, a world-weary man-of-mystery who might be immortal. (The text suggests that he is at least a century old, and hints that he might be several thousand years older still.) He works as director of a government agency tasked with protecting and preserving the surviving relics of a destroyed earth. A nuclear war referred to by the characters as “The Three Days” has occurred many decades before, leaving most of the planet uninhabitable. The survivors, which include a wide variety of mutants both human and animal, live mainly on islands like Greece, Conrad’s home.
And that’s not even the main subject this wild, wild little book. Conrad is assigned the duty of escorting a group of VIP tourists—including Cort Myshtigo, an alien from the Vega star system whose race has purchased earth as a kind of vast museum—as they tour the planets once great sites (now ruins). Conrad soon realizes that another of the tourists, an Egyptian assassin named Hassan with whom Conrad has befriended in the past, is secretly on a mission to kill the Vegan. Hassan, it seems, has been hired for this task by an obscure, underground political group who want to reclaim earth for humanity. So, Conrad finds himself not only being a tour-guide but also an unpaid protector of Myshtigo—who he hates.
It’s a crazy book, and the cover conveys this craziness well. Though the edition is from 1980, the cover really feels like a 1970s cover, with its vaguely photorealistic painting of a ruggedly handsome dude with great hair (think Roger Staubach in his prime). I also like how Morrill works in the other tropes of the book—its setting among Greek ruins, as well as the presence of some mythological creatures in the background (which, the reader eventually learns, are actually just animals that have been mutated by radioactive fall-out).
It’s a very dated cover, but still a really cool one. Classic, one might say…
Some years ago, my son Connor and I were watching the movie Dunkirk on DVD. It’s a very good movie, telling the story of that fateful week from multiple points-of-view. Of course, the most compelling thread of the narrative is that of the lone RAF pilot (played by Tom Hardy) doing his heroic best to protect the stranded British troops.
These scenes inevitably led to a geek-worthy discussion between Connor and me about the relative merits of the RAF’s Spitfire versus the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt 109. Believe it or not, such discussions are becoming more common between fathers and sons (and mothers and daughters, for all I know), mainly because of online games like War Thunder, whose popularity has breathed new life into the study of military history by the Millennial generation.
Anyway…. At some point during the discussion, I offhandedly commented that I had once flown in Adolf Hitler’s airplane.
Continue reading “Synchronicity for Bookworms: Martin Caidin”It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a year since the launch of my mystery novel, Twice the Trouble. It’s been a wild ride! To commemorate the launch, I’m re-posting this very long (three chapters!) sample of the audiobook version on Youtube from Google Play.
Ash Clifton, Writer 