Ed Gorman and Ed & Lorraine Warren

 

Ed Gorman and Ed & Lorraine Warren *          *           *

The novelist Ed Gorman collaborated with demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren on four “non-fiction” books about hauntings and demons between 1987 and 1992. One – The Haunted – was made into a surprisingly good television movie.

The Haunted, by Robert Curran with Jack & Janet Smurl and Ed & Lorraine Warren, was released as a blandly designed hardcover by St. Martin’s Press in 1988. It detailed an allegedly true account of the haunting of Jack and Janet Smurl in their West Pittson, Pennsylvania duplex. Kirkus called it “simplistic and clumsy, but undeniably luridly entertaining” and the dust jacket blurb claimed the Smurls were “victims of abuse—both mental and physical—by inhuman entities [threatening] their sanity, and even their lives.” Surprisingly, when the book was released, the Smurls were still living at the address where all that bad stuff happened. I’m pretty sure I would have moved somewhere less—ghastly. My interest in the book is less about the subject matter (and even less about Ed & Lorraine Warren) than it is about what the guy who did the actual writing, Ed Gorman, had to say about it. But first, Ed was a friend of mine, although I admit we never once set eyes on each other. He was a fine writer that wrote in every popular genre, except maybe romance. His marvelous 1990 story, “The Face”—set during the Civil War—earned him a Spur Award and the Private Eye Writers of America honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award, The Eye, in 2011. And for those doubting whether Ed wrote The Haunted, this acknowledgment appeared on the copyright page of the original edition:    “Special thanks and acknowledgement to Ed Gorman for his work on this book.”  In a February 2016 email exchange between Ed and I, which was only eight months before Gorman’s death, he wrote: “[The Haunted is] a ‘non-fiction’ book about an allegedly true example [of] demonic possession.” The quotation marks around non-fiction are Ed’s, rather than mine. He added, “[the book] was ridiculous, but it made a good TV movie.” The movie Ed referenced was originally broadcast on Fox on May 6, 1991, and it is a good movie. Cheesy but effective with a few scares that kept this teenager (at the time anyway) wondering what made that sound after the lights went out. Its main players, Sally Kirkland and Jeffrey DeMunn, are terrific as the Smurls. The script is darn good, too. But, and this is important since we live in a world of lies, half-truths, and more lies, The Haunted, according to Ed Gorman is a novel masquerading as non-fiction. The late-Ray Garton, known mostly for his horror fiction, related his similar experience working with the Warrens in this excellent 2009 interview with Damned Connecticut here. Ed went on to write three more “non-fiction” books with the husband-and-wife “demonologists” in the few years following the appearance of The Haunted. For these latter three books Ed changed his nom de plume from Robert Curran to Robert David Chase. Why the change in name? I never thought to ask him, but here is a listing of all of Ed Gorman’s collaborations with Ed and Lorraine Warren: The Haunted: One Family’s Nightmare (1988) Ghost Hunters: True Stories from the World’s Most Famous Demonologists (1989) Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession (1991) Graveyard: True Hauntings from an Old New England Cemetery (1992)

Epilogue: All of Ed’s books with the Warrens have been in print most of the years since their first publication, likely due to the Warrens’ success in Hollywood, but none, I’m sure Ed would say, are of any great literary value. But you know if Ed Gorman wrote them, they will (at least) be entertaining. Ed Gorman also used his Robert David Chase pseudonym for two short stories published in the mid-1990s (and neither had anything to do with the Warrens): “Fathers, Inc.” (Murder for Father, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Signet, 1994. The anthology included two additional stories by Gorman: “Playground”, as by Daniel Ransom; and “Long Lonesome Roads”, by Ed Gorman [featuring Jack Dwyer].) “The Monster Parade” (Monster Brigade 3000, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles Waugh, Ace, 1996. The anthology includes another of Gorman’s stories: “A Zombie Named Fred,” as by Jake Foster.)

A different version of this article appeared at Dark City Underground on January 31, 2022.

Review: "Night on Fire" by Douglas Corleone

 

Night on Fire by Douglas Corleone Minotaur Books, 2011     Douglas Corleone’s second Kevin Corvelli mystery, Night on Fire, is a snappy and sharp legal thriller with personality—in the form of the almost debauched and always fun Corvelli. While chatting-up a cougar in his favorite outdoor beach bar, in Ko Olina on Oahu, Corvelli is among the many witnesses of a nasty and drunken fight between newlyweds. Corvelli’s only thoughts about the dust-up are: 1) too bad he doesn’t do divorces; and 2) just how sexy the bride is. With that, Kevin follows his libido into the cougar’s room in the Liholiho Tower of the Kupulupulu Beach Resort where the fight would have been forgotten, except later that night the Liholiho catches fire, killing eleven—including the sparring groom—and very nearly gets Kevin, his cougar, and a four-year-old boy named Josh Leffler that Corvelli befriended at the hallway vending machine. It takes investigators only a few hours to rule the fire as arson and a few more to finger the angry bride, Erin Simms, as their prime suspect. Of course, Corvelli takes Erin’s case, pisses off his law partner, Jake Harper, and makes one or two ethically dubious choices while facing down a prosecutor that seems to have a personal grudge against him. Night on Fire is a great summertime read—from its vivid Hawaii setting to Kevin Corvelli’s questionable personal behavior; which Corleone obviously had fun writing. Corvelli is a borderline alcoholic, a confirmed skirt chaser, but a damn good lawyer and something of an okay guy once you scrape the gunk away. There is a bit of fish-out-of-water subplot here, too, as Corvelli takes a big brother-like interest in the young Josh Leffler. The mystery is nicely developed with a handful of well-placed clues and the courtroom scenes are excellent. The climactic twist ending is on the far side of wild, but it didn’t bother me a whit since the journey there was so damn fun. Night on Fire is a must read for anyone with a hankering for entertainment and a desire to get away this summer without leaving home.

Night on Fire appears to be out-of-print (for some sick reason), but you can check out the original hardcover here at Amazon.

Review: "Them Bones" by David Housewright

 

Them Bones by David Housewright Minotaur Books, 2025   David Housewright’s Them Bones—which is the twenty-second Rushmore McKenzie mystery—is a tale of… well, two tales of the same story. Okay, not really two tales, but rather a single story told in two different styles. The McKenzie books are written in first person from the perspective of McKenzie—an unlicensed private eye in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, that spends his time doing favors for friends. But Them Bones is distinct from its predecessors because the crime is detailed in third person from the perspective of the client, Angela Bjork. We last saw Angela as a girl saving McKenzie’s life in The Taking of Libbie, SD (2010), but now she is all grown up and working on her Ph.D. in paleontology at the University of Minnesota. Angela discovered a nearly intact fossil of an Ankylosaurus while working a dinosaur dig in Montana. It was a profound find because it is the most complete of its kind, but before the bones can be transported to the Twin Cities, the skull was stolen. Angela tells McKenzie, and the reader, about the discovery (in May) and the heist (in August) and everything that happened in-between. In this unofficial prologue, Angela introduces the suspects—professors, students, and other miscellany—that were present at the dig site when the heist occurred. The paleontology stuff was interesting, including how the dig was done, the problems they encountered and personalities involved; however, it took so long, about a quarter of the narrative, that I had begun thinking McKenzie had the week off. But once McKenzie agrees to help Angela recover the Ankylosaurus, and he takes charge of the narrative things really pick up. In fact, Them Bones, suddenly becomes a McKenzie novel. With his subtle and not-so-subtle wit, his penchant for finding trouble and breaking the rules, and his always gallant search for justice, McKenzie does an admirable job of flushing out the villains. The action moves from college campuses (there are two), to a museum, to high class neighborhoods, and from Minnesota to Montana to Canada and back again. And it is a good bit of fun. But that opening prologue made the entire enterprise a little wobbly. Its length almost made me give up before the good stuff started, which I’ve never encountered with David Housewright’s writing. It felt like Housewright was setting-up a traditional whodunit, which is cool, but (for me at least) it never quite worked that way. What I did like about Them Bones is far more than what I disliked. As usual, the setting—the Twin Cities, Montana, and even rural Canada—was vivid and melded perfectly with the story. The actual mystery, who was the Inside Man that helped the thieves steal the skull, is compelling and McKenzie’s self-deprecating style and often flippant attitude is fun. There is a good deal of subterfuge and the final reveal is both surprising and perfectly right. But a few hours spent with McKenzie, even in a flawed tale like Them Bones, is always a chore to look forward to.

Find Them Bones on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Review: "Playback" by Raymond Chandler

 

Playback by Raymond Chandler Houghton Mifflin, 1958 Reviewed by Mike Baker Playback is the last book Raymond Chandler published in his lifetime and, while I haven’t read everything he wrote, I can say categorically this is the weakest entry to date. The novel opens and closes with Clyde Umney, a lawyer representing some nebulous East Coast concern, stogeying Marlowe into taking a job tailing a young woman for reasons he refuses to explain—but he pays well enough, and that’s apparently enough for Marlowe. So our detective heads down to Central Station in L.A., where the woman is supposed to arrive, and brings along a grip full of clothes, cash, and a gun. There, we meet the story’s villain, Larry Mitchell. He’s well-connected but broke, seedy, and clinging to charm like it might still work. Mitchell meets with the young woman—who wants nothing to do with him—and then vanishes. Marlowe follows her to some small southern California town, and the job should be simple: observe, report, collect. But it isn’t. Mitchell complicates things. Marlowe can’t stand a bully, and Mitchell fits the part too well. The woman complicates things more. Marlowe still carries the instincts of a knight, even if the armor’s corroded and the lance is blunt. He delays calling Umney, digging instead into what Mitchell might have had on her. Then Mitchell turns up dead—or doesn’t. There’s no body. In true Chandler fashion, the mystery becomes metaphysical as much as procedural. Maybe there was a murder. Maybe there wasn’t. But Marlowe, ever the stubborn moralist, is now in it, tangled up with a woman he barely knows and a story that doesn’t want to be told. And here’s where Playback loses itself. What begins with promise descends into a slow unraveling: a string of aimless NPCs saying things, doing little, contributing less. A fog of narrative confusion settles in. There are murky shenanigans, unresolved threads, and long stretches of pontificating—much of it Chandler, or Marlowe, or some hybrid of the two, meditating on life and death and what it all means. It took me until page 119 to feel even a flicker of investment. Chandler can still craft a surgical sentence—his style is as crisp as ever—but he no longer seems interested in building anything with them. Reading Playback is like calling a friend while cleaning the kitchen: they’re rambling about a trip to the library, and you’re only half-listening, more focused on the stubborn stain you’ve been scrubbing for fifteen minutes. There are, as always, moments of delight—those sharp quips that cut air and page alike—but they’re fewer and farther between. In between, we’re left with a kind of exhausted melancholy. Chandler, who once lit noir on fire with his wit and moral clarity, now seems lost in the haze. There’s no irony in his musings, just the raw blurting of worn-down truisms. Mortality isn’t just a theme here—it’s the undercurrent pulling everything under. What’s striking is the fear behind it. Chandler, the ultimate stylist, seems overwhelmed by the vision he’s spent his life perfecting. The white knight has become a disenchanted ghost, mumbling at the hollow praise still echoing around him. He’s no longer getting it right, and he knows it. Playback isn’t just a detective story. It’s a last letter, written to no one in particular. A man staring into the final dark, trying to summon meaning from the habits of a lifetime. In the end, there’s no great twist, no satisfying conclusion. Just a tired hero and the man who created him, both running out the clock. And maybe that’s the most honest ending Chandler could have written. Not with a bang, not even with a whisper—but with the slow, sinking realization that the world doesn’t need saving, and the knight doesn’t need to ride again*. *               *               * *  There’s a single chapter near the end where Marlowe is searching for a waiter and tracks him to the tiny shack he calls home—only to find him hanging in the outhouse. The story is so messy by this point that I wasn’t sure whether it was suicide or murder. Either way, Marlowe is gob-smacked by the horror of it, and maybe even shaken by the thought that he played some part in the man’s death. It’s a moment that feels like Chandler reckoning with something personal. Maybe even entertaining the idea of doing himself in. But history would prove he didn’t have the heart to go out that way. Instead, he chose the long, slow exit: alcohol and maudlin self-indulgence. Still, the chapter is striking—arguably the best in the book. The thing is, I love to read well-written books, but even the writers I admire most stumble sometimes. This might be one of those moments. But if you love Chandler, it’s like blues harp—you play all the notes between where you are and where you’re headed. And Playback, for all its flaws, is one of those notes. If you want to understand Chandler, really understand him, this is part of the journey.

Check out Playback at Amazon—click here for the paperback.

Review: "Little Old Ladies" by Simon Brett

 

“Little Old Ladies” by Simon Brett from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 2010   I’m ashamed of how few of Simon Brett’s mysteries I’ve read. A handful of shorts and a novel so long ago I don’t recall its title; although, I do remember it featured Charles Paris and that I liked it. I was thinking all this while I was reading his excellent tale, “Little Old Ladies” with a smile on my face and only a smidgen of an idea of where the story was going. Morton-cum-Budely is a swank Devon village—“of almost excessive prettiness”— mostly inhabited by retirees. And those retirees tend to be little old ladies since their husbands “were made of frailer stuff” and now spend their time lying about in the graveyard. When the Chair of the Morton-cum-Budely Village Committee, Joan Fullerton, is murdered, the village’s women are aflutter and the investigating detective, one D.I. Dromgoole, is flummoxed. In fact, Dromgoole’s bafflement is so great he follows the Golden Age tradition of enlisting the help of a little old lady, Brenda Winshott, to solve the village murder, which (of course) she does in short order. “Little Old Ladies” is a delightful, somewhat slanted—in the best possible way—traditional detective story with a light mood and a good deal of humor. Brenda Winshott, the quietest and most competent resident of Morton-cum-Budely, is a perfect sleuth. She is liked by everyone, a little sneaky, and her tactful manner puts everyone at ease. The clues are scattered in the narrative and there are three solid suspects—none of them with an alibi. I only cracked the case a few paragraphs before Brenda revealed it on the page. If you enjoy a solid whodunit with an English Village setting, “Little Old Ladies,” will do just fine. Did I mention, I smiled from the first page to the last, which is something in these harrowing times.

“Little Old Ladies” was first published in the U.K. in Women’s Weekly Special, January 2008.

Lee Majors Profile (TV Guide, Feb. 19, 1966)

This interesting article about Lee Majors—with no writer’s byline attached—appeared in the Feb. 19, 1966, issue of TV Guide. At the time, Majors was starring in ABC’s hit western, The Big Valley (1965 – 1969). My first real viewing experience with Majors was the silly but enjoyable The Fall Guy, which also aired on ABC, from 1981 to 1986. In this profile, Majors doesn’t lack confidence and while he had an admirable run on television, his hopes for an Academy Award have probably fallen away.

Review: "The Tribe" by Bari Wood

 

The Tribe by Barri Wood Valancourt Books, 2019   The Tribe, by Bari Wood—which was originally published by NAL in 1981—is a slow burning and suspenseful horror novel with a genuine Jewish golem at its core. It begins with the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp Belzec at the end of World War 2. Major Bianco, an American officer, becomes curious about the inmates living in barracks 554 because, unlike the camp’s other survivors, they are skinny but not emaciated. Bianco searches the barracks and inconceivably discovers boxes full of food, which should have been impossible since the Nazi’s were starving any Jews that weren’t sent to the gas chambers. But before Bianco can question the men of barracks 554, they disappear from a military transport. The Tribe’s roots are in Nazi Germany’s extermination camps, but the story is set in New York City and Long Island in 1980. The murder of a young Jewish academic by a ragtag Brooklyn street gang starts things off, but the police investigation is cut short when the killers—all of them are still boys, really—are beat to death in the basement of an abandoned house. The only clue, and it’s not helpful to anyone, is the clay-like mud covering the crime scene. The Tribe is a good example of 1980s horror. It is smart. The characters are well-drawn. The suspense is built scene-by-scene, and while the reader knows what the monster is, the mystery about the how and the why of the beast is intriguing and surprising. A richness of detail about the Jewish communities in New York City and Long Island, and the experiences of these men and women during the Holocaust, adds texture. The story says something about racism and hate, too. Its only real flaw, and this can be said of so many popular novels of a certain length, is that the story’s pacing slows to a crawl in the few dozen pages it takes for the characters to come together for the big and satisfying climactic showdown. *               *               * This review originally went live, in basically the same form, on January 23, 2020. The Tribe was featured in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction (2017); which is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon in Kindle (as I write this) here. It was republished as part of Valancourt’s Paperbacks from Hell series. The Paperbacks from Hell books are published in mass market—although the pricing is higher than I would like for a mass market at $19.99—and in Kindle with some truly excellent cover art.

Check out The Tribe at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.