No Comment: "The Tribe"

“‘Because my mother married a communist who wouldn’t kiss the rebbe’s ass. The rebbe, by the way, was Jacob Levy’s father. So, one man won’t kiss, pretty soon somebody else won’t, and before you know it you can’t get anyone to pucker up.’”

—Bari Wood, The Tribe. Valancourt Books, 2019 (© 1981); page 183

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context]

No Comment: "Save the Last Dance for Me"

“Sometimes, something happens that you can’t forgive. And it kills you because you can’t forgive. You drag it along with you your whole life and remember it at odd moments and no matter how old you get, that one thing still retains its fresh and vital pain. And a part of you knows that the other person has gone on and probably never thinks about it at all.”

—Ed Gorman, Save the Last Dance for Me. Worldwide Mystery, 2003 (© 2002); Page 217.

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context]

No Comment: "Bad Debts"

“I found Edward Dollery, age forty-seven, defrocked accountant, big spender and dishonest person, living in a house rented in the name of Carol Pick. It was a new brick-veneer suburb built on cow pasture east of the city, one of those strangely silent developments where the average age is twelve and you can feel the pressure of the mortgages on your skin.”

—Peter Temple, Bad Debts. Text Publishing, 2012 (© 1996). Page 1.

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context]

No Comment: "Overhead"

Hemingway liked to talk about how life sometimes bent people, sometimes in such a way that they healed and went on, stronger because of the hurt. He said life sometimes broke people, too. But he never really came to terms with that. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe at the very end Hemingway understood being truly broken, beyond healing, and that was why he went down to the hallway that fine sunny morning outside of Ketchum and put both barrels of the shotgun to his forehead, just above the eyes, and pulled both triggers.

—Jack M. Bickham, Overhead. Tor, 1993 (© 1991) page 279. 

No Comment: "Dying in the Post-War World"

“That’s what we’d fought for, all of us. To give our kids what we never had. To give them a better, safer place to live in. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“For that one night, settled into a hard hospital chair, in the glow of my brand-new little family, I allowed myself to believe that that hope was not a vain one. That anything was possible in this glorious post-war world.”

—Max Allan Collins, “Dying in the Post-War World”. Foul Play Press, 1991 (© 1991). Page 105. Nathan Heller is in the hospital for his son’s birth.

Purchase a copy of Triple Play, which includes the novella “Dying in the Post-War World” at Amazon.

Read the Gravetapping review of “Dying in the Post-War World”.

No Comment: "Winesburg, Ohio - 'Sophistication'"

“In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into the long night of late fall. Farm houses jogged away along lonely country roads pulling their portion of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods in off the sidewalks and lock the doors of stores. In the Opera House a crowd had gathered to see a show and further down Main Street the fiddlers, their instruments tuned, sweated and worked to keep the feet of youth flying over a dance floor.”

—Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio: “Sophistication”. Library of America, 2012. Page 176.

Purchase a copy of Winesburg, Ohio at Amazon.

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context.]

No Comment: "Nowhere to Run"

“Vigil half turned in his chair, raised a hand, and when the waiter arrived he ordered two more bottles of the mineral water. He smiled at David. He was not an ugly man until he smiled.”

—Ron Faust, Nowhere to Run. Turner Publishing Company, 2013 (© 1981). Page 57. Captain Vigil, a Mexican policeman, is questioning David Rhodes about the murder of a young woman.

Purchase a copy of Nowhere to Run at Amazon.

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context.]

No Comment: "The November Man"

“It must be the same as deprogramming a Jesus freak: The intellectual argument never counted because there was no intelligence involved.”

—Bill Granger, The November Man (There are No Spies). Grand Central Publishing PB, 2014 (© 1986). Page 157. Lydia Neumann speaking to Margot Kieker.

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context]

Purchase a copy of The November Man at Amazon.

No Comment: "Nowhere to Run"

“He had spent most of that evening in the lounge of the Hotel El Presidente, drinking and playing liar’s poker with a couple of his pals. They had gambled with one-hundred-peso notes and Harry had lost about forty dollars. Not much money, but enough to sour his mood a little; he had never learned how to accept losing, hated it, regarded it as a little death—every time you lost, whether a dime or an argument or what the Asians call face, a chip was taken out of your self-esteem and you entered the next contest with that much less confidence. Losing was an accumulative poison like lead or arsenic; small doses did not appear to cause much harm, but they collected and in time…”

—Ron Faust, Nowhere to Run. Turner Publishing Company TPB, 2013 (© 1981). Page 161. “He” is Harry Rudd, a wealthy former automobile broker. The protagonist, David Rhodes, finds Harry at his Mexican estate. A gun in one hand, a drink in the other.

Read the Gravetapping review of Nowhere to Run.

Purchase a copy of Nowhere to Run at Amazon.com

No Comment: "Spiderweb"

“Baker feared his boss, Klotscher feared God, Mrs. Annixter feared cancer, which was a polite term for syphilis, which was a polite term for intercourse, which was a polite term for the Sin Against the Holy Ghost, which was a polite term for the fact that she really enjoyed it. By a strange coincidence, Mr. Annixter was a patient too, and he feared—Mrs. Annixter.”

—Robert Bloch, Spiderweb. Hard Case Crime paperback, 2008 (© 1954); page 85. First person narrative of the protagonist, Eddie Haines.

[No Comment is a series of posts featuring passages from both fiction and non-fiction that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context—since the paragraph before and after are never included.]

Purchase a copy of the Hard Case Crime edition of Shooting Star / Spiderweb at Amazon.

No Comment. "Winesburg, Ohio, 'Surrender, Part Three'"

“Sometimes it seemed to her that to be held tightly and kissed was the secret to life, and then a new impulse came and she was terribly afraid.”

—Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio: “Surrender, Part Three”. Library of America edition, 2012; page 59.  

No Comment is a new series of posts featuring passages from both fiction and non-fiction that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context—since the paragraph before and after are never included.

No Comment. "Save the Last Dance for Me"

“‘Well, the wife—I’m not sure you ever met her, gal from Sioux City I met when I was doing my printing apprenticeship up there—anyway, she was raised as an evangelical.  And what with one thing and another she kinda got me interested in the whole thing. She always says you should feel bad when you go to church. And I tried ‘em all—Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian. But they always tried to make you feel good. But bad’s the only way you know your religion’s workin’ for you. When you feel terrible.’”

—Ed Gorman, Save the Last Dance for Me. Worldwide paperback, 2003 (© 2002); page 118. Dialogue between John Parnell and Sam McCain.

No Comment is a new series of posts featuring passages from both fiction and non-fiction that caught my attention. It may be the idea, the texture, or the presence that grabbed my eye. There is no analysis provided, and it invariably is out of context—since the paragraph before and after are never included.