New Sam McCain Novel by Ed Gorman

We all have a favorite writer, or two, or three, or ten--but every once in a while, if we are lucky, we find a writer that speaks to us. Not the common, "Oh, this is soo good" kind of book speak, but that "Wow, this guy is really saying something here" kind of lightening strike moment that signals a brief--all too brief--moment of understanding. To put it another way, the world--at least a very small part of it--is made plain by this writer; or something complicated and hard suddenly seems simple and very understandable.

This writer, to me, is Ed Gorman. He writes everything from dark suspense to mystery to science fiction to western, and I have never read anything he wrote that I didn't like. That's not to say I don't have favorites, because I do, and they are too numerous to post here, but among them I have to place his Sam McCain novels.

The Sam McCain mysteries are beautifully rendered portaits of small town life in the fifties and sixties spun into an entertaining, meaningful and downright fun story. There are six titles in the series: The Day the Music Died, Wake Up Little Susie, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, Save the Last Dance for Me, Everybody's Somebody's Fool, and Breaking Up is Hard to Do. McCain is also featured in a novella titled, "The Santa Claus Murders," which appeared in the anthology: Crooks, Crimes and Christmas. I'm actually reading this story right now, and it is vintage McCain. Fun, fast and uncomprimisingly enjoyable.

And now, drum roll please--again imagine your favorite actor / actress at the podium--the seventh title in the Sam McCain series has not only been announced, but the cover art has been released (see right). The title: Fools Rush In. The publisher: Pegasus Books. The release date: March, 2007.

Damn. Why must I always wait? Needless to say, I can't wait to get my grubby hands on this title--the last entry in the McCain saga, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, was published two long years ago. Two very long years ago.

Stansbury Island

The last several weeks have seen few, to say the least, posts here at Gravetapping. My instinct is to blame blogspot--their blog posting program has been messing about with me. I think it is a conspiracy. Although while this is a simple and somewhat accurate excuse their is another: calculus. God, how I despise that class, and I am just unfortunate enough to be taking it right this summer. Oh goody. So, anyway with that out of the way and can move on...

A few months ago my girl and and I went to Stansbury Island on the Great Salt Lake--it is a desert landscape surrounded by vast, seemingly limitless, stretches of water. There is a large heard of cattle that roams the northern end of the island, and on the southern end--which is actually attached to the surrounding desert, much like a peninsula--are several evaporation ponds, salt factories, biking and hiking trails, and a myriad of dirt roads--not to mention a few nude male sunbathers. Just don't look too close, and you'll be okay.

The island has a desolate eloquence, which gives one the impression of timelessness. It is seemingly the birthplace of our world. Ancient, and new at the same time. Everything is slowed down here: life, death, decay, and even re-birth. There is beauty. The golden hue of lazily swaggering flora. The crisp airy sky and the deep, restless water slowly moving, tapping, tapping against the brilliant whites of shoreline. There is life--mountain lions roam the in solitude along the far edges of the high back country, birds sweep across the horizon as they migrate North in the spring and South again in the autumn, rabbits bound across the flat brush covered lowlands down near the lake, and then you have the creepers and crawlers. The bugs, flys and the pesky mosquitoes. They are all here on Standsbury Island, living and dying. It is a wonderful place. A place were one can reflect on the past, the present and one's own mortality.

Amazing Journeys Magazine

Good news, and bad too. Amazing Journeys Magazine recently published my short story "The Electric Man," and it is currently available for purchase at Clarke's World Books. Go Here to find AJM--"Electric Man" is in issue 10.

It has been well received, both my short story and the magazine as a whole. AJM is a great little digest sized (perfect bound) magazine of modern science fiction written in the classic style of the golden age. These stories will remind you of The Twilight Zone, vintage Asimov, Heinlein, and even L. Ron Hubbard. The stories are crisp, clean and very well told.

Go Here to read the Tangent review for this issue of AJM.

Now for the bad: I recently learned that Ed Knight, the hardworking editor of AJM, has called it quits after thirteen issues. He did a nearly impossible job of putting this high quality magazine together on a shoe-string budget. I'll miss AJM, but I wish all the best to Ed and hope maybe, just maybe, he'll throw his hat back into the small press magazine rink. Good luck, Ed.

New Hard Case Crime Artwork

I just got my dirty paws on the latest artwork to appear on a future Hard Case Crime novel. It is deliciously lurid and boldly vibrant. The artist is Greg Manchess--he has painted several of the better covers for HCC including: Fade to Blonde, Home is the Sailor, and the forthcoming Michael Crichton novel (published under the pseudonym John Lange) Grave Descend. This beauty reminds me of his cover for Fade to Blonde--my favorite of the HCC covers to date--and it will appear on Gil Brewer's The Vengeful Virgin due out--sigh--March 2007.

Don't forget that Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake), the latest HCC title, is due out in the next week or so. This is a title I can't wait to get. It features Grofield, a member of hardass-criminal Parker's gang, and now brought back into print in one of his starring roles. Westlake is great, as either himself or as Stark.

The 2006 Shamus Award Nominees are Announced

The Private Eye Writer's of America have announced the 2006 nominees for their annual Shamus Award for best private eye fiction. All of the nominees were published in 2005.

I'm ashamed to admit that I have read only one of the nominated stories--Lee Goldberg's The Man with the Iron-On Badge, which was a great P.I. novel. Anyway, here are the nominees. (I hope you pictured someone fantasically hot celebrity smoothly delivering that line--I pictured, um, Naomi Watts.)

An interesting aside: two of the five nominees for best paperback original are from independent publisher Pinnacle. The titles are: Deadlocked by Joel Goldman, and The Killing Rain by P.J. Parrish. Not a bad showing.

Best Hardcover

Oblivion by Peter Abrahams (Wm. Morrow), featuring Nick Petrov.
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown), featuring Mickey Haller.
The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais (Doubleday), featuring Elvis Cole.
In A Teapot by Terence Faherty (Crum Creek Press), featuring Scott Elliot.
The Man with the Iron-On Badge by Lee Goldberg (Five Star), featuring Harvey Mapes.
Cinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown), featuring Easy Rawlins.

Best Paperback Original

Falling Down by David Cole (Avon), featuring Laura Winslow.
The James Deans by Reed Farrell Coleman (Plume), featuring Moe Prager.
Deadlocked by Joel Goldman (Pinnacle), featuring Lou Mason.
Cordite Wine by Richard Helms (Back Alley Books), featuring Eamon Gold.
A Killing Rain by P.J. Parrish (Pinnacle), featuring Louis Kincaid.

Best First Novel

Blood Ties by Lori G. Armstrong (Medallion), featuring Julie Collins.
Still River by Harry Hunsicker (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Minotaur), featuring Lee Henry Oswald.
The Devil’s Right Hand by J. D. Rhoades (St. Martin's Minotaur), featuring Jack Keller.
Forcing Amaryllis by Louise Ure (Mysterious Press – Warner), featuring Calla Gentry.

Best Short Story

“Oh, What a Tangled Lanyard We Weave” by Parnell Hall. Murder Most Crafty (Berkley), featuring Stanley Hastings.
“Two Birds with One Stone” by Jeremiah Healy. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Jan/Feb 2005, featuring John Francis Cuddy.
“The Big Road” by Steve Hockensmith. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May 2005, featuring Larry Erie.
“A Death in Ueno” by Michael Wiecek. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March 2005 featuring Masakazu Sakonju.
“The Breaks” by Timothy Williams. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2005 featuring Charlie Raines.

Through Wyoming Eyes, by Ken Rand

My review of Ken Rand's most recent chapbook, Through Wyoming Eyes, has been posted on SFReader.com. [Click here to read it] Ken Rand is a local Utah writer--he is a librarian in my local library system--and his writing is a unique blend of science fiction, horror and western. In this collection he puts together five stories that are set in Wyoming. They all have a great sense of time, place and will often leave you smiling--they have the feel of classic scifi: The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits.

If you have never read Ken Rand's work, you should, and Through Wyoming Eyes is a good place to start.

An Interview with Western Writer, Elmer Kelton

There is a great interview with writer Elmer Kelton currently online at The American Enterprise Online. Kelton recently celebrated his eightieth birthday--he started his career writing stories and novellas for the old pulp magazines, and he has seen some amazing changes in the business of writing. He seems witty, humorous and downright humble. It doesn't hurt that he is one of the better selling western writer's currently producing.

I have read only one novel written by Elmer Kelton--Badger Boy--and I can't say that the story, the location--Texas--or characters spoke to me, but the prose and pace were expert and I finished it with no problem. With that in mind, this article / interview puts me in the mood to try another of his stories. I hope you read it, and enjoy it because we are watching an entire genre washed away without so much as an alert, a siren, or even a eulogy. Click here to read the interview.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

I was pointed to a review of a new "pulp" novel on Yahoo! News, The Chinatown Peril written by Paul Malmont; published by Simon & Schuster in hardcover. (Now just if they would print the damn things as paperback originals so we could afford to buy them!*) The book sounds great--the main players will all be familiar to you: L. Ron Hubbard, Lester Dent, Robert Heinlein, Louis L'Amour and many other popular writers of pulp's golden age join forces to solve the murder of the soon to be famous H.P. Lovecraft. . . read the review. It'll explain sooo much better than I, since, dare I presume, he actually read it. This is one I hope I can find at the local library.

*This review got me thinking, if the old-style pulpy thriller is fashionable--we see it all over these days in bookstores, on movie screens, and even on television--does it take away from its power as a vehicle of the working class to tell their very real story in a fantastical way? The way it told stories in the 30's, and especially the '40s and '50s when the paperback original revolutionized American literature by making books--real paper, ink and ideas--available in editions that the common person could afford?

The way I see it, when something becomes hip, or fashionable--all the beautiful people "love, just love it baby"--it has lost its connection with reality. If the wealthiest, most charming, most beautiful--and probably most medicated--of us all has an attraction to this neo-pulp has it (the genre) lost its power as a voice for the working class? God, I hope not, but how can the same piece of fiction speak to a Harvard graduate earning $300,000 a year and to the guy that cleans the toilets for $300 a week?

No answers here I'm afraid. Only questions, but damn I wish there were more publishers putting out affordable books. Although the cover for The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is genuinely beautiful--still, it would be even more so on a cheap rack-sized paperback.

An Interview with John D. MacDonald

I ran across an interview with the one and only John D. MacDonald (you know, the guy who wrote the Travis McGee novels, Slam the Big Door, The Damned and dozens of other tremendously successful novels) conducted by Ed Gorman. It was originally published in The Big Book of Noir in 1984. John D. talks about Travis McGee, writing, and life. There are also several scans of vintage John D. pulp art paperbacks--Gold Medal and Dell. You should check it out.

The interviewer, Ed Gorman, is one of my favorite writers and he does a bang-up job here. If you like his interview style you should check out his novels. His Sam McCain stories give John D's Travis McGee a run for his money.

The interview is currently online at Mystery File. Click here to read the interview.

Pulp Covers for Classic Novels

Is this the mark of the revitalization of 1950s pulp? First we have a major national publisher, Hard Case Crime, marketing classic and original noir novels complete with lurid and sleazy artwork (which I love!) and now Slate.com is following the trend by bankrolling six mock pulp covers for classic literary works. Animal Farm is my favorite--when you see it, you'll know why. Click here to read the article and see the covers.

Parker is Back!

I just bumped into Richard Stark's latest Parker novel on Amazon--it is amazing what aimless surfing / time-killing will do for you. The title is, Ask the Parrot, and it is, according to Amazon, set for release on November 23, 2006.

If you are unfamiliar with Parker, or Stark, you should remedy that as quickly as possible. Parker is the quintessential tough guy anti-hero. He is a professional criminal who works only when he needs to, and isn't afraid of anyone, or anything. He is loyal, most of the time, reasonable and more than willing to kick your ass if you cross him.

You very probably saw him portrayed by Mel Gibson in the film Payback--and while I enjoyed the film, the novels are so much better!

Richard Stark is the pseudonym for Donald E. Westlake, and I have yet to read a Westlake, or Stark novel that I didn't enjoy. Hard Case Crime released a vintage-style mass-market paperback of Westlake's classic hardboiled novel, 361 last summer and they are set to release Lemons Never Lie in July. Lemons is another classic novel, this one under the Richard Stark moniker, which means it will be tough, hard and lean. It is high on my list of summer reading. The cover is great, too.

New Jack Ketchum & Richard Laymon titles from Leisure Books


Good news on the horror front. Leisure Books has two new Richard Laymon titles coming later this year, and one Jack Ketchum. Okay, so they are all reprints. Picky, picky. First off, Leisure continues to publish classic Ketchum titles with, Off Season. This is the unexpurgated edition, which means that it has been expanded by the author to more accurately represent his original text before the editors / censors of the original publisher got ahold of it. I have read that Ketchum actually threw-out, or otherwise destroyed the original manuscript. Off Season was Jack Ketchum's first published novel, and it will be released in June--just a few weeks away. I can't wait. I read the Headline edition several years ago, and needless to say I'm anxiously awaiting this new revamped version.


Into the Fire by Richard Laymon will be released in July--this is the paperback reprint of Leisure's hardcover release last fall. It isn't one of Laymon's better novels, but it is entertaining, and contains the usual sexual titillations and humor Laymon is known for.

The Laymon title I really am excited about is his first published novel, The Cellar. It is the original Beast House novel and, from what I have heard, the best of the bunch. I can't wait to get my grubby hands on this one. It is scheduled for release in October, and it should make a great Halloween read.

Vengeance Valley by Richard S. Wheeler

I read a western a few months ago titled Vengeance Valley by Richard Wheeler. It is a mining camp story about a prospector named Hard Luck Yancey. It is a quiet story of perseverance, love and ultimately triumph. It won the 2005 Western Writer’s of America Spur Award for best paperback original.

And no one read it! The sales numbers were terrible. It got me to thinking—and on this subject I am less than original and far from expert—about why such a sweet and charming novel would do so poorly.

First let’s start with the title: Vengeance Valley. This is an obvious throwback to the heyday of the western. Those old Ace Doubles, Gold Medal and Signet originals (all of which I love) that portrayed the west as a palace of helpless women, bad men and loner heroes. Unfortunately in this case the title is so misleading that if that were the type of book you wanted, you would be angry that it never took shape. There is no valley in the story—the town of Yancey, where the novel is set, is literally on the side of steep mountain ridge. And as for vengeance? Nope. None. Maybe there is a touch of poetic justice when Hard Luck Yancey earns back his mine, wins the girl and saves the town, but not much in the way of six-gun vengeance here.

Now, how about the cover (see above). There is a duded-up gunman with six-shooters in hand getting ready to exact a bit of vigilante justice on the bad guys. When I got about halfway through this novel it dawned on me that I had yet read about a gun—any gun, let alone a six-shooter—so in fun I made a count of just how many firearms showed-up in the telling of this story, and there was exactly one: A shotgun that was pointed, but never fired.

The publisher (in this case Pinnacle) marketed this book for failure. It narrowed the audience to a group of about five rednecks in Arkansas (Bill Clinton not among them) by the title and cover art when it easily could have found a much wider audience. There is much in Vengenace Valley to admire: there is a tender and beautiful love story; a very basic good versus evil strain; great characters; greed and innocence. This is a novel that could easily be enjoyed by both men and women, so why is it marketed as an action novel for men?

Why do the major publishing houses insist on marketing westerns like it is still 1955? Vengeance Valley is but one example of how publishers are destroying the genre through incompetence, neglect, or outright literary snobbery. I guess the old saying is true: You truly can’t judge a book by its cover. Maybe those romance novels with bare-chested Fabios aren’t so bad either—well, maybe.

Welcome to Grave Tapping.

Summer has finally arrived on the high desert--it was an unusually wet winter. The ski resorts had an unbelievable base of around 150+ inches of snow in April, and Snowbird is still open! Anyway, today is beautiful. The sky is clear, the snow covered Wasatch range is seemingly clawing their way to heaven and it is all happening on mother's day.

Happy day to all the mother's out there. It may be a Hallmark (buy crap from us) inspired holiday, but this one is well deserved. Although, skip the stores and just let your mom know you love her. Leave the consumerism alone for a day. Wal-Mart will survive, unfortunately, without your presence and purchases for one holiday.

Now, off my soap box. If you haven't noticed already, this is my new blog! Oh the power--err, something. Anyone out there? Anyone?

This is the place for anything and everything me, all the time. Except, that one can only talk about oneself for so long before ennui sets in with all its bleak ferocity. In fact, now that I think about it, I am almost there already.

If you love books--popular fiction (mystery, horror, science fiction, western) you will love this site because I love it, and will try to discuss it a bit here. I also love non-fiction, quality literature (not so much what passes for literature today, but the good stuff: Hemingway, Conrad, Steinbeck, etc.) You know, the good old-fashioned writer's who realized there had to be a story involved before any meaning could be conveyed. Or reader's found. Do I dare say, that evilness, they understood and implemented plot?

Welcome, sit back and maybe, just maybe we can have a dialog, monologue, or something equally enviable. Welcome, and come back soon.