Interview: Richard S. Wheeler

Richard S. Wheeler is the author of more than 60 books. His first novel, Bushwack, was published in 1978, and the majority of his work is set in the nineteenth century American West. His early novels tended to be short traditional Westerns, but as he grew as a writer, his work did to. In his quiet manner he has transcended genre, and at his best he is a chronicler of the westward expansion. He avoids the rough and rowdy mythology of the West, and instead writes about people, and places. He writes characters that are recognizable—flawed, admirable, frightened, vain—with a kind, understanding empathy. The settings are vivid, real, and capture the beauty, desolation, and wonder of the West.

Mr. Wheeler has won six Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Western Writers of America. He has been called “One of the best Western writers around today,” by Publishers Weekly, and “a master storyteller,” by Library Journal. 

Mr. Wheeler was kind enough, and showed an amazing amount of patience, to answer a few questions. The questions are italicized.  

You were raised in urban-Wisconsin, but you spent the majority of your early adult life either living in the Western United States—Arizona, California, Montana—or, when you were living away from the West, trying to get back. What is so appealing about the West in general, and Montana, specifically (where you settled)?

The vistas, the empty land, the romance, the stories. I discovered all that working as a newsman in the West. By some miracle, my first jobs took me west.

In your memoir, An Accidental Novelist, you candidly discuss your early work life—working as an opinion editor, beat reporter, book editor, etc.—your trouble staying employed, and the late decision, you were in your early-forties I believe, to write fiction. Why do you think it took so long to turn to storytelling, and how did the long journey help shape your fiction?

No money in fiction! A guy needs a steady job and paycheck. Also, fiction instructors insisted that a story must be shown, not told; dramatized, not reported. (They were wrong, but I didn’t know that.) They said a good novelist should be a playwright at heart, not a newsman.

You sold your first novel, Bushwack, to Doubleday in 1978. What was more gratifying, receiving the check, or holding the printed copy of your first novel?

I got a thousand dollar advance and it was gold to me. Could I possibly turn it into a living, writing on my own, free from bosses? Cash was incredible to me.

Speaking of Bushwack, in your memoir you briefly discuss the misspelled title. Did you take much grief from readers, or other writers, when it was published?

None at all. Doubleday editors left the title as it was, making a westernism of it. Bushwack is how it’s pronounced in the West.

You were the editor of Walker and Company’s Western line in the mid-1980s, and charged with acquiring a certain number of titles each year. Are there any specific authors or titles you “discovered” that you are particularly fond, or even proud, of?

I am proud indeed to have helped Michael Zimmer, Sam Brown, and Gary Svee, put their great talents to work. Each brought uniqueness, authenticity, and courage to the field. There were others I launched, and they all made my editing career rewarding.

How did the experience of editing a Western line change your attitudes towards your own writing, or the genre as a whole?

The gunslinger western gradually alienated me. The plot is roughly the same in all of them: who will be the last man standing? The high-body-count shootout stories are southern in nature, set in Texas and the Southwest, and still sell largely to southerners. Their heroes are ex-Confederates. You rarely see shootout stories set in the Dakotas or Idaho. Western stories set in the north are closer to actual frontier experience, and less mythic. Typically they involve the Indian wars, or vigilante justice, or mining rivalry, or cattlemen versus nesters. My experience editing mythic gunman stories set me to writing about the real West, and eventually historical or biographical westerns.

Your early novels were more traditional—Bushwack was about rustling, Dodging Red Cloud was about the Bozeman Trail—than your later work, which can be grouped into three broad categories: biographical, historical, and mining camp tales. What was the impetus for the change from a traditional Western writer to a historical writer?

People. Characters in romantic westerns are barely sketched out. Gunfighter stories pile up the corpses, but they are barely names: they don’t have histories, family, spouses, children, dreams, beliefs. Neither do they suffer. How many of these stories depict a slow-death wound, pain and gasping and agony, and fear? So the reader doesn’t care. Joe and Bugs and Sammy croak, but who cares?

In historical and biographical fiction, I found the chance to create real characters, and put their suffering into the unfolding drama of their lives. I’ve come to prefer stories that cover an entire life, and often end with an epilogue telling how it all worked out. Most of my later-life novels have followed that preference.

Of your early traditional Western novels do any stand out as particularly good or memorable?

My Santiago Toole novels, which are about a doctor in Miles City who finds himself filling in as a part time sheriff between treating patients, have richer qualities than most genre western stories.

Editor’s note. The Santiago Toole titles include The Fate, Incident at Fort Keough, Deuces and Ladies Wild, and The Final Tally.

I especially enjoy your biographical novels where you develop a story around a historical figure. The first I read was An Obituary for Major Reno (2005) where you tackle the life of Major Marcus Reno who was widely and popularly blamed for General Custer’s defeat at the Little Big Horn. I was amazed at how well you pursued Reno’s complexity, contradictions, and flaws while still making him an empathic character. What type of research do you do for these stories?

Site visits, and any authoritative reading I could trust. The Custer nonfiction is so fraught with blame-mongering that it is hard to separate scholarly work from propaganda.

What do you think causes the passion, blame-mongering, and propaganda in the Custer mythos?

There is a certain white-man arrogance in this. It doesn’t matter that the Sioux and Cheyenne had over 1,500 fighting men, maybe many more, many better armed than the soldiers, and that they easily separated Custer’s divided forces. You could have put General Sheridan or General Grant in Reno’s boots, and the result would not have been much different. How do you control a couple hundred green troops fleeing to the cliff in fear of their lives? For some reason, those involved in this blame-mongering can’t accept the reality that the Indians were a vastly superior force, and there wasn't a thing that Reno or Custer could do about it. It is simply closer to our frame of reference to blame Custer or Reno, i.e., white soldiers were the superior force, no matter the numbers, so it is all the fault of one commander or other, than to look at the reality. This is a distortion of life through the lens of history. We are the dominant world power, so we must have been vastly superior to the Sioux in 1876.

When you are researching a particular historical figure, have you ever been surprised by who the person actually was versus any preconceived notions you had when starting the research?

I thought Reno would be an anti-hero, but the more I read about him, the more variable he became to me. As a young bachelor he was an indifferent soldier, barely qualified for command. But when he met and married Mary Hannah, everything changed. He became a competent commanding officer. And when she died at a young age, he began to deteriorate. He was one of those men who are incomplete without a woman, without a home, without loving arms reaching for him. That topic makes some men itchy, so it isn’t widely discussed. But Marcus Reno was that sort, and I embedded it in the story, and feel I came close to the reality. In the end, I knew I could empathize with him in spite of his numerous failings. His grave at the battlefield is always decorated with flowers or a flag. I believe I know why.

Do you have a favorite, or two, of the historical figures you have researched and written about?

William Clark, of the expedition, who was a grand, balanced, capable man this country can be proud of. Marcus Daly, the Butte copper king, who arrived penniless on these shores and built the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, always generous and caring about his fellow Irish and their widows.

Your biographical novels humanize, and often de-mythologize, major figures of the westward expansion; Eclipse: A Novel of Lewis and Clark (2002) deals with Meriwether Lewis’s suicide, and ultimately finds blame with his contraction of syphilis; Snowbound (2010) focuses on John C. Fremont’s cold—almost sociopathic—ambition; An Obituary for Major Reno (2005) enhances Marcus Reno’s reputation at the expense of General Custer’s. Do you ever get kickback from readers and critics for humanizing these real-life, yet popularly mythologized, characters? 

The Lewis and Clark “Establishment” didn’t like the idea that Lewis may have contracted syphilis. That Lewis was ill no one doubted, but it was more commonly believed he suffered from ague, a recurring form of malaria common in Virginia. In my novel, Lewis uses attacks of ague as a way to conceal his true disease. That did not make me popular.  

Speaking of mythology, you have been critical of the New York publishing houses’ treatment of the Western genre—it narrows the field, rather than broadening it, by categorizing it as fiction for middle-aged men; focusing on gunfights, and coarse, hard, men. What do you think the genre—writers, fans, and publishers—can do to better market itself?

The mass-market gunman western is going to continue to sell well; people love myths and buy them. The realistic western story remains in trouble. My own solution is to write biographical novels, or historical novels, that depict the fabulous history of our frontier, primarily as literature rather than mythology. But this is a niche market, at best, and I harbor few hopes for anything more.

Why do you think American readers, and really Americans as a whole, prefer mythology to reality?

The romantic west makes us feel good about ourselves. I love some of those stories, such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I just watched the scene where the troops give John Wayne a watch inscribed to him, and he fights back tears. High Noon, an abandoned and newly married sheriff seeking justice and survival. Shane, a killer who rescues a nester from certain death just because it was the right thing to do. Shane hates his trade, and bawls out the boy for glamorizing what he does. I love those romantic stories that define who we are, and interpret history to glorify ourselves.

Barnaby Skye is one of the most original characters in Western fiction. He is a Brit seaman, a former fur trapper with an ugly, mean horse named Jawbone, and two native wives. I should also add he carries a belaying pin, and generally acts as a travel guide to anyone who will pay the freight. How did the idea for Barnaby germinate, and how have you been able to keep him fresh and interesting?

Pure commerce. A western hero with two wives and a British seaman-deserter background looked like it might sell books. I wrote nineteen in all, eventually carrying the story to three generations. It’s confusing because my first novels were about a middle-aged Skye, but then I went back to his youthful desertion at Fort Vancouver in the 1820s, and ended up with novels about his son, Dirk, entering modern times.

In the Barnaby Skye novels you effectively play off cultural differences between Europeans and the native tribes. As an example, in The Canyon of Bones (2007) you note how the two cultures treat marriage differently—Skye’s wife, Victoria, is ashamed her husband has only one wife, and while she is overworked—doing woman’s work—she won’t let Skye help because it demeans him. It appears you have fun comparing and contrasting the two cultures. What are some of the more interesting differences you have found between the cultures?

In some Indian cultures men were hunters and warriors, and sometimes spiritual leaders, while women gathered, cooked, nourished, sewed, scraped hides, and tended children. Women did the scutwork, such as moving lodges. It demeaned either sex to do the appointed work of the other. That gave me endless opportunities in the Skye’s West novels to have Skye suffer ridicule if he was a thoughtful and helpful husband. But the traditional tribes were more tolerant of women who assumed male roles, who became warriors or spiritual figures. All this formed a comic leitmotif in the Skye novels.

Your novels have a very strong sense of place; the mining camp stories feature the noise, aromas, sights, and the biographical novels aptly describe the terrain—mountains, deserts, elements—in a manner that adds credibility to the story. What is it about place that interests you, and how do you research to ensure accuracy? Do you visit the places detailed in your fiction? 

These places whispered, sometimes sang to me. I was able to stand at a western site and blot up not just the scenery, but all the history and implications. Was there a river? Hard to cross? Dangerous? The land became larger than imagines and sounds.

You have achieved an enviable amount of accolades for your writing, including an astonishing six Spur Awards, and the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement. In an interview with the late-Ron Scheer you said winning the awards “made [you] more reckless” and created the opportunity to include ideas in your fiction you would have removed before. Can you expand on this? Are there specific novels, ideas, etc. that come to mind?

The walls of genre fell away. I could write about a boozy Skye, with two wives, one of them a first-class cusser; a story about Lewis and Clark that begins when the expedition returns and looks at what fame did to them; a story about an American hero, Fremont, whose ego led to deaths in his company; a book about Wyatt Earp that makes him almost tongue-tied around his wife; a book about Bat Masterson in which the old boy, now a New York journalist, heads into the west to puncture the myths that sprang up around him.

I heard this question in an interview on a BBC program a few years ago. If you were stranded on an island and you had only one book. What would it be?

Most any novel about a protagonist who assumes adult  responsibility for his own conduct, his own failures and successes, and learns that excuses, even valid ones, are worthless.

The opposite side of the coin. If you were allowed only to recommend one of your novels, or stories, which one would you want people to read?

Sun Mountain, a story that follows a man through his entire life, and explores what he did once he arrived in the far west to make his fortune.

THE LONG HIGH NOON by Loren D. Estleman

“No one but Randy Locke and Frank Farmer knew just what it was that blackened the blood between them, but it didn’t lose its kick with time.”

The feud began in 1868, for reasons unknown, when the two traded drunken shots in an El Paso saloon. It escalated the following morning when Randy broke one of Frank’s ribs with a .44 slug, and their lifelong co-dependence was cast with Randy’s crushed leg; an injury caused by Frank’s misjudged pistol shot, which placed the pill in the horse rather than Randy. From there the two men dance across the Western frontier, their sole reason for living the taking of the other’s life—they trade barbs in Salt Lake City, hunt each other in Wyoming and San Francisco, and plan, with the aid of huckster Abraham Cripplehorn, a live pay-per-view duel to the death in Indian country.  

The Long High Noon is the tallest of tall tales, and its power isn’t a telling of the West, but rather a telling of the mythology of the West. It is told in vivid strokes, whimsy and humor. The humor often exposed in fine dialogue—

In an early passage the narrator—an unidentified gentleman who, from time to time, slips into first person—tells of Randy’s success with women (sometimes not having to pay at all), and Frank’s reaction: “That little stump’d have to pay a sheep.”

In a later passage Abraham Cripplehorn tells Randy: “It never occurred to me you had a mother.”

It chronicles, tongue-in-cheek, the settlement of the American West; from the post-Civil War expansion to its ultimate settlement and civilization. It is something of a mythology of the mythology of the West. It starts with the dime novels, the sensationalism of early western journalism, the traveling Wild West shows, and ultimately the rise of settlement and the fall of men such as Frank Farmer and Randy Locke. A fall both men take quite fittingly.

The Long High Noon is smooth, vivacious, and curious. There are moments—splashes of dialogue, shimmering narrative, clever twists—when Mr. Estleman appears to be showing off; it isn’t cheap or distracting, but rather a display of how good a writer he is. He has mastered his art, and it shows. It also displays a deep understanding of both the westward expansion and the literary genre that grew up around it; the reality and mythology wrapped into one neat package.

I wrote this review for Ed Gorman’s fine blog New Improved Gorman. If you haven’t been there, you should.

Purchase a copy on Amazon.

SNOWBOUND by Richard S. Wheeler

Richard S. Wheeler won a Spur Award for Best Western Short Novel for his 2010 novel Snowbound, and it was a well-earned, and deserving honor. Snowbound is less Western and more historical. It chronicles John C. Fremont’s ill-fated fourth expedition, which was ostensibly to find a railroad route across the Rocky Mountains at the 38^th Parallel between St. Louis and San Francisco.

The expedition was privately funded by a group of St. Louis businessmen—with the support of Fremont’s senator father-in-law Thomas Benton—and while its claimed purpose was to find a railroad route its true purpose was to rehabilitate Fremont’s public reputation after his court-martial, and ultimate resignation from the United States Army. The route crossed the high and rugged spine of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, where a railroad passage was unlikely at best, and, to prove something to his detractors, it was attempted in winter.

Snowbound is effectively told in an alternating first person narrative. The narrative perspective changes from chapter to chapter. It is told in the words of several characters, including Fremont, and several of the expedition members—Dr. Benjamin Kern, Alexis Godey, its lead scout Old Bill Williams, and others. It reads much like a diary—the dialogue is minimal, and the story is primarily told with the internal observations of the narrating characters. It is, through the horror of the failed expedition, a character study of John Charles Fremont. Fremont is presented as an enigma. He is narcissistic, admired—idolized, really—complicated, and, in the end, loathed by some.

The novel’s true power is its powerful description of the oppressive, brutal cold of the snowbound high Rockies, and the hardship of the expedition—

“We all looked pretty grim at times, with icicles dangling from our beards like chimes and ice collecting in our eyebrows and a rime of frost around our nostrils.”

“This was a tumble and rocky land, with giant gray outcrops, steep slopes, somber pine forests, groves of spidery cottonwoods and aspen, fierce, cruel creeks. And snow lazily smothered the country. It had caught and settled in every valley and dip, so that we were crossing spots that were ten or twenty feet deep, perilously working upslope in a tamped-down trench that reached our heads.”

“Somehow, we made camp and got fires going in protected snow pits where the wind would not snuff them. The snow had diminished, but the heavens scowled at us, and I had the sense we were trespassers, invaders of a place that was sacred to others, where no mortal should pass by.”  

The hero of the story is Alexis Godey, a former fur trapper and scout, who is Fremont’s second in command. He is developed as a quiet, competent, and ethical man. Godey was responsible for saving the bulk of the expedition’s men when he led the relief party—after reaching Taos with Fremont, and a few others—back into the Mountains to rescue those stranded by hunger and cold. While Godey is leading the relief party, Fremont recuperates in Taos planning the next leg of the expedition to California, and preemptively blaming the scout Old Bill Williams for the disastrous expedition.

Snowbound is a powerful novel of survival, and calamity. It is an introspective interpretation of one of the most eccentric and dishonest topographical expeditions of the Western United States. It is a beautifully rendered piece of literature that captures the stark beauty of winter on the high ranges, and both the hubris and nobility of men.     

Thrift Shop Book Covers: "Montana Bad Man"

Montana Bad Man was a paperback original published by Pocket Books’ imprint Perma Books in 1957, which is the very edition that caught my eye. The artwork is starkly creepy as it washes from the muted color of a face to an ink drawing of a crumpling gun hand. A splash of red bandanna crosses both elements, and adds an intriguing abstraction of violence. The artist: Jerry Allison.

The opening paragraph:

“The big Schuttler freight wagon rocked along the ungraded road in the thickening gloom, creaking and rumbling ponderously behind the six-mule team.”

Roe Richmond was a pseudonym for Roaldus Frederick Richmond (1910 – 1986). He spent his life in New England; Vermont and New Hampshire, specifically. He started as a pulp writer—writing sports stories—and moved to paperbacks in the 1950s. His novels were primarily westerns. Contemporary Authors, in its brief biography of Mr Richmond, quotes the following—

“I have loved writing from boyhood. I cared for no other career once I learned I couldn’t make the Biggies in baseball, but most of my life I’ve had to work at other jobs in order to support myself and family.”   

This is the fifteenth in a series of posts featuring the cover art and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops. It is reserved for books I purchase as much for the cover art as the story or author.

THE VIOLENT ENEMY by Jack Higgins (Hugh Marlowe)

The Violent Enemy is the film title for Harry Patterson’s 1966 novel A Candle for the Dead. A title that lasted well past the film’s fade to black, and still adorns its covers. It is Mr Patterson’s nineteenth novel. It was published in hardcover by Abelard-Schuman as by Hugh Marlowe, and it is one of only a few of Harry Patterson’s novels to remain out of print in the United States until the recent ebook frenzy.

Sean Rogan is an Irishman serving 12 years in a British prison. He is “Irish” to his is prison mates, and on the outside he is an Organization man, which is to say IRA, convicted of arranging prison breaks for his compatriots. The troubles are largely over, the Organization faded away, and Rogan is awaiting a pardon from the Home Secretary. The pardon never arrives, and Rogan’s old boss, Colum O’More, arranges the logistics for his final break out.

O’More has a plan to get the Organization moving again, but he is ill and desperately needs Sean Rogan’s help to pull it off. The plan is to steal a load of paper currency marked for destruction in a rural town in England’s Lake District. The job is simple, but the talent O’More brought in are the kind for treachery, which, along with betrayal, is the novel’s main tenant.

The Violent Enemy is something of a transitional novel in Harry Patterson’s work. It is similar in story and style to his early novel Cry of the Hunter—the lead characters are similar and the plots are mirror images—but Enemy’s characters, particularly Sean Rogan, are developed more expertly. There is much in Rogan that would appear in Mr Patterson’s later character Liam Devlin, and the female lead, Hannah Costello, is a composite for Mr Patterson’s abused, but lovely, strong, and virtuous woman featured in many of his best novels. A character that, more than any other, I associate with Harry Patterson’s work.

It is also transitional in its use of language. The prose is less adorned with elegant, striking and almost beautiful, passages than most of the early novels. It is starker, and standard. It fits the novel, but I wanted for a passage that forced itself to be reread. There were a few very nice moments, mostly dialogue, which is unusual for Mr Patterson—

“‘A fresh start makes old friends of bad ones,’ he said. ‘A proverb my grandmother was fond of.’”   

And, in response to a prison guard’s optimistic job satisfaction—

“‘I’d rather be the devil,’ Sean Rogan said with deep conviction.”

The Violent Enemy’s plot is, as always with Harry Patterson, smooth, complete with nothing left dangling, and familiar. Its pace is not perfect—it builds slowly with a few hiccups, but the climax is executed brilliantly. It is far from Mr Patterson’s best work, but it is a very capable and enjoyable thriller.

The Violent Enemy was produced as a film in 1967. It was directed by Don Sharp (Alistair MacLean’s Bear Island, 1979), and starred two pretty good actors as Sean Rogan and Colum O’More—Tom Bell and Ed Begley, respectively.

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. 

STRIP FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins

It is 1953, and comic strips are big business. Jack Starr, “vice president, chief troubleshooter and occasional bottle washer” for Starr Newspaper Syndication Company is on the job. Starr specializes in comic strips, and its biggest player is Sam Fizer’s Mugs O’Malley, but Starr is in negotiations to pick up a new strip from another big hitter named Hal Rapp, which could be a problem since Fizer and Rapp despise each other.

Things heat up when Fizer is found dead in his Waldorf-Astoria residential suite. It is staged as a suicide, and poorly at that; Fizer is right handed, but the gun is in his left, and the suicide note is a comics-style inked affair (making handwriting analysis useless). The obvious suspect is Rapp, but Jack is skeptical and with his “troubleshooter” fedora firmly in place, his private eye license in his back pocket, he starts his own investigation.

Strip for Murder is cleverly plotted, humorous—tongue firmly in cheek from beginning to end—whodunit with a twist that needs reading for believing. It is heavy on dialogue, in a good way, and the descriptions of 1950’s New York, Broadway in particular, and the syndication business are great fun. The prose is spirited in a smooth and whimsical manner—

“Maybe ten seconds later, Maggie stuck her head in; more than her head, the uppermost, most exposed part of her. Very distracting neckline, that red gown.”

Even more distracting, Maggie is his widowed step-mother, and President of Starr Syndicates. His boss, you could say. The characters—from Maggie to Hal Rapp to a Police Captain named Chandler—are charmingly eccentric and make a compelling juxtaposition to Jack’s hardboiled tendencies. A relationship that generates more humor than black eyes.       

Strip for Murder is the second in Max Allan Collins’ comic book trilogy; subsequent to A Killing in Comics (2007), and prior to Seduction of the Innocent (2014). It was originally published in 2008, and Dover Mystery Classics has brought it back as a very nice trade paperback with all the trimmings—fully, and very nicely, illustrated by Terry Beatty.

"Desert Island Discs": Interview with Jack Higgins

A few years ago I stumbled across an old BBC radio interview, or more accurately conversation, with writer Harry Patterson. It is from a program called “Desert Island Discs”. The host is a smooth voiced man named Roy Plomley, and it was broadcast December 18, 1981.

The conversation meanders across several topics, including Mr. Patterson’s early life, military service, and writings. The talk is done between short music pieces selected by Mr Patterson, and it includes a nice mixture of jazz, big band, and classical. The music is enjoyable, but the interview is a real treat.

A favorite moment is when Mr Patterson discusses his fondness for a band leader named Al Bowlly. Mr Patterson wrote Bowlly, as a background character, into his 1972 novel The Savage Day. The Savage Day was Mr Patterson’s first bestseller, and afterwards he included—at least through 1981—a cameo for Al Bowlly in each of his novels for luck. A recurring character I have never noticed.

A few interesting facts. The Eagle Has Landed was translated into 43 languages, including Welsh. The Harry Patterson novels published after The Eagle Has Landed—The Valhalla Exchange, and To Catch a King specifically—were written for his American publisher Stein and Day and could not include the Jack Higgins name, likely due to contractual issues. The book he would want on a deserted island: The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.

The interview runs approximately 48 minutes, and it is well worth a listen. Mr Patterson also appeared in a “Desert Island Discs” episode broadcast March 5, 2006; unfortunately the online stream is currently unavailable. It is also very much worth seeking out.     

Thrift Shop Book Covers: "Needle in a Timestack"

Needle in a Timestack was a paperback original published by Ballantine Books in 1966, which is the very edition that caught my attention. It is a collection of ten early Robert Silverberg stories. The artwork is intriguingly reminiscent—to my naïve eye—of Wassily Kandinsky’s expressionist paintings. It is vivid, stark, and muted; a contradiction that works well. The artist: Richard Powers (1921 – 1966).

The opening paragraph, of the story “The Pain Peddlers”:

“The phone bleeped. Northrop nudged the cut-in switch and heard Maurillo say, ‘We got a gangrene, chief. They’re amputating tonight.’”

Needle in a Timestack includes the following stories: “The Pain Peddlers” (1963), “Passport to Sirius” (1958), “Birds of a Feather” (1958), “There was an Old Woman—“ (1958), “The Shadow of Wings” (1963), “Absolutely Inflexible” (1956), “His Brother’s Keeper” (1959), “The Sixth Palace” (1955), “To See the Invisible Man” (1963), and “The Iron Chancellor” (1958).

This is the fourteenth in a series of posts featuring the cover art and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops. It is reserved for books I purchase as much for the cover art as the story or author.

ROUGH RIDERS by Charlie Stella

Rough Riders is a follow up to Charlie Stella’s 2001 novel Eddie’s World. This time around Eddie Senta spends the bulk of his time in a coma. His old nemesis James Singleton, called Washington Stewart since he snitched for a new identity, put a hit on Senta that went sour. Senta’s wife hires former NYPD detective, and current private eye, Alex Pavlik to find Singleton. The trail leads to North Dakota where there is something of a cold spell—30 below and holding—and a crime wave.

There is also a cast of real characters: a former Miss North Dakota tending bar, an ice cold Air Force Colonel who is both a pilot and M. D., a drug dealing airman about 20 points shy of a hundred, a couple gangsters, and a lineup of lawmen. Not to mention a college kid dead of a heroin overdose, and his strung out girlfriend.

The plot has a bunch of moving parts, and the action sprawls between New York and North Dakota. The bad guys, with Singleton at the center, cleverly plot their riches and ultimately their escapes. The good guys are mainly trying to get in the game, or even worse figuring what the game is, and who the players are. It is something close to humorous absurdity—the good and bad guys occupy the same places, but their paths rarely cross; Washington Stewart is missing an eye and one side of his face is caved in, but he is hard to find.

The dialogue, as always with Mr Stella, is something special. It is sharp, humorous, and revealing. The prose is stark as a Dakota winter, and the journey is a pleasant, entertaining, and involving distraction. Rough Riders is great fun.

Rough Riders was published as a trade paperback by Stark House Press in 2012, and Eddie’s World is scheduled to be republished in mass market by Stark House’s imprint Black Gat Books in May 2015.

THE HUSBAND by Dean Koontz

My patience with modern thrillers—anything late-1990s and beyond—is thin. They always open with potential and then become less interesting with each page. I start several each year, but seldom get past the 100^th page before cleaning the gutters is preferable. Dean Koontz is the exception to the rule; although labeling him as a thriller writer is similar to confusing a Corvette with a Kia Soul.   

I recently read his 2006 novel The Husband, and I was mesmerized from the first sentence to the last. Its opening is undeniably appealing:

“A man begins dying at the moment of his birth.”

Mitchell Rafferty is happily married, moderately successful with a two man gardening operation, and about to be pulled into nightmare. It begins quickly and without remorse. The day: Monday, May 14, 11:43 AM. Mitch is planting red and purple impatiens when his cell phone rings. A man’s voice:

“‘We have your wife.’”    

The kidnapper demands $2 million in exchange for her life. A sum that is not only unobtainable, but nearly unimaginable for Mitch. More revelation would spoil the meal, but there are a handful of brilliantly executed plot twists—none expected, anticipated, or doubted once revealed—and suspense alarming enough for sweaty palms, shallow breathing, and sleepless nights.

The prose—like everything Mr Koontz writes—is smooth and easy as glass. It is poetic in its simple, metered manner; easy to read and brilliant. But everything about The Husband is brilliant; from plot to prose to character to theme. And even better, it opens with death, but ends in a flutter of life:

“Although he knows her as well as he knows himself, she is as mysterious as she is lovely, an eternal depth in her eyes, but she is no more mysterious than are the stars and the moon and all things on the earth.”   

Winter in a Day

It has been a long dry winter in my neighborhood. High skies, bad skiing, and uneventful driving. A handful of bushes in my front yard, miraculously, never lost their leaves and really look terrific this spring. I shoveled my driveway a whopping three times; a frequency my back enjoyed. But yesterday the sky opened and winter arrived dropping 6 or 7 inches. It lasted a meager 24 hours, but it was wonderful. 

Then this morning things got even better. I found a visitor in my backyard. A small buck mule deer—velvet covered antlers between his ears—laying in a deciduous alcove. The snow like ground cover around his bed. It really is the small stuff.

TEKWAR by William Shatner and Ron Goulart

Sometime in 1992, probably late in the year, I devoured the first three novels in William Shatner’s Tek series: TekWar (1989), TekLords (1991), and TekLab (1991). At the time, as a teenager, I was certain they were as original and exciting as anything ever published. As I’ve aged, become jaded by life, my opinion has changed a smidge; there probably are stories more original, more exciting. And, even worse, the Tek books will never be canonized, but—even after these truths were revealed—I still enjoy them. They are a sweetly inviting piece of candy—all sugary and sweet with no aftertaste, or calories. Maybe a shadow of guilt, literati induced guilt, but thankfully it passes with the first page.  

The first novel, TekWar, was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in hardcover. Ace reissued it as a mass market in 1990. Amazingly, I have read it three times. It introduces former police detective Jake Cardigan who was convicted of corruption. He was sentenced to fifteen years in the “Freezer,” which is a cryogenic suspended animation penitentiary. The world continues, but the convict sleeps it away. Jake is given parole after four years when an influential private detective agency, Cosmos, successfully lobbies for his release.

Cosmos wants Jake for his contacts in Mexico. A man named Leon Kittridge, along with his daughter Beth, have disappeared in Chihuahua where their skycar reportedly crashed. Professor Kittridge is developing a device that easily, and remotely, destroys tek; an illegal virtual reality device that creates the illusion of a perfect life. Cosmos has sent three operatives to Chihuahua in pursuit of the Kittridges and none have returned.

TekWar is a humorous, almost tongue-in-cheek, futuristic private eye novel. The setting is 22^nd century, but the science fiction takes a backseat to the hardboiled detective story. There are robots, flying cars, and, of course, tek, but the “science” is decoration. Very good decoration and the novel is better for it, but still decoration. Change out tek for smack and flying cars for Chevys and it is a 20^th century piece.

The humor is built in to the science fiction element of the story, which gives it the feeling of, “don’t take this too seriously.” In an early passage the warden, through his robot proxy, wishes Jake well and of his certainty Jake learned his lesson and will never return to the Freezer—

“Or, for that matter, to any of the fifty-three other prisons and correctional facilities in the State of Southern California…”

A platinum haired silver painted receptionist, going through life changes, confesses to Jake she has recently been mistaken for an android—

“‘…so far three clients have confused me with servomechs and a new ‘bot on the custodial staff tried to dust and polish me.’”

The action and humor are the novels strong points, and overshadow its weaknesses—there isn’t much doubt how the novel will end, and Jake Cardigan’s motive is exposed by his annoying habit of talking to himself. A habit, in my memory, that is reduced in the later series novels. 

NOWHERE TO RUN by Ron Faust

Ron Faust published 15 novels in a career that spanned nearly 40 years. The first, Tombs of Blue Ice, appeared in 1974 and the last, Jackstraw, was published posthumously in 2013. His work never gained the commercial success it deserved; maybe it was too atmospheric and literary for the genre crowd, and too plot-driven for the literati. Or maybe he didn’t put enough titles on the shelves, or maybe it was pure blind bad luck. Whatever the reason, his work is deserving of a revival.

Mr Faust’s work appeared in three distinct bursts. The first, and his most productive as far as number of titles published, was between 1974 and 1981. This period saw the publication of six novels, which tended to adventure with exotic locations and solitary heroes. Lean, beautiful, descriptive prose, linear storylines, and violence.

The final novel of this early writing period is titled Nowhere to Run, and its publication in 1981 would be Mr Faust’s last for 12 years. It is also one of a few Ron Faust novels I hadn’t read, until very recently, and while it isn’t as mature and ambitious as much of Mr Faust’s later work—In the Forest of the Night, When She Was Bad, etc.—it is an excellent adventure story with a strong sense of place, character, and a beautifully nuanced awareness of humanity.

David Rhodes is something of a bum. He was a professional tennis player, ranked as high as 147 in the world, living illegally in the Mexican coastal town of El Jardin de los Reyes, Garden of the Kings. He makes a meager living teaching tennis and raiding lobster traps. In the beginning, he meets an American girl who calls herself Strawberry Lassitude—

“Her eyes seemed illuminated from within. They were bright and metallic with craziness.”

—who is later found strangled at the bottom of a rocky cliff. The local police, in the form of one Captain Vigil, are desperate to solve the murder in a manner to reassure the town’s primary economic driver: tourism. Specifically, American tourists. The simplest solution. One American killing another, and, better, the killer an illegal guest of the seaside town, which makes David the ideal suspect.

Nowhere to Run is stylistically flashy, thematically subtle, and plotted for surprise. The natural, smooth flow of language is beautiful in its sparse and rich tones. It equally defines the characters, the landscape, and the story.

“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.”

“Brown pelicans folded their wings and made clumsy crosswind landings in the troughs between waves. The tops of the coconut palms were greenly incandescent in the sunlight but it was cool and dim in the shade below. Here, there was a soothing opacity, a rippling underwater sheen, while beyond the grove of trees the morning sun glazed the air and slowly devoured the shadows it had created.”

Nowhere to Run is simple, or appears so at its surface. The tale is straightforward—murder, man accused, and, after much turmoil, killer exposed—but its simplicity is misleading. The story is dependent less on plot than character. The actions of the characters, and the motive for those actions, are dominant and the plot becomes a rational extension to that dominance rather than the characters a prisoner of the plot. Its language is sharp, almost poetic in its descriptive prowess, and its building blocks are human morality, psychology, and frailty. The psychology, and morality, and frailty, are summarized quite nicely in the closing pages—

“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…”

Nowhere to Run was originally published as a paperback original Fawcett Gold Medal in 1981, and it is currently available from Turner Publishing as a trade paperback and ebook. The essay “Ron Faust: An UnforgettableWriter” provides a bibliography and a little detail about Mr Faust’s work. 

Purchase a copy of Nowhere to Run at Amazon.

Thrift Shop Book Covers: "The Foundation Trilogy"

The original Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov consisted of Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation. The three novels were based on eight stories published in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and 1950. The first title, Foundation, was published as a hardcover—packaged as a novel—by Gnome Press in 1951, and Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation followed in 1952 and 1953, respectively. I have read that Gnome Press paid royalties rarely and grudgingly.

The editions that caught my eye are mass market reprints from 1964 to 1966 by Avon. The covers are vintage 1960s—a psychedelic slant with detailed but simple images of man and beast and wonderful colors; forest green, sky blue, and burnt orange. The artist: Don Ivan Punchatz.     

Foundation (1966).

The opening sentence:

“HARI SELDON—…born in the 11,988^th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069.”

Foundation and Empire (1966).

The opening sentence:

“The Galactic Empire was falling.”

Second Foundation (1964).

The opening sentence:

“THE MULE. It was after the fall of the First Foundation that the constructive aspects of the Mule’s regime took shape.”

I am particularly fond of The Foundation trilogy; in my middle teens my mother purchased a trade paperback anthology published—in my memory—by Ballantine Books, which included all three novels. I devoured it, lived it. Loved it. And I really wish I still had that copy.  

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts featuring the cover art and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops. It is reserved for books I purchase as much for the cover art as the story or author.