Wednesday, July 18, 2012

BrOmance Some Notes

So I'm checking out Robert Ward's Red Baker and reading the new introduction written by Daniel Woodrell and come across this gem:

"All a bereft and humiliated man has left is the capacity for violence (that's why violence is so abhorred and heavily punished - if social inequities came to be adjusted through violence, the lower classes might somehow win a few rounds, and no elite class or people rig the rules of society to encourage the defeat of themselves)..."

Damn.

Meanwhile Sean Doolittle's Lake Country is just fucking me up and I think I can put my finger on what exactly I respond to so heartily in Sean's writing - I have never questioned the motivation of his characters. Not one of them. I've never sat back and said, 'wait a minute here, that reaction seems awfully out of proportion'. Do I agree with their actions? Of course not - a lot of the time - but they come from such an emotionally honest place that their responses to circumstance spring so organically from character that the stakes are high though the scale is relatively small (no conspiracies that go all the way up in these books, kids). I'm hoping I get a similar reaction to Joy Castro's new one Hell or High Water, and I've got a sneaking suspicion that I will. Plan on er, diving in over the weekend.

Finally saw Savages last night. Good damn movie. Till the last five minutes anyhow. But hey, getting to them is well worth it. Easily my favorite Oliver Stone movie in a long ass time. Also heard tons of shit about new Don Winslow film projects including California Fire & Life. Also, sounds like Leonardo DiCaprio's option on Satori is alive and kicking - it'd been a long time and I figured it had fallen apart the way Michael Mann's Winter of Frankie Machine project seemed to. Sounds like Winslow's co-written an original script with Chuck Hogan too - and that's alright with me.

Earlier in the week, at Ransom Notes, I was talking Thai (Bangkok mostly) crime books on the occasion of the latest Poke Rafferty title The Fear Artist by Tim Hallinan. And today at Ransom Notes I'm asking for your favorite current book to television adaptations after hearing the good news out of Michael Connelly land that Harry Bosch may soon have his very own boob tube address. Frankly, I think long-form television is the right place for Bosch. Of course any number of things can go wrong with adaptations, but so many things can go right in this medium too.

I just read Sebastian Junger's A Death in Belmont about a murder that took place in his neighborhood in the early 60s and his family's connection to Albert Desalvo - the man who confessed to being The Boston Strangler (though it was never conclusively proven that he was), and the whole time, I'm thinking - this is basically a book-length version of what I'd like the CriMemoir series to be. What's that? You have no idea what I mean when I say CriMemoir? Stay tuned.

Lastly: head on over to the OOTG online for a taste of St. Louis. Local writer Jack Ryan's story The Break-In shows some nice ways with prose, and crime fiction world, I want you to cinch your drawers for another St. Louis writer coming your way soon - I'm reading stories by Umar Lee right now and I can't wait to be able to talk to the rest of you about that shit.

1 comment:

Kieran Shea said...

RED BAKER. One of my all time favs. Period.