Rough Edges

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

2009-07-11T08:21:00.002-05:00

As I may have mentioned before, we’re not big on horror movies, but we watched and enjoyed the first two UNDERWORLD movies, so it was a given we’d watch the third one, UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS. This is actually a prequel to the first two movies, explaining the beginnings of the centuries-long war between the vampires and the lycans, a race of werewolf/human hybrids who retain some of their human intelligence when they transform into wolves. As such, it’s set in some vaguely medieval time, so there are a lot of castles and swordplay and such. With its blend of gothic horror and adventure, it reminded me a little of the Warhammer novels, and with the romance, political intrigue, and soap-opera-like dramatics, it also struck me as the sort of story that Book Creations Inc. used to produce in any number of historical family sagas (some of which were written by yours truly).

Anyway, although it’s kind of predictable, I enjoyed RISE OF THE LYCANS quite a bit. In fact, it may be my favorite of the series so far. Rhona Mitra replaces Kate Beckinsale as the heroine (Beckinsale provides some narration and makes a cameo appearance). Mitra is as good-looking as Beckinsale and has a really hot accent (how’s that for incisive film criticism?), so the change is okay with me. There are swordfights galore, bloody battles between lycans and vampires, the hero has a big galoot sidekick (giving weight to my theory that most action movies are really Westerns, regardless of their trappings), and after the inspiring ending, there’s an epilogue setting up the next film in the series. Needless to say, we’ll watch it.

By the way, even though this is a prequel, it’ll make a lot more sense if you’ve seen the other two UNDERWORLD movies first.

Forgotten Books: Armed ... Dangerous ... - Brett Halliday (Robert Terrall)

2009-07-10T07:35:00.002-05:00

A while back I had an email conversation with an author friend of mine about the relative merits of Robert Terrall’s Mike Shayne novels. When I was first reading the Shayne novels back in the Sixties and early Seventies, I didn’t know that Davis Dresser, the original Brett Halliday, had had so many ghost-writers contributing to the series. But I did know that as the Sixties went on, I began to like the novels less, and by the Seventies, I didn’t care for them at all. Later, of course, I found out that Robert Terrall was the author of the books I didn’t like.

However, a number of people whose opinions I respect do like Terrall’s Shayne novels, and since I hadn’t read one in close to forty years, I thought I ought to do so and see if my opinion of them has changed since then.

Well . . . it has and it hasn’t.

ARMED . . . DANGEROUS . . . , from 1966, is one of the books I never got around to reading back then. It’s got a nice McGinnis cover, at least on the first edition, and although Mike Shayne is nowhere to be seen, the opening section certainly has plenty of action and intrigue to recommend it. Early on, there’s a beautiful French blonde, a jewel heist, the brutal shooting of an off-duty cop, and a kidnapping. But there’s a twist coming, and I’ll admit, Terrall slipped it right past me for a good while, although I caught it before it was revealed. From that point on, there are a lot more twists, as the story takes on a much larger scale and becomes part caper novel/part thriller with international implications. It’s very well written, a little dated in some respects today but not all that much, and the pace is spectacular, leaving the reader whipping through the pages to see what’s going to happen. There’s even a bit of humor as Terrall name-checks another of his pseudonyms. This is a very entertaining novel. The problem is, it’s barely a Mike Shayne novel.

Oh, a character named Shayne plays a huge part in it, make no mistake about that, but he’s so lacking in personality that the protagonist could be almost anybody. There’s no sense that this is the same character who inhabits all the books in the series actually written by Davis Dresser. Terrall may have been a better wordsmith than Dresser was, I won’t argue that point, but Dresser’s Shayne is a fascinating character, no more honest than he has to be but with a decent core, and maybe one of the most intelligent characters in mystery fiction, who is always two steps ahead of the other people in the books and three steps ahead of the reader. I think most of the other authors who ghosted full-length Shayne novels were able to capture this to a certain extent, and Terrall did, too, at first, but as his stint on the series went on, I believe he lost his handle on the character. However, I could be wrong about this, and I plan to read more of his books to see what I think.

In the meantime, should you read ARMED . . . DANGEROUS . . .? Absolutely. It’s well-written and a lot of fun. If it had featured anybody but Mike Shayne, I’d give it an unqualified recommendation. But if you’ve never read a Shayne novel before, this is definitely not the place to start.

Knowing

2009-07-08T07:22:00.000-05:00

KNOWING is your basic action thriller/science fiction/horror film about the concepts of determinism versus the randomness of the universe. And, oh, yeah, the end of the world. Nicolas Cage plays an MIT professor who comes into possession of a paper covered with apparently random numbers that were written by a little girl and put into an elementary school time capsule fifty years earlier. He sees a pattern in the numbers, starts to decipher them, and soon realizes that they correspond to the dates of violent disasters that happened in the intervening fifty years. And there are still some dates and disasters to come . . .

This movie is of possible interest to mystery fans because it was written by Ryne Douglas Pearson, the author of several pretty good suspense novels featuring a team of FBI agents. And most of the way, KNOWING is a pretty good little film that explores issues mainstream films often don’t. But then, boy, does it do some serious falling apart in the end. Livia and I both wound up disappointed. It’s not a terrible film by any means, but I wouldn’t rush right out to pick up the DVD.

Movies I've Missed (Until Now): Reservoir Dogs

2009-07-07T12:58:00.002-05:00

There are a lot of movies that most of you have seen already, but that, for one reason or another, I’ve missed along the way. I’ve written about some of them before, here on the blog, but I’m going to make it a semi-regular series, Movies I’ve Missed (Until Now). The first one up, which I watched last night: Quentin Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS.

I admit, I haven’t seen much of Tarantino’s work. I liked the episode of CSI that he wrote and directed a few years ago, and I’ve seen PULP FICTION, which I thought was okay. But I like the episode of THE SIMPSONS that parodies PULP FICTION more than I like the movie itself. In fact, every time Tarantino has a bunch of guys sitting around talking about various oddball subjects (as he does in RESERVOIR DOGS, too), I keep hearing Chief Wiggum saying, “You know what they call a Krustyburger with cheese in France, Lou?”

Anyway, RESERVOIR DOGS. You’ve seen it: gang of professional criminals, botched diamond robbery, extremely bloody aftermath, broken up by the back-stories of some of the characters. Great cast. I was especially impressed with Lawrence Tierney and Harvey Keitel. The violence is effective, and so is the use of music. Love Steven Wright (one of my favorite comedians) as the DJ. Unfortunately, as I touched on above, all of Tarantino’s favorite bits have been parodied so much it’s hard to take them seriously. Still, I have to admire the guy. His work has a style and a voice of its own, and I like that. If I had seen RESERVOIR DOGS when it was new, it might have impressed me more. As it is, I liked it well enough to say that if, like me, you’ve never seen it before, you really ought to watch it.

Not Your Usual Gold Medal

2009-07-06T19:06:00.004-05:00

I was in a thrift store today looking over some shelves of used paperbacks when a bright yellow spine caught my eye. I grabbed the book immediately, of course, recognizing it as a Gold Medal. But it turned out not to be what I expected. I didn't even know this one existed. Now, I'm not exactly a poetry-lovin' kind of guy, but . . . it's a Gold Medal. I couldn't leave it there. Anyway, it looks like a pretty good collection, heavy on the classics like Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, and the like. What the heck, it was only 40 cents. And I can't help but wonder . . . what's that dame really got in mind? Why's she leading that poor sucker down that country lane? Is there a dead body at the end of it, or a fortune in loot from an armored car robbery? Is this really a lost Charles Williams novel, POETRY GIRL? Hey, it is a Gold Medal, after all.

Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop - Lee Goldberg

2009-07-04T07:54:00.002-05:00

MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP, the latest novel in the tie-in series by Lee Goldberg, will be released next week, and you should do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. I’ve mentioned here before how much I enjoy these books, and this one is no exception.

MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP finds Adrian Monk being forced out of his comfort zone again (as if Monk actually has a comfort zone). Budget cuts cause his old friend Captain Stottlemeyer to fire him from his job as a consultant for the San Francisco Police Department, so Monk winds up going to work for a snazzy, high-tech private detective and security outfit called Intertect (a deliberate nod on Goldberg’s part to the old MANNIX TV series – and not the only such nod in this book, either). Naturally, there are several cases going on, and also naturally, some of them wind up being linked in ways that aren’t readily apparent at first. Monk, with the able assistance of narrator Natalie Teeger, sorts through them in his own distinctive way. The stakes are raised higher than usual, though, when someone he’s close to winds up in jail, charged with murder.

As always, Lee Goldberg has the voices of the characters down perfectly and spins his yarn in smooth, often funny, and occasionally poignant prose. The plot has just the right level of complexity. There are a lot of excellent tie-in novels out there (the level of writing in the genre has never been higher than it is right now), but the Monk books are some of the very best. Don’t miss MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP.

Trinity - Matt Wagner

2009-06-28T18:18:00.004-05:00

Over the years I’ve read and enjoyed a number of comics written by Matt Wagner, his long-running series SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE being the most notable. TRINITY is a fine trade paperback reprinting a three-issue miniseries written and drawn by Wagner and featuring DC’s three most iconic characters: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

Now, when I was a kid, I wasn’t a Wonder Woman fan. I suppose I was as sexist as any other ten or twelve year old boy in the Sixties. Plus I really didn’t like the art on the issues coming out then. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, DC tried to remold Wonder Woman into a Modesty Blaise sort of character, and while that was interesting, it never really worked for me, either. In the Eighties, though, there was another Wonder Woman relaunch with excellent stories and art by George Perez, and that one won me over. I’m still not a huge fan, but Wonder Woman is okay.

Throw her into an epic story with Superman and Batman, though, and you’ve got something. TRINITY is the story of Wonder Woman’s first meeting with them, and it involves an evil, globe-spanning conspiracy hatched by one of Batman’s arch-enemies, Ra’s Al Ghul, as well as one of Superman’s antagonists, Bizarro (who’s not really evil but still plenty dangerous anyway). Several things make TRINITY a fine piece of graphic novel entertainment. Wagner provides the art as well as the story, and it really works. He’s a good storyteller who uses classic layouts most of the time. His script is top-notch, capturing the personalities of Superman and Batman in all their complexity. There’s a sense of rivalry that’s always there, as well as a certain frustration and disapproval that each feels about the other’s methods, but above all, they’re friends. Then that sort of gets knocked cock-eyed by the arrival of Wonder Woman. No, there’s not any sense that they’re vying for her affections (although Batman is surprisingly interested in her). Wagner is too subtle a writer to take the easy, obvious route. But having Wonder Woman around does change the dynamic between Superman and Batman, at least a little.

This is one of the best comic book series I’ve read recently. If you’re a fan of the classic DC characters (another of whom makes a funny, unbilled cameo appearance), give TRINITY a try. I had a great time reading it.

The Lost Battalion

2009-06-27T07:42:00.002-05:00

I enjoy a good war movie every now and then, and THE LOST BATTALION fits the bill. Made for the A&E cable network, it’s based on the true story of an American battalion that gets cut off from the rest of the American forces during an advance into the Argonne forest during World War I. Almost completely surrounded by the Germans, the Americans resolve to hold their position until help arrives, which takes days. Outnumbered, starving, without medical supplies, the odds are against any of them surviving.

In classic war movie fashion, THE LOST BATTALION introduces us to about a dozen of the soldiers, most of them from New York but some from Texas and Montana as well. Most of them are “citizen soldiers”, who were either drafted or enlisted to fight, not career military. Their commander, a lawyer in civilian life played by Rick Shroeder, fits into this category, too, and struggles to become a respected leader. You know going in (at least you do if you’ve ever watched many war movies) that not all of them are going to make it, but this grim, gritty film directed by Russell Mulcahy makes their life-and-death struggle very interesting.

With its unrelenting air of doom, I’m not sure I’d say that THE LOST BATTALION is an entertaining film, but it’s very well-done (other than some shaky camerawork I didn’t like) and I think it’s a movie that’s well worth watching.

Don Coldsmith, R.I.P.

2009-06-25T18:54:00.003-05:00

I was never a big fan of Farrah Fawcett or Michael Jackson, but I'm sorry to hear about their passing. The third death today hits a lot harder in the Western field. Don Coldsmith, who collapsed last week during the Western Writers of America convention, has passed away. I was definitely a fan of Don and his work. We weren't close friends but always talked whenever we were at the same convention. I believe we shared an agent for a while. He was a good man and a fine writer. Best known for his multi-book Spanish Bit series, he also wrote several very good stand-alone historical novels. He will definitely be missed.

The Tarnished Star - Jack Martin (Gary Dobbs)

2009-06-25T08:24:00.003-05:00

THE TARNISHED STAR, the debut novel by Gary Dobbs of The Tainted Archive (writing as Jack Martin), is out now, and I’m happy to report that it’s a fine traditional Western novel. It’s the story of Sheriff Cole Masters, who runs afoul of the evil Bowdens, father and son. Wisely starting in the middle of the action, Dobbs takes a page from the movie RIO BRAVO and has Masters waiting for the arrival of the circuit judge so that the prisoner in his jail, Sam Bowden, can be tried for the murder of a prostitute. Sam’s father, wealthy and powerful cattleman Clem Bowden, has a different idea. He plans to free his son, no matter what it takes.

From that point, Dobbs veers off from the expected and spins a yarn of violence and redemption in gritty, tough-minded prose. Cole Masters is hardly an infallible hero. He can be indecisive at times and dangerously impulsive at others. He never loses his devotion to the law, however, and before the book is over, the title reference to a tarnished star takes on more than one meaning.

THE TARNISHED STAR is an entertaining, fast-moving story, as are all the books I’ve read from the Black Horse Westerns line. From the pulpish cover to the final showdown in which plenty of bullets fly, it’s a fine, action-packed Western that still manages to be character-driven. You can order it from an assortment of places, including Amazon and The Book Depository (which offers prompt, free shipping worldwide – hard to beat that deal, which is why I ordered THE TARNISHED STAR from them), and if you’re a Western fan, you want to get your hands on this one.

Taken

2009-06-24T18:43:00.001-05:00

Speaking of explosions, as I was in the previous post, there’s one in TAKEN, and a lot of other action, too. Liam Neeson, handling the running, shooting, and fighting parts just fine, plays a retired CIA agent who goes after the bad guys who kidnap his daughter while she’s vacationing in Paris. Needless to say, since Luc Besson co-wrote this film, Neeson’s character is a one-man army much like Frank Martin in the Transporter movies, although the stunts in this one are somewhat more believable. There aren’t really any twists to the plot. Everything plays out pretty much like you’d expect it to. But when it’s done as well as it is here, that’s fine with me. I liked TAKEN a lot, and if you’re in the mood for an action movie, I highly recommend it.

"It Doesn't Always Have to Be Six-guns, Boobs, and Explosions"

2009-06-24T09:34:00.003-05:00

That was my comment, referring to my usual movie-watching habits, after we watched LITTLE MANHATTAN, a sweet, occasionally funny film about the budding romance between a couple of fifth-graders who live in New York City. This movie takes place in what I think of as sitcom Manhattan, where everything is incredibly clean and safe and charming. It's a pretty good film, although, lowbrow that I am, I wouldn't want a steady diet of movies like it, either. But that takes me back to my original comments about six-guns, etc. On the other hand, why the hell not?

Return of the Japanese Spammer

2009-06-22T06:14:00.002-05:00

The blog got hit with spam comments in Japanese on nine different posts during the night. I've deleted all of them, and if it continues I'll turn on comment moderation again. I'd rather not do that unless I have to, though. I like for people to be able to see their comments right away, and it doesn't take much longer, if any longer, to delete the spam than it does to approve comments. I do hope this isn't the start of a whole new wave of spam, though.

Fired Up!

2009-06-21T01:29:00.003-05:00

Crass, crude, silly, predictable teen sex comedy about a couple of football players going to cheerleader camp to chase girls. And I laughed all the way through it and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Big surprise there, eh?) Seriously, if you can say such a thing about a movie like this, the script is considerably smarter than you might expect. Worth checking out if you're in the mood for some lightweight entertainment, which I usually am.

One More Reason I Love the Internet

2009-06-19T19:26:00.003-05:00

I got a call this afternoon from a small press publisher who's interested in reprinting some of the work of one of my favorite pulp authors, Donald Barr Chidsey. It seems this fellow had read something I wrote on-line about Chidsey and thought I might be able to give him some information he's been looking for. As it happens, I was able to tell him what he needed to know, and we had a nice long conversation about pulps, mysteries, Westerns, and the current state of the publishing business. Probably wouldn't have happened, though, if he hadn't run across my comments about Chidsey. (By the way, "Battleship on a Mountain" is a heck of a story.)

Forgotten Books: I Should Have Stayed Home - Horace McCoy

2009-06-19T09:56:00.002-05:00

Cullen Gallagher mentioned this novel a couple of weeks ago on his blog, and since I happened to have a copy on hand, I thought I’d go ahead and read it. I’d never read any of McCoy’s novels before, although I’ve read several of his pulp stories and enjoyed them. And I SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME is dedicated in part to Joseph T. Shaw, the famous editor of BLACK MASK, so I figured it might be worthwhile.

Which it certainly is, although it’s not a crime novel at all. A few minor crimes take place, but they’re hardly the focus of the book. Instead it’s a Hollywood novel set in the Thirties, narrated by Ralph Carston, a young would-be actor from Georgia who’s determined to make it big in the movies. As the book opens, he’s working sporadically as an extra and living, platonically, with a bit-part actress named Mona Matthews. Ralph makes the acquaintance of a wealthy widow known for throwing lavish Hollywood parties, and despite being rather naïve, he knows that she can help him advance his career if he goes along with what she wants, which is him.

This book is pretty much a soap opera. Along with Ralph’s affair with the widow, the plot features a big star who turns out to be a lesbian, an interracial couple, some nights spent in jail, a suicide, and lots of boozing and sex. What makes I SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME worth reading is McCoy’s bleak, fast-paced prose. The plot may be melodramatic, but the writing is pure hardboiled, with a grim, fatalistic tone that makes the book qualify as noir, as well. I’ll definitely have to get around to McCoy’s other novels, and in the meantime, if you like Hollywood novels, this one gets my recommendation.

Progress!

2009-06-17T18:49:00.003-05:00

After struggling mightily with the current manuscript for the past two days, today actually turned out to be fairly productive. No barn-burner, you understand, just a good solid day of work. It's always a relief to realize that you're not really that talentless hack the little voice in the back of your head keeps whispering that you are. (I think all writers probably have that little voice at times.) I've compared writing to baseball before, and I still think the comparison is valid. You write your way out of a slump just like you hit your way out of a slump. Of course, it remains to be seen whether I'm really out of this one. Let's give it a few days.

Joe Lansdale Podcast

2009-06-17T04:48:00.002-05:00

As someone who's been fortunate enough to hear Joe Lansdale talk on numerous occasions, I can tell you that it's always entertaining and often informative. The same can be said of the podcast of Jeff Rutherford's recent interview with Joe. You can listen to it here, and I recommend that you do so. Joe's comments about the current state of the publishing business are especially interesting. Check it out.

Japanese Edition of Dust Devils

2009-06-16T11:56:00.003-05:00

Copies of the Japanese edition of DUST DEVILS arrived in the mail today. I think this is a pretty good cover. Of course, I can't read any of the book itself other than the English stuff on the copyright page and some of the house ads in the back for Dick Francis books. Whenever copies of a foreign edition of one of my books show up, I still think, "Ain't that cool?" I love the idea that people in Japan will be reading what I wrote in my little, book-cluttered studio in Texas. Yesterday was one of those days when I thought, "Why did I ever want to be a writer?" Today is one of the days when I know why.

Hitting the Wall

2009-06-15T19:13:00.002-05:00

Those of you who are writers, or who are acquainted with writers, are probably well aware of one thing we all have in common: we complain. We complain a lot. But even so . . . man, the pages came slow today. Really slow. But the good thing, to quote Scarlett O'Hara, is that tomorrow is another day.

Murder By the Book

2009-06-14T22:45:00.002-05:00

I’m back from my signing at Murder By the Book in Houston, which went very well, I thought. I missed several friends I’d hoped to see who weren’t able to attend, but the customers who were there were fun to talk to, and McKenna and the rest of the staff couldn’t have been nicer. As for the store itself, if you’re a mystery fan and you’re anywhere near Houston and you haven’t been there yet . . . start making plans to visit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much mystery fiction of all types in one place outside of Bill Crider’s house and my old studio. It’s just an amazing collection. I started buying stuff for myself after the signing was over and had to make myself stop after a while.

As for Houston itself, the last time I was there was in 1961, a week or two before Hurricane Carla came ashore nearby. I remember my dad complaining about the traffic and how hard it was to find your way around, even then. As you can imagine, nearly fifty years later neither of those situations had improved. I got turned around when I came into town on Friday and wound up going the wrong way, but I figured that out fairly quickly and got squared away. By the time I left I knew my way around the streets in the vicinity of the hotel and the bookstore pretty well. But it was still very nice to get back to my neck of the woods.

And again, Murder By the Book is a wonderful store. If you can, go there. Buy books.

Forgotten Books: Try Anything Once -- A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

2009-06-12T09:17:00.002-05:00

I’m not sure any of the books in this series are truly forgotten, since there are still a lot of Donald Lam/Bertha Cool fans out there, but they’re certainly not as well known as they once were. Also, all the books are out of print except possibly TOP OF THE HEAP, which was reprinted by Hard Case Crime a few years ago. Anyway, you can’t go wrong with any of the books in this series, so today we’ll look at one of them I read recently.

TRY ANYTHING ONCE is from 1962 and finds Donald being hired to impersonate a man who went to a motel with a beautiful young woman who’s not his wife. It seems that around the same time they were at the motel, a murder was committed there, and naturally the cops are looking for anyone who might be a witness. Also naturally, the client doesn’t want his wife knowing that he was at the motel with another woman, so he persuades Donald to fix the situation. It seems like a relatively simple job, since the cheating husband and the beautiful cocktail hostess he was with don’t have anything to do with the murder that took place at the motel.

Here’s where you’re going, Suuuure, the two cases aren’t connected. And suuuure the client has told Donald the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what happened. And you’d be right to be suspicious, as Donald is right from the start. Things get a lot more complicated before Donald untangles all the deception and murder. Despite their physical differences, Donald Lam has always reminded me a little of Mike Shayne, because he’s usually two steps ahead of everybody else in the book and three steps ahead of the reader. Bertha has quite a bit to do in this one, including getting Donald out of jail twice, and she also manages to utter her trademark exclamation, “Fry me for an oyster!”

I enjoy the Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardner a great deal, but the Lam & Cool books he wrote as A.A. Fair are my favorites among his work. The plots are just as bizarrely complex as the Masons, and the books are genuinely funny. Donald’s first-person narration is one of the great voices in mystery fiction, rivaling Archie Goodwin for wise-assery, if there’s such a word. And if there isn’t, there should be. Try anything once, as Bertha says to Donald, and if you haven’t read any of this series, you should try this book or another A.A. Fair novel immediately.

Farewell Tour

2009-06-11T22:52:00.003-05:00

If any of you are in the Houston area this weekend, I'll be signing at Murder by the Book at 4:30 Saturday afternoon. This will be my last signing for the foreseeable future, so if you get a chance to drop by the store, I'd love to say hello. (I'm also looking forward to buying some books myself, since I've never been to MBTB before, but that's another story . . .)

Panic Attack - Jason Starr

2009-06-11T08:55:00.002-05:00

I haven’t read much by Jason Starr – his novel NOTHING PERSONAL and his first collaboration with Ken Bruen for Hard Case Crime, BUST – but I liked both of those books, so I decided to give his newest one a try. PANIC ATTACK is more of a mainstream thriller than either of the other two Starr novels I’d read, but with his own distinctive spin on the material.

It begins with a crime – a couple of burglars breaking into the house of psychologist Adam Bloom. Bloom confronts the burglars with a gun and shoots and kills one of them. The other one gets away and decides to take revenge on Bloom for killing his partner, and that revenge involves Bloom’s wife and daughter.

That’s really the entire plot of the book, but it’s a lot more emotionally complex than it sounds because Starr takes the reader into the heads of all the characters involved, often covering the same events from different perspectives. Most of the time I don’t care much for that technique, but Starr makes it work in this book. Even though none of the characters are very likable (something other readers have pointed out about Starr’s work), they’re all intensely human and you can’t help but want to find out what happens to them, even the evil ones. (And the villain in this book is really evil.) Starr had me flipping the pages and staying up late to finish.

PANIC ATTACK will be out later this summer from St. Martin’s/Minotaur. It’s certainly not what you’d call a breezy beach read, but it’s very well written and worth checking out if you’re a fan of noir fiction.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

2009-06-10T12:25:00.003-05:00

Taking a break from Spaghetti Westerns, we finally got around to finishing our Indiana Jones retrospective that we started last year and watched INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. I remembered less about this one than either of the other two entries in the original trilogy. We saw it in the theater when it came out and never watched it again. But I recalled really liking the prologue featuring River Phoenix as Young Indy, and watching it again now, I still liked it a lot. As those of you who have read many of my Westerns may have gathered, I like scenes that involve running around and fighting on top of moving trains.

Anyway, what about the rest of the movie? I’m happy to say that I think it’s the second-best Indiana Jones movie, behind RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and not all that far behind, either. You got your Holy Grail, you got your Nazis, you got your zeppelin, you got aerial dogfights and battling a tank from horseback and rats and snakes and 700-year-old Crusader knights. The movie’s not too special effects heavy, and the action scenes are staged and edited so that you can tell what’s going on. If there had just been a swordfight and some quicksand, this would be close to a perfect adventure movie.

I can’t imagine that any of you reading this haven’t seen this movie at least once, but if you haven’t, you should give it a try. I thought it was a heck of a lot of fun.