Posts Tagged ‘Chicago Lightning’

10 Heller Kindle Titles $1.99

Sunday, September 23rd, 2012

All day today (Sunday, September 23), Amazon’s Kindle Deal of the Day is featuring the Nathan Heller series, with the following ten titles available for only $1.99 each!

The Million-Dollar Wound
Neon Mirage
Stolen Away
Carnal Hours
Blood and Thunder
Flying Blind
Majic Man
Angel in Black
Chicago Confidential
Chicago Lightning: The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories

Shareable link: http://amzn.to/ORG0Yb

This is the first time NEON MIRAGE, BLOOD AND THUNDER, MAJIC MAN, and CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL have been showcased on the daily deal.

Of further interest to digital readers, Amazon has been rolling out a new feature called Whispersync, which syncs your place in a book between Kindle devices and the Audible audio edition, allowing you to switch back and forth between reading and listening. Now Amazon is offering many Audible editions at a significantly reduced price for owners of the Kindle editions. This only applies to the Audible download edition, not the audio CDs or MP3 CDs, but the downloadable version works on many portable devices and can be burned to CDs through iTunes. Abby and I have been listening to the Heller audio books (read by the wonderful Dan John Miller) on CD on our road trips over the past year and we’ve really been impressed by the readings. Look for the Audible edition on each Amazon book page.

Target Lancer

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

Though the book won’t be out till November, we are starting to get some very nice notices on the new Heller. I was pleased (actually relieved) to see Publisher’s Weekly’s highly positive review.

Randy Johnson, at his Not the Baseball Pitcher web site, also has a nice TARGET LANCER write-up.

Asked about what he’s been reading, Bill Crider is quoted as saying he’s enjoying the ARC of TARGET LANCER. Knowing Bill, he’ll probably review the book closer to pub date.

Bookgasm has been very supportive of my work – although there have been occasional less than glowing notices there – but that fine site has posted a fantastic review of BYE BYE, BABY. This is not so belated as it seems: the reviewer is working from the paperback reprint. Incidentally, a surprising number of typos and a few historical goofs have been corrected in that edition. If you are a Heller fan (or maybe fanatic), that’s the version you’ll want to read. There’s a promise of a TARGET LANCER review in the Bookgasm write-up, as well.

Goodreads has a bunch of mostly positive reviews on CHICAGO LIGHTNING that you might find worthwhile.

Keeping up with my movie mentions, I want to recommend two this week. First, PARANORMAN is a first-rate 3-D movie (see it that way) with wonderful stop motion animation and terrific character design. It has kid appeal – it’s about a middle-school outsider who is bullied because he claims to see and talk to dead people – but it works just fine for adults, particularly those interested in horror and fantasy.

Second, HIT AND RUN is a great crime comedy melodrama that stars Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell (wasted on Showtime’s unpleasant HOUSE OF LIES) opposite her significant other, Dax Shepard, who also wrote and co-directed. Shepard, besides being the lucky bastard who gets to live with Kristen Bell (I say this as the lucky bastard who gets to live with the former Barbie Mull), is mostly known for playing villains in film comedies like EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH as well as holding down one of the leads on the TV series, PARENTHOOD. This is the kind of movie I used to see all the time in the ‘70s – quirky, walking the line between comedy and drama, with sharp, natural dialogue, lots of interesting characters, plus plenty of action (it’s a car chase movie). I’m also reminded of Don Westlake’s ‘60s and ‘70s comedy novels. You want to know how good this movie is? Tom Arnold is hilarious in it. So, in a much different way, are Bradley Cooper and Beau Bridges. It is in times in wonderfully poor taste, but in a much smarter way than most bad taste movies – including gags involving prison rape and racial stereotyping. It’s also a tender love story. I haven’t checked Rotten Tomatoes, but I bet at least half the critics hate this. Don’t listen to them.

M.A.C.

O’Collins Obects

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

An Irish crime writer, whose work I’m not familiar with, has been hired to write a new Phillip Marlowe novel. It got tons of play, particularly on the Net, and my name was mentioned (with Robert B. Parker’s) in a short list of mystery writers who have previously written Marlowe material. Parker, of course, finished POODLE SPRINGS and later wrote a sequel to THE BIG SLEEP. I didn’t care for either of Parker’s efforts – they surprisingly seem half-hearted, from such an avowed Chandler fan – although a fun TV movie was made out of SPRINGS. My contribution was in the Phillip Marlowe centennial collection (a story that subsequently was rewritten as a Heller and can be found in CHICAGO LIGHTNING as “Perfect Crime”).

As the guy who is continuing the Mike Hammer books, I am probably hypocritical and way out of line in suggesting that this new Marlowe novel seems like a terrible idea. I will defend myself by pointing out that my situation is different, even unique – I was asked by Mickey himself to complete unfinished works in his files. And the truth is, I would have taken the Marlowe gig if offered to me, because Chandler is on my really, really short list (the one that includes Spillane, Hammett and Cain). What rankles – and I am aware of Chandler’s British upbringing – is that the choice wasn’t of an American writer. I’m not the only American typewriter-pounder who would have done this job well – I can think of a dozen off the top of my head, from Bob Crais and Loren Estleman to John Lutz and Ed Gorman. Bob Randisi wrote a hell of a good Marlowe story in the centennial collection. Maybe one of the big boys like Michael Connelly or Dennis Lahane or Jeff Deaver…anyway, there are plenty of better choices than somebody from the UK. I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.

Some years ago (probably at least twenty), I was approached to continue the Lew Archer books. I turned the job down (pshaw, to those of you who think I never say no to a gig) because (a) I have never been a Ross Macdonald fan, and (b) it was a suicide mission. Now I would have taken on any number of other suicide missions (I would still do a Sam Spade novel if anybody offered it), but I felt somebody more attuned to Archer ought to do it. As it turns out, nobody did.

By the way, I am not a Macdonald detractor. I read him when I was a teenager, devouring private eye novels. I liked his books. I just didn’t love them. He seemed to keep writing the same book over and over, and his writing seemed forced and, well, arch. He reached for the similes and metaphors, where they mostly flowed right out of Chandler. But he was serious about what he did and the books were readable, the people more real than most in the genre, and he provided a more overtly literary alternative to Mickey Spillane and Hammer that invited a whole other crowd of writers into the game. So props to him. I just didn’t want to step into his shoes.

I haven’t decided whether I’ll try to read the Irish guy’s book. Probably not. Somebody from South America or Spain or someplace wrote one that I couldn’t get past page one on. But it’s interesting how much attention it’s attracted.

* * *

Ron Fortier has given a good, lively review to TRIPLE PLAY. Check it out.

Unexpectedly, Craig Clarke – long a Heller supporter – has written a fine, insightful review of STOLEN AWAY, perhaps sparked by the new Amazon Encore edition.

And my BATMAN stuff keeps attracting attention, often from people who still want to tar-and-feather me (who was it that said, “Get a life?”), but now and then something surprisingly positive shows up, like this piece.

There seems to be an audio book collecting the Fangoria Dreadtime Stories, many of which are written by me. Here’s a mostly good review here that scolds me for including gratuitous sex. Who, me?

A British web site published a mostly negative but interesting review of Mickey’s early non-Mike Hammer novel, THE LONG WAIT. I waded in disagreeing, and a very interesting, lively bunch of comments followed. Worth looking at.

M.A.C.

The “H” Word

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
The Comedy is Finished

The rediscovered Donald E. Westlake novel, THE COMEDY IS FINISHED, is getting some great reviews. Regular readers of these updates know that I had the manuscript for the novel in my basement (actually a drawer in a cabinet in my basement, with other Westlake materials). Don and I had explored revising the novel for publication under both our names (or possibly a joint pseudonym) after he had difficulty finding a publisher for an unfunny Westlake novel about a Bob Hope-style comedian. The book didn’t really need any work, but he was sick of looking at it, and I had some ideas about streamlining, and addressing some complaints editors had expressed about the political content. But when the similarly plotted film “King of Comedy” came out, Don called me and scrapped the project. As I’ve said before, when MEMORY came out as the “final” Westlake novel (a book I also knew about but didn’t have a copy of – I could never get Don to loan it to me), I got in touch with Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai about THE COMEDY IS FINISHED.

Most of the reviews are mentioning my efforts to get this book into print, and several have been very kind – this one is typical.

Another good review began oddly, stating that there might be something fishy about this discovery if it hadn’t come from me, because after all I can be trusted. You see, the reviewer (Steve Donoghue) says “a more honest thousand-word-a-day hack isn’t living.”

Here’s the thing. I resent the word hack. Any writer would. It is the “n” word of the writing world. Further, if Steve Donoghue thinks that a “hack” is anybody who can turn out a thousand words a day, he is (in my case at least) 1500 words short. And trust me, Donald E. Westlake never had a thousand-word writing day in his life. Ed McBain probably never had a day under 5000 words.

Anyway, speed or lack of it has no bearing on the quality of writing, which should and does speak for itself. I rewrite heavily, but my practice is not to rewrite the life and spontaneity out of a work. Barb considers herself slow – 1000 words would be a good day – but the result is terrific and has an off-handed feel as if she just threw it off quickly. That’s an art in itself.

I understand that – like Don – I am a prolific writer. This does not mean that I don’t work hard at writing. In fact, I work very hard at it, and if I write 2500 words of a Nate Heller or Jack Starr or some other historical novel, many hours of research have gone into it. And it’s not just research. One thing that Barb and I share in our approach is a propensity for thinking about what we’re going to write for at least as long as it will take to write it.

For me writing is an art, yes, but first and foremost it is a craft, and selling what I’ve crafted is my business – you know, like trouble was Phillip Marlowe’s. When a reviewer – whether in the New York Times or on a blog – dismisses a writer as a “hack,” or talks about a writer “churning out” or “grinding out” a book, that reviewer is indulging in a lazy, prejudiced, sloppy way of thinking…and writing. Those of us who do this for a living – and are not lawyers or doctors or teachers who write on the side, and are not blockbuster writers who can afford to write a thousand words a day, or less – deserve more consideration if not respect than being called the “h” word.

* * *

Here’s a nice review of CHICAGO LIGHTNING.

Here’s a fun review of a short story that Barb and I did a while back, “Flyover Country.” [From Nate: Most recently published in the anthology ONCE UPON A CRIME, 2009]

And here’s a column on the great film noir, GUN CRAZY, from writer Mike Dennis. The comments below include one by me.

George Hagenauer is spending a few days here at La Casa Collins in our first meeting about the new Nate Heller novel, tentatively titled ASK NOT (the second JFK book). We’ll be mostly brainstorming, strategizing, and assigning homework to each other.

M.A.C.