Making the Rounds: Short Stories

Some of Pulp Serenade's favorite writers have been very busy lately. Check out what they've been up to.

--An excerpt from Patti Abbott's "Ghostscapes," soon to be published in BEAT to a PULP: Round One, was posted over at David Cranmer's blog, The Education of a Pulp Writer. Here's just a sample of what is to come. For the full excerpt, and more information about the anthology, click the links.

Helen eventually settled on the 31st of July as the date of her death. It was difficult to be certain because for days, perhaps as much as a week, she wandered around the cottage without any glimmer of what had befallen her...

--Jason Duke's long awaited Pheonix Nightlife has finally hit the web. Parts one and two have been posted at CrimeWAV. Here is the trailer.


--Paul D. Brazill's upcoming story, "Guns of Brixton," will not only appear in the next issue of Crime Factory, but will also be anthologized in Maxim Jakubowski's The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries. Read all about it at Paul's blog.

--Beat to a Pulp is back again this week with another hell of a story. This week's punch is "The Little Boy Inside" by Glenn Gray.

"Who Was that Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery" by Jeffrey Marks (Delphi, 2001)

Readers generally only know one side to Craig Rice. She was the author of a beloved series of comedic crime capers starring lawyer John J. Malone, heiress Helena Brand, and press agent Jake Justus. As Jeffrey Marks points out in his illuminating and compelling biography, Who Was that Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery, there was a great deal of pain and suffering behind every laugh, bruises behind every wisecrack, and a lifetime of failed relationships that inspired the close bond between her memorable fictional sleuths. Rice’s life is a paradox as complex as any of her plots: she was talented but tormented; loved and reviled; and strong-willed in some ways but weak in so many more. She was the living embodiment of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, “My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and ah, my friends; It gives a lovely light!” For Rice, the light was short lived, and failure came as quickly as success and lasted twice as long.

The writer that would become Craig Rice was born Georgiana Craig, the daughter of two artist. Shortly after her birth, the parents would abandon their child to return to Europe to paint, leaving Georgiana to be raised by her aunt and uncle, the Rices. They would eventually adopt her, and Georgiana would take their name as her own. Jeffrey Marks locates this as the central conflict in Craig Rice’s life and work: most of her novels deal with orphans or those who have been abandoned in one way or another, while in her own life Rice would cling to mentally and physically abusive men out of fear of being alone. As Marks points out, Rice would wind up repeating her own mother’s decisions and leave her children with nannies and relatives. Why she would do that, after being so scarred by the same decisions, is still up for speculation.

Leaving college after only one year, Rice became a free-spirited Bohemian, making the rounds of the big city, attending lots of parties, and becoming a crime reporter. She made a living as a journalist during the Great Depression, and turned to writing novels by the end of the 1930s, beginning with 8 Faces at 3 in 1939, which introduced the world to Malone, Brand and Justus. Their alcohol-infused adventures in and around Chicago continued in a slew of novels written over a short period time. In her first five years as a novelist, Rice would publish an astonishing 16 novels (7 of which were about Malone and company).

Alcoholism, depression, and a series of bad marriages would slowly bring her writing to a halt, ruin her ties to the industry, and destroy her health. Her many husbands were all writers, none of whom were as talent or successful as Rice. Jeffrey Marks points out that one of them, Lenny Lipton, was especially poisonous: after deriding popular fiction (in spite of the fact that his “literature” never sold and got horrible reviews), he would eventually sue her and claim partial ownership of all her writing in order to continue living off Rice’s success after they had broken up. He later tried to join the Beat movement, and was unsuccessful at that, as well.

Marks also makes a strong case that Rice was an unfortunate victim of her time. Her alcoholism and time spent in hospitals became vicious news stories, and even her cover story in Time Magazine is unnecessarily harsh, influenced by the stricter morals of the day. As Rice points out, however, many of Rice’s peers—the male writers—were also alcoholics but did not suffer the stigma that she did. Also, Rice’s bipolar conditions were unable to be treated at hospitals at the time, leaving her few options except to fall back into the same cycle of depression and drinking time and again. That type of living took its toll on Rice, and it eventually killed her when she fell down the stairs, alone in her house. She was 49 years old.

Who Was that Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery could be called a critical bio-bibliography. Jeffrey Marks writes about Craig Rice with great sympathy, but always with an insightful, critical eye. Marks proves to be as perceptive a critic as he is a biographer and researcher. He locates the autobiographical strands of her work, smartly connecting them to her own life. Just as important, he also places her work in context to the mystery field at the time, as well as compares her books to each other, tracing their development over the years as her quality rose rapidly in the early 1940s, then fell as a result of her personal struggles, only to rise again shortly before her untimely death. Concise synopses and succinct reviews of all her novels (and many of her short stories) provides an indispensable guide for navigating the ups-and-downs of Craig Rice’s career.

One of the most important and successful mystery writers of her day, Rice is sadly forgotten today. While many of her books were reprinted in the late 1980s and early 1990s by IPL, only one novel and one collection of stories is in print today. Rue Morgue Press has released Home Sweet Homicide (which Marks calls her greatest book) and Crippen and Landau have released a collection of the Malone stories, Murder, Mystery and Malone, which was edited by Marks. We can only hope that her innovative, inimitable, and undeniably delightful novels see the light of day again sometime soon. In the meantime, we have Marks’ wonderful biography, an essential for fans of Rice’s work, and of great interest for anyone interested in the history of mystery and crime fiction.

Other Pulp Serenade posts on Craig Rice:

"Craig Rice" (Time Magazine, January 28, 1946)

"Trial by Fury" by Craig Rice (International Polygonics Ltd., 1991)

Craig Rice on Words and Writing

"The Long Saturday Night" by Charles Williams (Gold Medal, 1962)

Charles Williams’ The Long Saturday Night was published by Gold Medal in 1962. It would turn out to be his last for the publisher. It’s about John D. Warren, a real estate broker from Carthage, Alabama. When he gets early to pay a visit to the private duck-hunting club early on Friday morning, he doesn’t realize what the weekend holds in store for him. First, he’s accused of murdering Dan Roberts, one of his tenants and fellow members of the duck-hunting club—the only member who was also out that morning. Next, a mysterious phone call suggests that his wife, Frances, was stepping out with Roberts as well as another man. Then there is the matter of several thousand dollars that Frances took with her to New Orleans which have vanished without a trace. And then there’s her dead body, lying in Warren’s home.

On the run from the cops, it is up to Warren and his resourceful secretary, Barbara Ryan, to piece together the connection between Frances and Dan Roberts, as well as identify the mysterious caller and catch the real killer—all on one long, frantic, and dangerous Saturday night.

Perhaps the “wrong man” and “amateur detective” scenarios sound familiar enough, but it is proof of Williams’ skill that he can seemingly reinvent these tropes and breathe new, panic-stricken life into them. Using a remarkable first-person narration, Williams burrows deep into his main character, John D. Warren, and brings his growing paranoia to life. The first-rate storytelling is both enthralling and magnetic, and it has the fevered pacing of a never-ending nightmare.

Francois Truffaut turned The Long Saturday Night into a movie called Confidentially Yours! in 1983 (in France it was called Vivement Dimache!, literally “Finally Sunday!”). (Here is my review of the movie.) The film turned out to be Truffaut’s last. Unfortunately, it is not one of his better movies. The adaptation seemingly sticks close to the outline of the plot, but the tonal changes are totally out of step with Williams’ paranoid vision. Truffaut tries to add a comedic, screwball feeling akin to The Thin Man, and tosses in plenty of unnecessary and distracting movie references (especially to Hitchcock). The movie doesn’t work because, for one thing, the actors (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Fanny Ardant) don’t have the same chemistry as William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man movies. Truffaut also is unable to recreate the swift pace of Williams novel, nor is Trintignant able to convey the increasing anxiety of Warren’s character. Ultimately, the movie just wasn’t that thrilling or funny, a bad sign for a movie that tries to be a comedic thriller.

While the book is currently out-of-print, used copies are still floating around. Fans of early paperback crime fiction don’t want to miss this one. For more information on Williams, check out Bill Crider’s excellent essay, “The Gold Medal Corner: Charles Williams” over at Mystery*File where he calls Williams “one of the people who belongs in the Gold Medal Pantheon.” August West, over at Vintage Hardboiled Reads, also reviewed the book: “The Long Saturday Night might not be the author's most well-known novel, but it's one that should not be overlooked.”

As always, a couple of quotes from the book.

“I kept opening and closing my mouth and swallowing to hold back the oily ground-swell of nausea running up into my throat, and pressing my face into the bedspread as though I were convinced that if I could close my eyes tightly enough the picture would go away.”

“The bed rocked as if I were still driving, and the instant I closed by eyes the pulpy and battered mass of her face was burned into the backs of the lids down to the last projecting shard of bone, and I sat up shaking and sick, my mouth locked against the outcry welling up inside me.”

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More of Friday's Forgotten Books are available at Patti Abbott's blog.

Craig Rice on Words and Writing

"When [Craig] Rice did finally sit down to write a book, it was a sight to see. Her writing habits were legendary. She wrote without an outline, or character sketches, or any good idea of where she was going, simply typing away until she'd completed a novel. The manic sessions would sometimes last for days. These focused writing sessions provided the first indication that perhaps Craig Rice didn't behave like other writers – she was driven to complete a work in a few sittings. No one would see her until she emerged with a finished book." -- Jeffrey Marks, from Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery

"Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West" by James Reasoner (Berkley, 2003)

What happens when you combine rip-roarin' Western action with legendary true stories and one of best working writers of the genre? James Reasoner's Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West. This exciting, non-fiction book looks at the men (and some women) behind the guns that blazed trails across America. Cowboys, bandits, sheriffs, bank robbers, marshals, horse thieves, card players, posses, gangs, and even a little boy suffering from consumption--they all carried guns, and they all had to use them, sometimes in the name of the law, sometimes in the name of vengeance, and sometimes in the name of violence. Behind each bullet is a story, and Reasoner gets to the heart of each and every one.

What I most appreciated about the book is Reasoner's approach to the material. The past isn't chiseled in stone like a cold tombstone, but lives and breathes. He begins each chapter with a striking scene, a cliffhanger that introduces us to the character and the defining moment in their lives--and often it is their last moment, as well. From there Reasoner takes us back, giving us a concise but comprehensive look at all the characters and the events leading up to the climactic showdown.

A humanist historian, Reasoner is as interested in a character's psychology and emotions as much as his actions. And because he can find a little sympathy for even the most ruthless gunslinger, the characters come off as real people instead of historical documents, and even the most timeworn tales seem fresh again. He gives a new perspective on the Earp clan by focusing on the forgotten brother, Warren, who was the only one not present for that historic battle in Tombstone, and who lived his life in the shadows of his brothers' legacies. And even Bob Ford (the man who shot Jesse James) and Pat Garret (the man who shot Billy the Kid) are given sympathy, as Reasoner tries to understand their disappointment of never eclipsing the notorious men they killed.

Reasoner is smart to realize that history shouldn't always be written by the victors. He not only tells the story from the viewpoints of all involved, but also respects the unresolved mysteries and speculations, those wondrous questions that linger on more than a hundred years later. Some of my favorite moments involve those characters who made their mark and then disappeared into history, like the young, consumptive boy Riley who, after seeing his gun-toting idol shot down, surprised the whole town of Wichita by doing some fancy shooting of his own. After avenging his fallen friend, the little boy vanished without a trace. History lost track of him, and his fate remains a mystery to this day.

Beneath the surface of Draw, Reasoner is doing more than just telling the stories of famous gunfighters. Through these stories, he also chronicles the larger history of the West, from the initial migration, to the establishing of of industry, towns, and law and order. The book ends, fittingly, with the settling and taming of the West, and the end of a spectacular, bloody, and exciting era of gunfighters.

The book is still in print from Berkley. Reasoner also keeps a blog called Rough Edges. Previously on Pulp Serenade I interviewed Reasoner about his book Hunt at the Well of Eternity, and I also reviewed his books Texas Wind and Old Times' Sake.

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from the book:

"The gambler from the east was fast, all right, but his aim was wild, wild as hell, and his speed hadn't bought him a thing except a few ounces of lead."

"They were young, in their twenties, but hardly children. In fact, their eyes were older than their years. They were the eyes of men who had been both the hunters--and the hunted."

"The Executioner" by H.A. DeRosso (AHMM, October 1957)

I know H.A. DeRosso mainly from his gripping, noir-ish Western .45, so it was a real pleasure finding his short story “The Executioner” in the October 1957 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Here he departs from the Western genre he is mostly associated with and delivers a terrific story of dystopian politics set in Latin America.

The nameless protagonist is a Captain in the military, in charge of the executions. Ramon Laramate, a dissident, is to be executed shortly. The Captain’s girlfriend, Maria Alba, testified against Laramate and begs to watch him die. Her persistence, however, worries the Captain.

“What could she do to him? Denounce him? He had never concerned himself with politics; he had never uttered a single word against Tomasino; he was more faithful to the Leader than the natives of Cielo Azul. What, pray, could she do to him?”

DeRosso has an ironic, and decidedly dark, sense of humor. Even if it is slightly predictable, there is still a good punch at the end of the story. Overall, it is a well-structured and smartly paced story. The seeds for the twist are planted early on, and it is fun to watch as DeRosso develops them into the final twist ending.

(For those who are interested, last year on Pulp Serenade I also featured another excellent short story by DeRosso called "Hide-Away." It is about a Private Detective with the unpleasant task of hunting down a former partner.)

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Thanks to Galactic Central for the cover scan.

Frederick C. Davis on Words and Writing

Renowned pulpster Frederick C. Davis passes on the following advice to writers:

The most valuable and penetrating comment I have ever seen on writing--any kind--is one made by Henry Seidel Canby of the Saturday Review. He said: "A writer doesn't write with his mind, he writes with his hands."

(Quoted from The Mystery Writer's Handbook, edited by Herbert Brean.)