The Spirit

How did I miss out on The Spirit growing up? I’m not sure, but knowing me, I was probably in the Sgt. Rock and GI Joe section.

I've read my first Spirit, The Portier Fortune, in Best Crime Comics and have become hooked by Will Eisner’s masked man of mystery. And now after watching the trailer, I’m looking forward to the Frank Miller film coming this Christmas.



I love the Sin City look of the film and that Frank Miller style that translates well from graphic novels to the big screen. I’m not really familiar with Gabriel Macht who’s playing The Spirit but his bio includes roles in The Good Shepherd and The Recruit. Of course, all eyes will be fixed on the combined charms of Eva Mendes, Scarlet Johansson, and Paz Vega -- enough to make a Jessica Rabbit jealous.

On Writing: Multiple POVs in the First Person?

Earlier in the year, I subscribed to a writer's book club, and now each month whether I want it or not, I get a 'how-to-write' book. I know there are varying opinions on this kind of educational tool, and no doubt, there's a gluttony in today’s market. But I've found some are worth reading, like The Mind of Your Story by Lisa Lenard-Cook. In Chapter 5 “What's Your Point,” Ms. Lenard-Cook writes, “The main question to keep in mind as you consider point of view is, whose story is it, anyway? … [O]ne way to determine who will tell your story is to decide who will be changed by the events that unfold.” Good advice, and this is the springboard for my current post and dilemma.

I've been working on a story where my protagonist ends up in a potentially fatal predicament. I wrote it in the first person and later realized the antagonist is equally absorbing. I thought of changing to the omnipresent 3rd person but felt it would lack kick. I finally decided to use first person to tell the story from both character's point of view, trying to clearly distinguish who is speaking in each section.

I think it works fine, but I wonder if there will be gripes about making such a transition. Several people who've read it have said that it works for them. Of course, the big test will be whether it’s accepted or not.

Has anyone else come across a similar problem? If so, what was it?

Thursday morning paper

One nice thing about staying at a hotel is the free paper delivered to the door. This morning's Life section from USA Today has a sizeable amount of print devoted to authors from the crime/detective community. Carole Memmott interviews Max Allan Collins about the forthcoming Mickey Spillane novel, The Goliath Bone. An article appears on actor and comedic author Richard Belzer with his latest I am Not a Cop! Last but not least, is a short bio of Stieg Larsson and a review of his bestseller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Check out the links if you would like a morning dose of crime.

The Trial by Franz Kafka (Montellier – Mairowitz)

The Trial takes place in a bizarre, impersonal, bureaucratic society where Joseph K, a bank clerk, is arrested for a crime that didn't take place. While he searches for answers as to where his trial is going to be held, no one seems to want to tell him. The authorities in Kafka’s cleverly created world are quick to arrest and sentence but have no particular interest in the accused’s defense.

Metropolis, 1984, A Clockwork Orange and Brazil have all explored similar themes, and after reading The Trial, I see where these frightening landscapes originated.

According to The Trial’s jacket blurb, artist Chanta Montellier, is one of France’s leading graphic artists and it’s easy to see why. She constructs magnificent nineteenth century interiors in vivid detail and then quietly blends them into a mixture of 1940’s film noir and a nightmarish gothic world. I thought it was a nice touch that Kafka’s likeness served as Montellier’s interpretation of Joseph K.

Writer David Zane Mairowitz is a well-renowned author and playwright. His bio states he previously wrote Introducing Kafka with Robert Crumb (that’s gotta be a great combination). His use of exclamation points and question marks are perfectly used to emphasize the citizens’ confusion in the totalitarian state.

I may never have read this classic piece of literature if it weren't for the graphic novel adaptation. The Trial is a great book for fans and for slouches like me who have just discovered this acclaimed novelist and short story writer. I’ll be reading more of Kafka’s work, like The Metamorphosis and The Castle.

On a similar note, check out Scott D. Parker's site. He has a review of Coward (Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips) plus a short history of graphic novels.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (November 2008)

I haven't seen too many people blog about it, so I want to touch on the November issue of Ellery Queen. Foremost, it’s noteworthy for containing the last story that Edward Hoch was working on at the time of his death. Handel and Gretel, seamlessly completed by Jon L. Breen, follows the winning team of Stanton and Ives. The couriers find themselves entangled in a murder mystery when hired to transport a George Handel manuscript. Every time I have picked up a new issue of EQMM or an old secondhand copy, I'd flip through to start with the Hoch story (I find the Nick Velvet and Simon Ark yarns are the most enjoyable). Buying another issue of EQMM won’t be the same without the prolific Edward D. Hoch.

John Harvey’s Trouble In Mind opens the issue, pairing up two of his regular characters, Charlie Resnick and Jack Kiley. PI Kiley is searching for an AWOL soldier and enlists the help of Resnick. The story alternates between the soldier who’s kidnapped his family and Resnick and Kiley on the trail. Harvey successfully tackles the topical issue of post traumatic stress disorder without being preachy.

Too Wise, written by O' Neil De Noux (sidebar: what a great name for a writer!), is set in 1940s New Orleans with protagonist Lucien Caye, PI. Caye becomes a suspect when an attractive strawberry blonde is murdered a few hours after he was seen dropping her off at her house. Mr. Noux, a former cop himself and native of the area, brings a great deal of realism to this piece. I will have to check out New Orleans Confidential which has the Caye character.

The magazine’s special sections also offer several great pieces. "Passport To Crime" spotlights Brazil’s talented Rubem Fonseca with a tale that I could imagine from the pen of Lawrence Block. "Black Mask" features Gary Phillips who delivers a compelling entry intriguingly entitled, The Kim Novak Effect. In "Reviews", The Jury Box reminded me I have to pick up Paris Noir and Crimini. All this and Bill Crider does a nice write-up in Blog Bytes on Patti Abbott's Friday’s Forgotten Books.

Other contributors include Janet Dawson, Barbara Nadel, Judith Cutler, Len Moffat, and the gifted Robert Barnard. A great issue -- check it out.

Friday’s Forgotten Books: The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne Du Maurier

I went across the street and bent over the sleeping woman. The furtive odour of stale wine, worn clothes, rose to my nostrils… suddenly she stirred. She lifted her head. The features were aquiline and proud, the eyes, once large, were now sunken, and the straggling grey hair fell in strands to her shoulders. She must have travelled from some distance, for she had two baskets beside her containing bread and wine, and yet a further woollen shawl. Once again I was seized with that sense of recognition, that link with the past which could not be explained. Even the hand that, warm despite the cold air, held on to mine in gratitude awakened an involuntary, reluctant response. She stared at me. Her lips moved.

I turned, I think I ran.

Armino Fabbio gives some money to the homeless woman in the above passage. When he later hears that she’s been murdered, he is surprised to learn she was once a family servant. He feels compelled to return to his home town of Ruffano where he makes another astonishing discovery. His older brother, Aldo, who he thought died in the war, is alive.

Aldo serves as the director of the university arts council and is in the midst of a stage production on the sinister Duke Claudio (the Falcon), a brutal man who preyed on the Ruffano people five hundred years earlier.

Armino knows his brother is no less brutal than Claudio. His childhood memories of Aldo’s bullying haunt him. He recalls the time Aldo intimidated him into playing Lazarus and locked in a linen cupboard for a tomb:

So great was my dread, so disciplined to his commands my spirit, that I dared not disobey. I came forth, and the horror was that I did not know whether I should meet with the Christ or with the devil, for according to Aldo’s ingenious theory the two were one, and also, in some manner which he never explained, interchangeable.

Armino suspects Aldo is using the students for his own nefarious purposes despite the fact that they see him as an ally.

The book continues to flash between present day and the brothers’ past, The Falcon’s history, the servant’s murder and possible implications it has for Armino plus the hectic university life circa the mid 1960s. The plotlines interweave, building to a couple of unexpected plot revelations and a tragic ending.

Before Du Maurier wrote Falcon, she was criticized for being an "agreeable writer of agreeable fiction" and "nostalgic novelist yearning for the past." Perhaps because of these drubbings, she decided to create a complex, multilayered plot.

In 1965, she appeared to have some doubts about her work, "I’m afraid people are not going to understand it at all." She was right. Good Housekeeping demanded serious revisions before it was serialized in their magazine including a re-write of the ending. Du Maurier considered herself "on the slide" and she agreed to the changes. But in the end, the efforts didn’t pay off. The New Yorker called the novel "extraordinarily dull."

Is the plot a little convoluted? Yes. A little dull? It can be. So why recommend this book? Because, Daphne Du Maurier had a keen ability for creating atmospheric worlds, suspense and that old style of mystery they just don’t craft anymore.

I wouldn’t make this my first Du Maurier read. Her established pieces like Rebecca, The Birds and Other Stories (1963) and Not After Midnight (1971) are a better start. Then, like me, maybe you will become entranced and travel down that back road where The Flight of the Falcon is waiting.

Click here for more Friday’s Forgotten Books...

SSSSSSS

I've had an unusual week of offbeat posts with King Crimson, British comedians and stamps. Today's post has been scheduled in my Blogger list for weeks now and it's time to finally put it up. This should add to the week's peculiarity...

SSSSSSS is a 1973 horror film, starring Dirk Benedict and Strother Martin, about humans being turned into cobras. I love this campy trailer "Don't say it-Hiss it".



"King cobra vs. Mongoose or is it man vs. man." Because I was a fan of Benedict in Battlestar Galactica at the time, I convinced my mom to allow me to watch this cult film one Saturday afternoon. I don't recall thinking it was bad, but I found it to be a decidedly strange movie.