A BLOG FOR LOVERS OF CRIME FICTION

DICK ADLER, former crime fiction reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, picks the best of new releases -- and a few old ones.

The Book You Have to Read: “When the Sacred Ginmill Closes” by Lawrence Block

And so we’ve had another night
of poetry and poses,
and each man knows he’ll be alone
when the sacred ginmill closes. -- Dave Van Ronk

Ginmill was the sixth Matt Scudder book and the first one I ever read. I've since become as big a Block enthusiast as anyone else in their right mind, but something about this sad and beautiful baby still holds my heart. To think that any crime fiction lover might have missed it in the glare of more publicized Blocks is, quite literally, unthinkable.

Maybe it was the title, from a Dave Van Ronk song (Last Call) which I actually heard Van Ronk sing in some smoky Greenwich Village club. I don't think it was the booze (I'm Jewish, and a 5706 Manichewitz was a great year for my Mom and Dad). But the bars I didn't dare walk into became in my mind Gentile temples of pleasure and temptation as Scudder moved from Armstrong's to Miss Kitty's (not named after the lady on Gunsmoke) to Morrissey's, where the bad luck and trouble began.

And I was absolutely knocked over by Block's ability to tell in 1986 (looking incredibly youthful and wise on the book jacket) a story that happened in 1975, when Scudder was still drinking, without dropping in a flashback or missing a beat. A scene where Matt tries to remember anything else important that happened in 1975 and can come up with only a fistful of sports highlights might just leave you breathless.



If you haven't read Ginmill, it starts with Scudder drinking at an afterhours bar called Morrissey's (“The legal closing hour for bars in the city of New York is 4:00 a.m., but Morrissey's was an illegal establishment and was thus not bound by regulations of that sort”) when two masked gunmen break in, holding a gun on one of the Morrissey brothers. The other gunman turns his pistol on the older brother, Tim Pat, as they proceed to rob the place – cashbox on the counter, another box in a safe, even a collection jar for IRA loyalists.

The gunmen escape with their loot, Tim Pat consults with his brother, then makes a speech to the trembling patrons (ex-cop Scudder never carries a gun) about how the whole thing was just a joke. Nobody believes it. Tim Pat later asks Matt to look into the robbery – sucking in the always broke unlicensed private eye with a handsome offer. Two more clients – friends met in bars -- rapidly line up to pay for Scudder's services in matters of murder and blackmail.

The mood of the book is as boozy and dark as its settings, but I'd forgotten how Block could slide in a guffaw from time to time without overloading the boat.

“She looked at me sharply. 'You a cop?'
'I used to be.'
“Her laugh was loud, unexpected. 'Wha'd you get, laid off? They got no work for cops, all the crooks in jail?'”

Bottoming Out

I don't care what that weird guy at THE RAP SHEET says -- I love this! Good on you, Ken Laager.

And the book ain't too shabby, either. Here's a link if you wanna buy one:

The First Quarry

(Or click on OUR STORE)

Nemirovsky's Spy Novel

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and emigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne in Paris, she began to write and swiftly achieved success with DAVID GOLDER, which was followed by more than a dozen other books. Throughout her lifetime she published widely in French newspapers and literary journals. She died in Auschwitz in 1942. More than sixty years later, SUITE FRANCAISE was published posthumously.

Now the stalwart Everyman's Library is publishing four of her shorter novels in one handsome volume, a gorgeous hardcover complete with a gold cord bookmark. And the especially good news for lovers of crime fiction is that one of them, THE COURILOF AFFAIR, is a classic Conradian (or Dostoyevskian) spy novel. It's the story of a Russian revolutionary, Leon M., living out his last days in Nice, first meeting in the 1930s a man who jogs his memory and then writing in longhand about his relationship with Valerian Courilof, the minister of education in imperial Russia. Léon grew to like the decrepit, politically ruined Courilof, even as he was ordered to kill him.

Dr. Soos to the Rescue

I've said it before: Mass market paperback originals are the Rodney Dangerfield of the publishing trade -- they get no respect. Many top crime writers now firmly entrenched between hardcovers began writing paperback originals: John Shannon and Harlan Coben come to immediate mind. And Terry Soos -- a writer, historian and physicist -- could well be the next.

Soos' excellent historical suspense novels have been compared to Caleb Carr's, especially the ones starring Marshall Webb -- a writer for Harper's Weekly who digs up lots of dirt on New York political and police scandals of a hundred years ago which sound very much like today's headlines.

Dr. Soos's latest involves Webb, his basically honest but not completely graft-free Brooklyn cop friend Buck Morehouse (he'll accept free drinks and food, but never cash), and a female social reformer who all get mixed up in a couple of murders during the bloody trolley worker's strike in Brooklyn in 1895. Wonderful stuff: more attention should be paid.

It's All True -- But Is It Crime?

Non-fiction is one of the areas I love to explore, but my stack of should-reads is usually pushed aside by the stuff I get paid for. Richard Rayner's fine review of David Samuels in the Los Angeles Times got me off my duff, however.

I had read Samuels' original piece about James Hogue in the New Yorker in 2001, and remember thinking then that it would make a great book. Now, seven years later, Samuels has expanded his piece about the petty thief and compulsive runner Hogue into an amazing work -- short but stuffed with obviously hard-won details. Hogue first conned his way into Princeton University and became a top student. He then used his odd charms and talents to bedazzle (and defraud) many citizens of Telluride, Colorado, from his shack across the street from Oprah Winfrey's former home. It's a sad and bitchily amusing story, told by a master.

As a companion piece, the gutsy New Press is publishing a collection of Samuels' articles from such magazines as Harper's and the New Yorker -- profiles of everyone from Donald Rumsfeld to an eternally optimistic dog track devotee.

The Amazing Mr. Rifkin

“Shepard Rifkin, who turns 90 this year, is not famous – but he's led one of the most interesting lives of any author I know,” says Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime. “During World War II, he survived being torpedoed in the North Atlantic; after the war ended, he joined the crew of the famous S.S. Ben Hecht” -- the sister ship of the Charles MacArthur? -- “which was captured while trying to run the British blockade of Palestine...”

As a birthday present, Hard Case is rescuing from out-of-print limbo what could well be Rifkin's best mystery. The Murderer Vine is about the killing of three young Civil Rights workers in Mississippi, and the father of one of them who hires a New York private eye to find the men responsible -- and not come home until they are dead.

Happy 90th, Mr. Rifkin. Keep writing.