Welcome back, Frank!

I’ve really gotta wonder — why all the griping about Punisher: War Zone, the newest effort to launch a Punisher movie franchise? Not only do the mainstream critics hate it, as I’d expect, the online geekboys are piling on the shit as well. But as a longtime fan of the Punisher in most of his comic book versions, and a fan of 2004’s movie with Thomas Jane, I have to say that War Zone is just about everything I’ve wanted in a Punisher film. It’s over-the-top, it’s unrealistic (as it should be, right?), and it’s a veritable merry-go-round of blood-drenched kickass mayhem. The movie’s got Ray Stevenson doing a fine turn as Frank Castle, and it’s moved Frank to Manhattan (where he belongs), and it’s got hundreds and hundreds of mobsters and street punks ineffectually throwing themselves at Frank, and it’s got Dominic West playing Jigsaw fer crissakes. It’s got it all, and it’s all wrapped up into a balls-to-the-wall gangbuster of an action movie.

Unfortunately, Punisher: War Zone is tanking at the box office. But there is, after all, a long life promised in the DVD world. However, if you’re a fan of the character, you might want to run out immediately and see this new take on the Punisher while it’s still on the Big Screen.

Gregory Mcdonald RIP

Author Gregory Mcdonald died from cancer last Sunday. He was 71.

Besides writing for newspapers, Mcdonald wrote the Fletch series of crime thrillers. If your only experiences with Fletch are the horrible two movies starring Chevy Chase, do yourself a very big favor and get hold of Mcdonald’s first three books, all published in the ’70s — Fletch; Confess, Fletch (which introduced another series character, Flynn); and Fletch’s Fortune. Over the past thirty years, I’ve read each of those novels at least five times. They are all massively entertaining, and they taught me a lot about writing.

Mcdonald wrote eight other novels in the Fletch series, two of them about Fletch’s son. Unfortunately, none of them are as good as the original three.

I’ll miss Gregory Mcdonald.

Your Tuesday night moment of noir

Some novels’ opening sentences are so goddamn fantastic, you just gotta share ’em. Hat tip to Duane, who’s written some brilliant opening sentences himself.

“When his girlfriend greeted him at the door dressed only in a T-shirt and thong, then kissed him hard on the mouth without a word before pulling him into her ground-floor bedroom, she was so worked up she didn’t even notice that he was wearing gloves.”

Deadline
by Simon Kernick
(Corgi, 2008)

The game is afoot tonight!

The idea was first hatched several months ago. The Blind German Mechanics, our local Sherlock Holmes society, would go on a “field trip” to one of those mystery dinner events at, say, the Embassy Suites. Or maybe we’d gather at the nearby melodrama theater for hotdogs and a show.

Well, after much haggling and plotting, that Sherlockian “field trip” occurs tonight. At my house.

And believe me, that’s a good thing. I’m not bitchin’. Not really. After all, the house and yards are now in the shape I’ve wanted for a decade.

But it remains to be seen whether we pull it off. This group — all 12 of us — is just a tad eccentric and disjointed. And in five years, we've never assembled anywhere but a convenient Borders or Starbucks. Will everybody find my house? Is there enough parking space? Will anybody be freaked by my gigantic (but not too demonic) hound — and her canine buddy, who’s been visiting for the past ten days? Will the frozen lasagna be hot and ready at 7:00? Will the Game — yes, one of our flock has pieced together a mystery for us to solve — really be afoot?

But there’s still vacuuming to be done, a bathroom to be scrubbed, and a deerstalker to be donned. Must dash.

If I don’t mention this again, just figger all went well. If something intriguing comes of the evening, I’ll report in later.

A moment of hardboiled Objectivism

“The police are picking up Baggot and his bunch! I’m here to make sure you pay for what you did! Roden marked the money he gave you — where is it?”

“No! No, he lied! You can’t believe a crooked lawyer! I swear I’m innocent!”

“I can make you talk like I made Roden. And you will talk, Purity! How do you want it?”

“I-I hid the money in my apartment! I-I’m not a real criminal! Please, give me a break!”

“You can confess to the D.A. on your own or I’ll drag you in… That is the only break you’ll get or deserve!”

“No, please! I’ll give you all the money! I deserve another chance! I’m sorry — I swear to God I am! I’ll never do it again! It-it’ll just be Roden’s word against mine! Please — have pity on me!”

“You scum, you betrayed the whole concept of justice! You sold out everyone who looks to the law as the protector of the innocent. And why did you do it? No one pressured you. No one threatened you. No one used force to make you! In a battle between good and evil, where there can be no compromise, you willingly chose to be evil’s secret ally! You wanted the advantages of both sides. Money you haven’t earned…respect you’re not entitled to!”

“But I’m sorry! Sob!”

“Your self-imposed blindness is over! You’re going to face up to pay for your sellout! Go turn yourself in!”

“Mr A: Money”
by Steve Ditko
(witzend #4, 1968)

Book review: SEVERANCE PACKAGE

Severance Package is brand new from Duane Swierczynski, the third of his crime books I’ve read in the past year and a half. On his blog, Duane himself describes it as “essentially a pulp hybrid of a spy novel and a slasher flick.” A pretty good description, I guess. Like Duane’s last two novels — The Wheelman and The Blonde — Severance Package is genre-bending. It flips the conventions of crime fiction on their heads, grabs ’em by their ankles, then pile-drives them into the concrete. This fucker goes full throttle from the first page. And when it’s finished, you need about an hour to sit still with a glass of your favorite iced beverage pressed to your forehead.

Maybe Severance Package walloped me so effectively because, well, its protagonist, Jamie Debroux, is a PR hack for a company of questionable ethics; for some 15 years, that’s what I did for a living. But I never dealt with the madness Jamie does in Swierczynski’s story. You see, Jamie and his co-workers are called into the office on a Saturday morning for a special meeting, told by their boss that the business has been a front for government intelligence, that it’s being shut down, that the elevators are locked, that the stairwells are rigged with sarin gas bombs, and that each of them is expected to drink the Kool-Aid. Then, as they say, the high-jinks begin.

But here’s the thing. Through all the violence and bloodshed, Severance Package is a goddamn LOVE STORY. It’s about the love of a man for his family, the love of employees for job security, the love between men and women, and men and men, and women and women. Granted, it may be a sick and twisted love story, but it has a lot to say about how we often cling to people and position and possessions and how maybe that’s not always a good thing.

Duane Swierczynski rocks. Read this novel and get rattled to your core. Then lend it to a friend, sit back, and watch them squirm for awhile.

THE BLONDE: a second look

A year ago, I wrote this about Duane Swierczynski's genre-bending crime novel The Blonde:

“It turns the genre on its head. No, it actually pulls the genre apart, mixes it with a punk sensibility, then reassembles it into something new and unexpected. Think D.O.A., the old movie with Edmond O’Brien, stirred vigorously with Michael Crichton. Think The Fugitive on crystal meth.

“But none of those comparisons really work. The Blonde is something else entirely. It’s just hard to say what that something else is. A look at the book’s jacket would have you convinced that this is a typical hardboiled crime novel. But it crisscrosses genres faster than you can blink. And it literally ticks like a time bomb…”

If you haven’t read The Blonde yet, fer crissakes, do so. But make sure you pick up the new trade paper edition. It includes a brand new 46-page sequel titled “Redhead” that packs a bigger wallop than most full-length crime books. It’s filled with hellish state-sponsored prisons, interrogators, and sadistic government killers with nicknames like Ana Esthesia, The Surgeon, and Bonesaw. This novella alone is worth the price tag on this new edition.

And yes, The Blonde makes a terrific gift for the holiday.

Movie review: GONE BABY GONE

Gone Baby Gone is tanking at the box office. In two weeks, it’s barely made $11 million nationwide. And that’s horribly sad, because it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in the past year, and maybe the best new film of the private eye genre I’ve seen since, well, maybe Chinatown, more than thirty years ago.

Gone Baby Gone is based on the fourth of five novels by Dennis Lehane about Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Every one of those books, published in the 1990s, is spectacular. So much so that ten years after reading them, I still vividly recall each one. Now here’s what director-screenwriter Ben Affleck has done magnificently: he’s crafted a movie that captures Lehane’s book detail by detail. The script is lifted from the novel’s pages with little alteration. I recognized snatches of dialogue. There are set pieces from the novel that have been translated precisely to the screen. And the casting is spot-on.

Be warned: Gone Baby Gone is a dark mystery about child abuse and kidnapping, lightened only by brief snatches of verbal humor from Casey Affleck’s extraordinary portrayal of Kenzie. But if you like detective stories stuffed with twists and turns and moral dilemmas, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this film. And if you’re a Lehane fan, this movie adaptation of Gone Baby Gone will astonish you.

If this movie were building a decent audience right now, I’d anticipate a second film from the Kenzie-Gennaro series. I don’t think I’m gonna get that. A shame, since I’m so in love with the performances of Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, who plays Angie. But at least I’ll soon have the DVD to add to my library of noir films. And I guess I can always hope that, even after eight years, Dennis Lehane will eventually write a sixth Kenzie-Gennaro novel.

Review: MADAME MIRAGE #1

I had quite a few good things to say about Paul Dini’s work on Detective Comics recently. So I thought I’d grab a copy of the debut issue of his new Madame Mirage book for Top Cow. Of course, the first thing that drew my attention was Kenneth Rocafort’s visual take on Madame Mirage herself. Rocafort has made her the most gorgeous comic book dame to grace news racks since Power Girl. But Mirage exists in a unique class all her own. As far as we know from this first issue, she has no super powers, although she very effectively wages a guerrilla war on a corporate cabal of Armani-suited “super villains.” Her “costume,” when she’s not in disguise, is a very noirish black hat, white dress, and gloves. And, unlike most comic book heroes, she’s got no code against offing the badguys in terribly brutal ways with everything from semi-automatic handguns to detonation devices.

While reading Madame Mirage, I thought, “Hey, this character’s kinda like a female version of The Shadow!” And sure enough, I find out from a little research that The Shadow was in fact one of Paul Dini’s inspirations — as was Dini’s own wife Misty, who happens to be a magician and also possesses Madame Mirage’s snappy fashion sense.

As premiere issues go, Madame Mirage #1 is a keeper. It does a good job of introducing the Mirage Universe and the continuing cast of characters. And at the same time, it manages to present a satisfying standalone story. I’ll definitely give this comic another look.

Review: CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL

Thanks to an entertaining Behind the Black Mask podcast interview with first-time author Paul Malmont last summer, his Chinatown Death Cloud Peril lurked in the darkest corners of my mind until the trade paper caught my attention at Borders two weeks ago. It’s a dandy book. Not perfect, but much greater than you’d expect from a first novel.

Here’s what makes Death Cloud Peril so much fun: its set in New York, 1937, and its characters are all real-life people, folks unfamiliar to most but whose names have drifted through my life for some 40 years. You meet Lester Dent (aka Kenneth Robeson), creator of Doc Savage. Walter Gibson (aka Maxwell Grant), father of The Shadow, is one of the leads. H.P. Lovecraft makes an absolutely shocking but oh-so-perfect appearance in the novel. L. Ron Hubbard is a major player. Doc Smith is here. The whole “pulp” world populates the book, and even the comic book realm pokes its head up a few times. But as gimmicky as that may sound, Malmont pulls it off terribly well.

Readers unacquainted with the old pulps will probably find The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril slow going at first. And that’s fair. It does dawdle a bit before building up to full speed. But fans of The Shadow and Doc Savage should be thoroughly engrossed from the first page. And at its midpoint, the story becomes a rip-roaring, page-turning adventure, as exotic as anything ever written by Gibson and as apocalyptic as anything penned by Dent. My summer reading has started with a bang.