Sunday e-mail 17th March

Pleasing pulps, riotous recommendations, & what to expect this week

As ever, a big welcome and thank you to all our new subscribers! I’m glad you could join us. What took you so long? Now you’ve arrived, please remember to spread the word – tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your dog. You know it’s selfish to keep something this good to yourself!

And if you’re not a new subscriber, you will surely remember my solemn vow earlier this year to peruse a panoptic plethora of pulp and let you know the outcome. I know you’re panting to hear. A few observations, then: fast, feisty, furious, mad-March style:

Have you forgotten how good John D MacDonald was? No less a literary lion than Kingsley Amis once said that MacDonald was ‘by any standards a better novelist than Saul Bellow’. One is tempted to agree (Can you keep a secret? I’ve never liked Bellow half as much as you’re supposed to. You won’t tell anyone, will you?) As a youngster, I read MacDonald a lot (whizzing through those Travis McGee books like a hare on lard) but then, for some reason, stopped. Why would anyone do that? Death Trap was marvellous, so I bought another fistful.

Curt Clark was the pseudonym of one of the very best hard-boiled crime writers. Donald E Westlake adopted the name while he was still young, naïve, and considering a career in SF. Anarchaos is nominally SF, but, let’s be honest, it’s basically a hard-boiled adventure story with spaceships in it.  Westlake was a good writer who possessed a lively sense of the absurd. It worked to his advantage when lifting his crime stories out of the well-worn hard-boiled rut. It may also have plagued him this time. You can almost imagine an imp crouched on his shoulder muttering as he wrote, ‘Well, this is a bit silly…’

It is obligatory to introduce Robert Bloch (author of Psycho) as Robert Bloch (author of Psycho). I bet Bloch got sick of it. It’s as if he never wrote anything else. But of course he did, lots of it. The Scarf is a strange but classy tale. Obscure, too – but Stephen King rhapsodises about it in his non-fiction book, Danse Macabre. He wonders why such a masterpiece ever went out of print. Danse Macabre came out in 1981. It would be a brave publisher who reissued the book today. The Scarf is very 1947. I liked it, because I wish it was 1947 all the time.

The best crime novel of the year is undoubtedly Newton Thornburg’s Cutter & Bone. But to mention it here would really be stretching the meaning of ‘pulp’, so I shan’t.

May I mention a graphic novel? Of course I may: it’s my Substack. Frank Miller came to the world’s awestruck attention during his run on Daredevil. His two great Batman graphic novels are worthy of the adjective. Sin City is, well, Sin City. Ronin is relatively neglected but worth a look. It reads like a dry run for The Dark Knight Returns, even to the point of having the hero hurtle about on an actual thunder-hoofed charger. Maybe it’s a bit emotionless; maybe it’s a bit violent (hell, it’s a lot violent); maybe it’s not-quite-there-yet, but if you pick up a copy, your adrenaline will thank you.

There are a few more books on my to-read list which kindly Crime & Psychology readers have recommended to me. Never fear – I have not forgotten. And thank you!

On the topic of recommendations, here is this week’s bullet list:

PODCAST: If you too are mildly obsessed with the assassination of President John F Kennedy, you can’t do better than a podcast called The Assassination of President John F Kennedy. A straightforward, no-nonsense title for a straightforward, no-nonsense show. You’ll enjoy it.

PULP FICTION: See Robert Bloch’s The Scarf, above. Yes, yes, I know it’s old fashioned. I know it’s out of date. You say that like it’s a bad thing.

NON-FICTION: The Furious Hours by Casey Cep has got voodoo, murder, modern American literature, and everything else you and I love in life (apart from pancakes. I don’t recall any pancakes. Make some pancakes before you start. Then you’ll want for nothing). Also, Casey Cep can really write. Her pristine prose made me want to give up altogether. You can’t say fairer than that.

TELEVISION: My beautiful wife and I had forgotten how great the first season of True Detective was. We watched it again last week, in preparation for the new season (of which I’ve heard what you might call mixed reviews reviews). Do yourself a favour – if you’ve seen it once, check it out again. And if you’ve never seen it…well, there’s a treat in store. But skip Season Two.

SUBSTACK: To all readers, old and new, I recommend Tracy Bealer’s terrific True Crime Fiction . I especially liked Tracy’s recent article about Frances Glessner Lee, who made murder dioramas in dollhouses. I’d never heard about that before, but I’m delighted to have done so! If you love Crime & Psychology but wish it was just a bit more academic, I have to recommend Aaron Jacklin’s Explaining Crime. The aim is to ‘help you explain crime your audience’, but you’ll find there’s even more than that, including a great regular feature called ‘What I do’ - someone who works in the area tells you exactly that.

..at this point, you’re doubtless wondering what’s awaiting you this week in Crime & Psychology. Of course you are! And - never one to subject a subscriber to superfluous suspense - I can reveal that this week’s scintillating subject-matter is none other than… Damn, we’re out of space.

Be brilliant! Beep, bop, or blip a bright blue button below. You know it makes sense! See you on Wednesday. All the cool kids will be here.