Only To Sleep by Lawrence Osborne

          Way out west, there was this fella,
         this fella that I want to tell you about,
          fella by the name of Philip Marlowe.
          At least that's the handle his beloved,
          yet often sozzled creator gave him.
          But he never had much use for it
          himself.
          This Marlowe, he often called himself
          a "Shamus", with emphasis on
          "SHA" when pronounced, like
          "Sha-na-na" and not "Shay". Now,
          Shamus, that's a name no one
          would self-apply where I come
          from. But then there was a lot
          about this gumshoe that didn't
          make a whole lot of sense to me.
          And a lot about where he lived,
          likewise. But, then again, maybe
          that's why I found Marlowe and the
          place he lived in so durn
          interesting.
          Now this here story I'm blogging
          about took place in the late-80's,
          just about the time of Madonna
          and Max Headroom and cartoons
          talking mermaids and dogs talking
          like Burt Reynolds and just before
          Michael Keaton put on a pair of
          Nike boots and dressed up as
          Batman. 1988. I only mention it
          'cause sometimes there's a man,
          I won't say a hero, 'cause what's
          a hero? But sometimes there's a
          man, and I'm talking about this
          shamus here, sometimes there's
          a man - well, he's NOT the man for
          his time and place. He DOESN'T fit
          right in there, he's an anachronism,
          and that's Philip Marlowe, in Los
          Angeles. And even if he's not a very
          perceptive detective, and Marlowe
          was most certainly NOT that, quite
          possibly the least-perceptive player
          in his chronicles, which would place
          him high in the running for the most
          clueless, yet highly-respected sleuth
          in detective fiction worldwide...But
          sometimes there's a detective...
          sometimes there's a detective...
          Ah, I lost my train of thought, here.
          But...ah, hell. He's the only one who
          cares. I done introduced him enough.

         
Writers will do a thing sometimes to amuse themselves with the manuscript. They'll name-drop an actor who could be their choice for playing the character in their book for a possible film/television adaptation. With Only To Sleep, Lawrence Osborne drops Beau Bridges in there, in passing. Beau Bridges as Philip Marlowe? Or in this case, a 72 year-old Philip Marlowe. Possible. But frankly, nowadays the actor playing Philip Marlowe in a new movie with the surname of "Bridges" is likely to be Beau's younger brother, Jeff. The Dude. Playing Jeffrey Lebowski has become Jeff Bridges performance by default...I don't know if his own personality became subsumed by the character, or if it crystallized him, made him identifiable in a way that he wasn't in roles played prior to The Big Lebowski, which I always thought was the Coen brothers' answer to Pulp Fiction and is arguably more-popular than the latter nowadays...or it just seems so, since you can find Lebowski re-released in theaters every summer and is on basic cable as often as Goodfellas...

             Ah, I'm going off on a tangent..

No, back to Marlowe. He's 72 in this book, retired and walking around with a swordcane...'cause that's a cool "toy" on every old man's want-list. He feels like he's marking time, but young, 38 years-old Marlowe always talked like that in the old books..I can't remember the blogger who wrote it, but he observed that Marlowe always acts like he's wondering why he's alive, and that attitude is in this new book, too, so it feels authentic.

This is the fourth Marlowe novel authorized by the estate of Raymond Chandler. The first three tried coasting on scraps - Poodle Springs was built off 3 brief sample chapters Chandler probably typed up to amuse himself (Marlowe married to Linda Loring? Heh heh heh), Perchance To Dream was Robert B. Parker's sequel to The Big Sleep, which only felt an attempt at identifying Marlowe with his own private eye character, Spenser, followed years later with Benjamin Black's effort The Black-Eyed Blonde, which proved you could do pastiches of Marlowe in perpetuity, but would you really want to read them if it doesn't feel like Marlowe was brought back to life? That's the appeal of the Chandler books. Marlowe may never realize that he's the only character in his stories that's not hip to what's happening, but he's the only character who cares, and the real highlight of the books of finding out what he cares about in each tale that makes him push on in these quests. In The Big Sleep, he felt bad about invalid General Sternwood saddled with two dirty daughters. What's he looking for to care about in Only To Sleep? Osborne decides it's the father of the man whose identity was stolen by Donald Zinn - a con artist who faked his death and is living a new life in Mexico with his younger wife. Marlowe takes a fancy to this femme fatale, but like the Marlowe of old, he resists her comely charms while revealing that he's still tempted as he was in the old days, even though he no longer looks like a matinee idol, if that's how he ever ever thought he looked like.

Zinn is clearly a dark mirror-image of Marlowe, though I can imagine John Slattery playing him in the movie, with Ana de Armas as Delores Araya, Zinn's "widow"/partner-in-crime/able Grable/Marlowe's femme fatale. He's living the life Marlowe toyed with having accepted Linda Loring's impulsive marriage proposal in Playback and tried out in Poodle Springs before Osborne's revelation in Only To Sleep:

"You know, I was married once, but the condition doesn't agree with me. It makes me unstable."

Rather eloquently put, that. There are a lot of passages in the book that give it a convincing texture, even though itdoesn't make much of the fact that it's set in the 80's. It feels it could be set in any decade pre-internet and the results are the same. The window-dressing was never the appeal of the Marlowe books. You read Marlowe for Marlowe. And this feels like Marlowe. Ironic that he's now the same age as Jane Marple or Hercule Poirot, given how Chandler thought little of Agatha Christie's work, but the private eye genre can be just as unreal and far-fetched. Read whatever you like.

Osborne's timeline suggests Marlowe would've turned 100 in 2015, yet because he can exist in that charmed state of suspended animation that keeps fictional characters from aging further, he could still appear again, this time with a swordcane in hand for his 2nd life, pondering the ephemerality of life and the persistence of yearning...he's a Miyazaki character, now.

             
              Well, you know...sometimes
               you eat the bear, and
              sometimes, you know...
             
              The shamus abides.

              I don't know about you, but
              I take comfort in that. It's good
              knowing he's out there,
              the shamus, taking her easy
              for all us readers. Shoosh,
              I hope he keeps on going
              into the next millenia. Well,
              that about does her. Wraps
              her all up. Things seem to
              have worked out pretty good
              for the shamus and Delores.
              And it was a pretty good story,
              don't you think? Made me
              laugh to beat the band...
              parts anyway. I didn't like
              seeing Delores go. But then
              I happen to know..there's a
              little Marlowe on the way. That
              might just absolute horseshit
              on my part, but I believe that's
              the way the whole darned human
              comedy keeps perpetuating
              itself down through the
              generations. Westward the
              Studebakers, across the sands
              of time until we - oh, look at
              me. I'm rambling again. Well,
              I hope you folks enjoyed
              yourselves. Catch you later on
              down the social media trail.
              Say, friend, you got any more
              of that good non-alcoholic
              margaritas? Margarita Hayworth?..

About That Blade Runner Sequel...

My blog posts wouldn't be lengthy if I could write about Blade Runner 2049 by writing, "I thought it was very good. It was better than the first one." But that's the short answer.

Publisher Random House does a clever thing with paperback editions of Philip K. Dick's Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep?: they offer an edition with the Blade Runner movie title and the true title in parentheses. For a long time, this edition's cover featured artwork patterned after the film adaptation, even a later edition with art by Star Wars poster artist Drew Stuzan, to coincide with the DVD release of the last and "official" re-release of the film. The joke here is that the book is...and I might be generous...30% of the movie. The film noir tropes and  atmosphere is nowhere to be found in the book; the Rick Deckard of the book is more like George Jetson than Philip Marlowe. And the cover has been revised to coincide with the release of the sequel...I don't like what they came up with. I would've preferred they used the movie poster, instead...or commission Struzan to whip up something. For my money, the best cover art I saw was a fanmade mockup I found online (see the second photo layout below) with Scrappy the robot owl (yes, his name is 'Scrappy' in the book) and the pyramid.

Apparently, it took a month for 2049 to break even, likely because they were so secretive about the plot that nobody could talk about it in interviews leading up to the release...that usually means it's a turkey, so that was a serious mistake. Who is Deckard's kid? That mystery could've been good-enough bait, since Ryan Gosling and Sylvia Hoeks seemed like red herrings for mostof the film. Ana de Armas' prominent presence on the movie poster seems like another red herring clue; it's only by watching the film that you learn she's not going to be Deckard's daughter...although I thought she was fantastic as Joi, Gosling's sentient hologram virtual assistant/girlfriend; Gosling and Armas have a nice chemistry that's more convincing than Harrison Ford and Sean Young in the original..there's more of a heart in this one...the fact that people debate online the nature Joi's extistince means that both actors deserve credit making believe in them as complete characters. Complete is a good word for this movie. The original always seemed improvised; this sequel has more focus on what it wants to do. Whereas it's much longer than the first, 2049 seems much simpler. I was more intrigued/interested in what was happening. I get that the original film is pretty iconic, but thestory of how it got made is more interesting than what they produced..And Rick Deckard is only interesting within that film..in my humble opinion..in that early scene where he's at the sushi bar.

The Replicants aren't robots/androids in the traditional sense; they're more like genetically modified organisms. These GMO-bots are flesh and blood, with internal organs and are man-made, yet they can be snobbish towards holograms (it's lightly hinted Joi might represent a potential evolution in a subset of artificial intelligence that hints at a class system among all forms of manufactured life...this, and a rebellion among Replicants against their manufacturer, the Wallace Corporation, seem like ideas for possible sequels).

So how was Harrison Ford in this? There's a reference to Ben Gunn from Treasure Island with 2049's take on Deckard. He's become this grumpy hermit, living in a deserted Las Vegas resort/hotel, keeping bees (perhaps a nod to Sherlock Holmes' retirement - becoming a beekeeper on a farm in English countryside). And he has a dog - possibly a replicant, since the future of Blade Runner is in a world where all animals are extinct and are either GMO replicants or nuts & bolts androids...that would include the bees. I kinda wish the Vegas had lasted longer, since there's a kind of peace to it. Does this sequel answer Blade Runner's oldest mystery? Well...this franchise isn't flexible enough to allow for the existence of cyborgs, or entertain the idea that Deckard is an older-model Replicant...one that probably has a lower threshold of endurance..he's just there, like an Easter Egg, really. An extended Easter Egg. Actually, Edward James Olmos' cameo was like a standard Easter Egg..he even does an origami sheep!

I imagine if this film had done better in the box office, we would've had another origami paper sculpture, but I'm trying to guess what it could be...a tortoise? A wolf (there's a recurring reference to 'Peter and The Wolf' whenever Joi makes her entrances and exits)? How about an owl?

5 Questions With...Joseph Adorno

The following questions came from David Rachels' blog, Noirboiled Notes (http://www.noirboiled.blogspot.com) I thought it would be fun to answer them; it's a recurring feature on his blog, where he sometimes posts interviews with contemporary mystery/crime fiction writers. I noticed I was able to answer some of them..

1. What's the first crime novel that you remember reading?

Encyclopedia Brown and The Case of The Mysterious Handprints. That was the first one, though if you find it too "kiddie", The Maltese Falcon was the 1st "adult/mature" crime novel I read...but I remember seeing the film first before reading the book, so I personally don't feel like counting it. The Murder At The Vicarage, then.

2. (Dashiell) Hammett or (Raymond) Chandler?

Hammett. Five novels, neither one alike. Each had something new to say. Chandler...I like Philip Marlowe, but I don't like the books..they're too formulaic to me. He rewrote The Big Sleep an additional six times. My favorite scenes in The Long Goodbye are not in the book - they're in the Robert Altman film adaptation - where Marlowe tries to seek a particular brand of cat food for his pet cat in the middle of the night, then in the end, when he shoots Terry Lennox. He thought the cat was his friend; he thought Terry was his friend; they turned on him, like he was a loser, yet he was the only one who cared about either. Meanwhile, in the books...Chandler's prose would have you think he could type 150 pages of scenes describing furnishings and call it a "novel".

3. If forced to choose, would you want Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe to save your life?

Holmes. Marlowe's no fool, but he's always the last to figure out everything! As a detective, he's perceptive in small ways; he can solve the puzzle, but only after the bodies have piled up. Everyone is one step ahead of him..even the shady asshat cops that always give him a hard time and do nothing to help are one step ahead of him! Like I said earlier, I like Marlowe, but Chandler liked him as a noble sap.

4. If you were stuck on a desert island, which crime novelist's complete works would you choose to take with you?

Agatha Christie. There's a lot I have yet read. I would stack neat piles resembling furniture and point to a book like Taken At The Flood and say, "I'm going to give you another chance!"..That was the one Poirot novel that I could never get through..something dull about it...like it was written just as she was making Ms. Marple's appearances more frequent and was about to write fewer Poirot books. When he does appear in later novels, he's usually accompanied by Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer who was a caricature of Christie's public persona as a mystery writer.

5. Any novel by Chandler you can recommend?

Pfft! ...actually, I think I have an interest in Poodle Springs that I could never shake off. He only wrote the first four chapters before he croaked; it's the work of a dying man - a crusty Philip Marlowe realizing that he's just gotten married to a vapid socialite that proposed marriage to him over the phone; it's strongly hinted that he had taken it at a week moment, when he was feeling his age, taking stock of his lonely existence...and now he realizes he doesn't want to be Nick Charles. It's was a spoof of Hammett's The Thin Man, basically. Enter writer Robert B. Parker with Chapter 5's "I finally found an office." and you realize the rest of the novel is going to eschew the Thin Man riff in favor of another Big Sleep pastiche, this time with Marlowe acting more like Spenser, For Hire...

Or I could recommend The High Window.

The Magrs Method of Book Reporting: "Sharks Never Sleep" by William F. Nolan

Encapsulate the plot in one sentence?

Erle Stanley Garner, the creator of Perry Mason, is framed with the double murder of a Hollywood power couple, and his friends Raymond Chandler & Dashiell Hammet help him clear his name and find out the truth.

What's your verdict?

This mystery was the last entry in the Black Mask Boys trilogy, in which the author had three legendary mystery writers team up to solve mysteries, like the old Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators books, with Chandler's luxury car standing in for Hitchcock's Rolls Royce. The conceit is that each novel was narrated in the first person by one of the trio, solving a mystery containing elements reminiscent of each authors respective works. Neither of them were friends in real life and are not known to have even met in person or shared correspondence, but Nolan's copious biograghical research into the lives of these men indicates that they were living and working in California at the same time and had interacted with Hollywood motion picture studios: Hammet was ghost writing as a script doctor and contributing storylines for sequels to The Thin Man while indulging in the beginnings of his long, unconventional relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman; Chandler was a struggling writer cranking out short stories for pulp magazines while enjoying a stable married life with his wife Cissy; Garner was gaining popularity with the success of Perry Mason, but was displeased with quickly-produced, low-budget film adaptations of the novels.

Nolan's greatest strength is that he convinces you that these guys actually could have been friends and gotten along very well. It's the main draw of the books and a lot of fun imagining Garner visit Hammet on the set of a Tarzan movie (Tarzan and Zorro movies were the equivalent of superhero movies back then)
and the two going on a road trip with a zany racecar driver into Mexico to pursue a lead that becomes a divergent episode within the book. Or Garner granted bail by a judge who turns out to be an old crony of Chandler's. The real highlight of the book is the trial, in which the creator of the most famous lawyer in pop culture history has to defend himself in a preliminary hearing in the courthouse.

There are weird hiccups in the plot: why did Garner need to wait for Hammet to deliver key evidence at the last possible moment when he could've had Hammet present it with the aid of another attorney while Garner was sitting in a holding cell? Why was Garner prime suspect in the first murder when he clearly had a strong alibi? Why wasn't Mae West and Gloria Swanson sworn in as witnesses for the defense? Why didn't Garner forfeit his claim to the victim's estate when he knew that the last-minute changes to the will planted suspicion on him? 

These plot holes didn't get in the way because this mystery wasn't too interesting - it actually does involve some dark subject matter, like the death of a toddler and the character of the murderer once he's revealed, but because this is Garner's perspective,  it skates lightly over it, in the same manner that the Perry Mason novels do it. His books were chases; solving puzzles, chasing leads, chasing suspects, discovering a solution and presenting it before a judge in courtroom. They were not what we think of as legal thrillers - they were classic detective puzzles with a brilliant amateur sleuth who happened to be an attorney; the Perry Mason novels rarely featured a criminal trial by jury and often ended with the preliminary hearing, in which a judge decides if there is enough evidence in the prosecution's case against the defendant to proceed with a trial. This was Garner's original twist to what had become a staple in detective fiction: the gathering of the suspects and the unveiling of the solution.

One of the hazards of "light" detective novels, or "Cozy Mysteries", as they're called, is the nature of the crime involved. A particularly violent crime can sour the mood, which is why there is rarely any bloodshed, mostly poisonings. Stabbings, hangings and shootings often occur offstage,  though weapons are present, often described at length. Poisonings, like the one featured here, involve detailed descriptions of deadly toxins; very rarely will you find a cozy that dwells on ballistic evidence. 

This was a rather long way of saying that I enjoyed the book, though the parts are greater than the whole. It wasn't a bad way to end the trilogy.

What surprises did this book hold, if any?

Chandler takes a backseat somewhat, Garner only shines during the courtroom scenes in the final act, Hammet takes decisive action, but it's not his story. I did enjoy the psuedo-biographical yet in-character stuff Nolan invented, like Hammet rewriting scripts for Charlie Chan and Tarzan movies,  or Garner in a sauna with Mae West & Gloria Swanson, or glimpses of Chandler's fussy particularity with houses he moved in and out of, or which gas stations he preferred driving to.

Hammet is, to this day, the only one amongst the three who has and continues to be fictionalized in stories by other writers (Hammet by Joe Gores & Hammet Unwritten by Owen Fitzgerald are good examples ), largely because he was a private investigator in real life for a time. As a young man, Garner was an attorney in real life, but writing was his true calling and he was the most prolific,  if not the most acclaimed of the three. Chandler was a ne'er-do-well of sorts who married a wealthy older woman and became celebrated for his singular creation, private eye Phillip Marlowe, and his use of language and metaphor,  but not his plotting.

The best moments in the book are when these three are brought together, but the real character is Barney Oldfield, retired racer and sub for Chandler when the latter declines to join the writers in their initial trip to Mexico.  You could tell Nolan was wishing Oldfield was famous enough to spin-off into his own series.

Are there other works by the same author?

Nolan co-wrote the sci-fi novel Logan's Run and penned two sequel novels. He also wrote two sci-fi spoofs of Hammet's Sam Spade character with a detective named Sam Space. As for The Black Mask Boys trilogy, I have the other two volumes - The Black Mask Murders & The Marble Orchard - read the first one years ago, just recently got Orchard and will review after I get a chance to read it sometime.

Incidentally,  the title of this trilogy of mysteries was inspired by the title of the pulp magazine that often featured stories written by all three authors in their salad days: Black Mask

Can you give us a good quote?

Sure. Check out the gallery below.

Until next time! :)