Out Now: No Accounting For Danger By Laird Long

Here's a real special treat for fans of hardcore noir mysteries - with a humorous twist: No Accounting For Danger By Laird Long

When this CPA crunched the numbers, they added up to crime. After graduating from university, gun Clint Magnum, accountant-in-training, is hired by Twinkle & Winkle Chartered Accountants of Winnipeg, Manitoba. He quickly discovers many of the firms he is assigned to audit are less that squeaky clean, and that many have balance sheets that hide criminality - or worse. These include: Roadhog Trucking - a company whose corporate vision is a load of something other than clarity; a senior citizen-run crafts emporium where the blue-haired merchants are importing more than just knickknacks; the clandestine tax reclassification of the oxymoronic Democracy Foundation. Along the way, Clint and his buddies, Spud Morgan and Vanya Holden, are forced to attend a training session in the secluded hinterland of Eastern Manitoba, under the unbalanced guidance of a host of crackpot consultants and technical shamans. And as the months crawl by like wounded snails, Clint realizes the more he knows the greater a threat he becomes to his bosses and clients. When a man knows too much, he needs to be very careful. But as Clint finds out, even that may not be not be enough, because as careful as you are - there is no accounting for danger. Then comes a climax filled with emotional sparks and electrical blackout.

The Fantomas Centennial Omnibus Edition

Introduction: Fleurs du Mal in the Flesh

By

Wade Heaton

A century ago, a new villain was born.

The Founder of the Criminal Feast of 20^th Century Supervillains is one hundred years old now, still surprisingly fresh and spine-tingling with its gory Grand Guignol blood spattering and grisly tortures of flesh and spirit.

And even now he is being reconceived and reborn as a film by Christophe Ganz, director of Brotherhood of the Wolf.

Fantomas returns yet again to haunt our nightmares.

In 1911, French readers discovered their Horror-Shock, Grisly Pulp Fiction, Arch-Criminal:  Hannibal Lector, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhies rolled into one. Europe’s original pulp fiction, the “Lord of Terror” Fantomas, is the anti-hero of France’s best detective thrillers. Written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, it is one of the most influential and enduring works of popular culture published in the 20^th Century.

A series of 32 novels (1911-1913), silent and sound films (1913-1964), television series (1979), and a host of products (radio plays, stage plays, comic books, graphic novels, rock bands, and even postage stamps) continue to be successful throughout much of the world. [For full list see Bibliography.] Current internet videos from Europe exhibit the continuing influence of these characters in worldwide pop culture: the faces of Fantomas and Inspector Juve are among the most popular Halloween masks on the Continent to this day. All except for the United States, where is name Fantomas is virtually unknown. However, this original King of Crime’s mark has been made and his influence still felt in virtually every genre of contemporary pop culture.

From Fu Manchu, Doctor Mabuse, Lex Luthor, to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, to Dr. Evil, the chameleon face of criminality, ever changing, ever renewing is shaped by the character Fantomas, Emperor of Crime.  He relishes the lurid details of criminality, crimes, and savage mayhem, clothed in royal robes, or the rags of a street musician, or the simple habit of a homicidal nun. His last chapter escapes surpass even those of the legendary Harry Houdini, then in his prime and height of world-wide fame.

****

The saga begins with a poetic dialogue in French, a spooky play on sound and meaning, a sinister catechism of creation, from chaotic formlessness to a physicalized phantom, nothing to something, nobody to somebody, whose essence is fear itself.

"Fantomas."

"What did you say?"

"I said: Fantomas."

"And what does that mean?"

"Nothing.... Everything!"

"But what is it?"

"Nobody.... And yet, yes, it is somebody!"

"And what does the somebody do?"

"Spreads terror!"

A modern reader of a translation might skip by this deceptively simple overture, but the French is very musical, emotionally evocative as Poe is in English. And at the same time, the tonal qualities of everything that follows are set, bearing phantoms of ancient tongues: phantasma (Greek, Latin) illusion or apparition. Fantomas—the phantom of evil made flesh.

The translation available here in the Fantomas Centennial Omnibus Edition is very good. Even though all translations lose much the music of the original, this version retains a taste of the florid style of the period in which it was produced, 1911-1914, and the period which it depicts, the transition from the fin de siècle to the Belle Époque, ca. 1898-1900.

The narrative proper begins in an opulent, bourgeois drawing room in Paris. The after dinner chat of the cream of Parisian society turns to criminal gossip of the day. Little do they know that each of them has a role to play as victim or desperate sleuth in the ensuing tales.

In Book 4 of the Fantomas series, L’agent Secret [The Secret Agent], a young girl asks a simple question.

"Who is Fantômas?"

Fandor stood speechless.

Ah, this question, which this young woman had asked so naturally, as if it referred to the most simple thing in the world, how often had he asked himself that same question? During how many sleepless nights had his mind not been full of it? And he had never been able to find a satisfactory answer to "Who is Fantômas?

Now behold, here was this little red-haired creature, Bobinette, who asked for the solution of this formidable, incomprehensible, unprecedented thing, wanted it straight away.

“Who is Fantomas?”

Echoes of the overture run throughout the series. The riddle never yet solved in over a century. The fluid face of evil, ever changing, ever on the verge of capture, always escaping at the final second to commit more despicable and terrifying crimes which bring the Republic near to collapse with every issue.

Little Bobinette gets her wish in an unexpected way. The eponymous Villain himself tells her:

"I am Fantômas! I am he for whom the entire world is searching, whom none has ever seen, whom none can recognise! I am Crime incarnated! I am Night! No human sees my face, because Crime and Night are featureless! I am illimitable Power! I am he who mocks at all the powers, at all the efforts, at all the forces! I am master of all, of everything; of all times and seasons. I am Death! Bobinette, thou hast said it–I am Fantômas."

That could be a verse by Baudelaire.  Engendered by Poe, with biblical overtones, “Thou hast said it.”  And true to the words themselves, she who beholds the face of death and evil must meet her demise before she can reveal his secrets.

Fantomas is the prototype of all super villains who followed, as both mastermind and bloody handed assassin, a Moriarty by way of Jack the Ripper. Sartre, Camus, Cocteau, all read him when they were children. Embraced by the Surrealists, one of whom dubbed him a modern Aeneas, father of a new world, of crime. This was in response to stylistic undertones that permeate every facet of the narrative. European elementary education of the period was little but parsing and memorizing Vergil and Homer.  One of the main characters, Jerome Fandor, journalist and Fantomas sleuth, even calls himself “companion” to Aeneas. “Sum Fides Achates.”  In context, the ironies of this statement abound. Fandor is the alter ego of a survivor of the villain’s first intrigue, and only survived to take on his new identity by the skills of Fantomas’ nemesis, Inspector Juve (who is later revealed to be the evil genius’ twin brother). Such in-bred relationships are a running commentary on upper-class mores of times.

Scattered throughout the entire series are rhetorical tropes of classical European culture. One rhetorical figure from classical literature that appears frequently, whenever the plot twists away from expectations, as in one of his utterly incredible escapes, is called Aposiopesis, “What? … How could…but he was…!” by which the speaker breaks off in silence leaving the sentence incomplete but the sense perfectly clear. This usually occurs when Fantomas has been bound hand and foot in the police van and manages to escape in time to commit crimes in the next book.

Even as Aeneas strove to escape burning Troy and found the new Roman world, so Fantomas escapes from the law every time and initiates horrendous crimes in order to bring the whole of society down, while he profits, growing ever stronger and more sinister. 

The first cinema adaptation followed hard upon the success of the first monthly novels. A three part serial of the first novel appeared in 1913. They were an instant international hit. Four more four-part serials followed through 1914 when the First World War changed everything.

The authors, Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, had been able to produce a new novel each month by writing alternating chapters from a pre-arranged outline. They had produced thirty-two novels in almost three years, when world events overtook them and Souvestre died of lung complications from battle. Allain produced eleven more novels throughout his long life. But the cinematic versions, television mini-series, and avant-garde metal bands keep the name of Fantomas alive even today.

The films have their place in cinema history as early great film experiences. Louis Feuillade was one of the great visionary innovators of 20^th Century, known for his “fantastic realism.” The serials present a spine-tingling vision of bourgeois Paris beset by a ruthless, faceless assassin, looking to modern eyes like a perfect black suited ninja, only French and very suave. Hollywood tried to copy their success during the silent era, but the higher budgets and studio apparatus yielded only pale copies. Others followed through the 30s and the post-World War Two French version updated the action with the cutting edge of the late 40’s technology, “helicopters, electronic gadgets, and death rays.” This set the stage for the metaphorical and actual physical “facelift” of the 1960s.

I was in Verona, Italy, with an international student group, in the mid 1980’s. The recent television miniseries was rebroadcast on a German language channel and a twenty-four hour marathon of Fantomas features ran on every television set in Verona. Every common room at our hotel with a TV set, every bar & saloon, the Tabak on the corner, even ladies of the night, camped out around pirated hookups in the park between clients, everyone was glued to the set. I felt like I did when was watching The Wizard of Oz with family and friends on Color TV for the first time. It was a unifying cultural event.

The cinematic incarnation they all knew, grew up with, and imitated was the 1964 version directed by André Hunebelle. Cross James Bond with The Pink Panther, and a snappy piece of visual cinematic editing and photography, where iconic French actor Jean Marais plays the dual role of Fandor-Fantomas. (In a nice circlet of pop lit-cine references, his most famous role to date was in Jean Cocteau’s Le Belle et Le Bete [Beauty and the Beast] where he played at dual role as handsome hunk and magnificently animalistic Beast. Here, one can see and hear the phantoms of his great Beast in his Fantomas mask and makeup.) Differing from the silent and early sound portrayals, his otherworldly, alien blue makeup enhances the actor’s star quality, and playing with the idea that Fantomas—Fandor were always one and the same. And the ever shifting face of evil is the guessing game of who is Fantomas, whom Juve with makeup tricks adapted shortly afterward in America for TV shows like The Wild Wild West and Mission Impossible.  Subsequent portrayals now use either the bald “Blue-Man” image, more congenial to film and “Acting Evil” or the black full face ninja mask, for mystery and nostalgia.

Everywhere I went that day and evening, shopkeepers, wait-staffs at bistros, especially at the corner trattorias, where all ages shared the well-known favorite lines and scenes, mouthing them in their own local dialects. Fantomas drinking games abounded. Even one where every time the now comedically portrayed Inspector Juve had an aposiopestic moment, “He … he wha? …How could…there’s no…Merde!” The whole place would down the local grappa and collapse in gales of laughter. The languages vary, but not the schtick. Inspector Juve has become more of a running gag comic foil on film, but the seeds were sown from the beginning.

The 1980s TV miniseries starring Helmut Berger portrayed the arch-criminal as a caped crime fighter a la Batman, no ears, but lots of cool gadgets and word play.

Looking at this Centennial Anniversary of Fantomas, this international pulp icon status deserves a fresh appraisal.  He prefigured not only the bloody horrors of the 20th Century, but the pop-cult iconography the 21^st. We might want to call him a Proto-Existentialist Steampunk Supervillain. There are even Nihilist hit squads (“Take it easy, Dude.”) A self defining chameleon of chaos.

Here is the beginning of it all.

Encore:

"Fantomas."

"What did you say?"

"I said: Fantomas."

"And what does that mean?"

"Nothing.... Everything!"

"But what is it?"

"Nobody.... And yet, yes, it is somebody!"

"And what does the somebody do?"

"Spreads terror!"

Pulp Fiction, My Kind of Fiction Jack Bludis

[Adapted from the Introduction to Jack Bludis collection MUNCHIES & OTHER TALES OF GUYS, GALS AND GUNS, which features his Anthony and Shamus Award Finalist title story. ]

It would be nice to see PI novels and stories appear on a more frequent basis. The best of these writers, in my opinion, are out there and virtually unknown. Some have been discovered by the critics already, but readers usually don't catch on until some magic moment, which unfortunately may never come for even the best

Some of us have a true sense of those periods that preceded our own even though we began our writing during the time period that TV's Mad Men tries and often succeeds in capturing.

We started at a time when the term "pulp fiction" had not disappeared from the language under the onslaught of the movie of the same name. That term was originally applied to magazines of the 1920s through the 1950s and maybe to the short hardboiled and noir paperback at the end of that period. The pulp fiction of the 20s was preceded by the "Penny Dreadful" fiction of the 19th Century. In both eras the magazines were published as frequently as weekly with cover prices from a penny to a nickel and then to a quarter by the end of the pulp fiction era. The name comes from the publisher's use of cheap pulp paper stock that differentiated them from their "finer" sisters and brothers of slick paper fiction like Esquire, Colliers, and the Saturday Evening Post.

Today there's hardly anything that's printed on the jagged edge brown pulp paper. Newspapers come close but not close enough for most of us to call it pulp paper.

Some of the great mystery writers who published in these magazines were Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. I'll leave it to others to name the British pulp authors, but if we count the penny dreadfuls, who can discount Arthur Conan Doyle? There were some pretty good science fiction, Western, and romance writers doing pulp fiction as well.

Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut were among the science fiction writers who published their early work in the pulps. The pulps generally paid a 1/4 of a cent to a whole penny a word except for front of the rag writers who sometimes earned as much as three cents a word. The best of the last moved on to bigger and more lucrative markets like the slicks. Some of the others moved on to paperback novels, which briefly replaced them as fodder for quick reads. Others moved on to hardback fiction of greater lengths.

The style of writing for these stories was usually terse, conversational, and for the most part, hard and tough. Some of the writers are now classics of the mystery and science fiction genres.

When there was sex it was implied or masked. Expletives were replaced with straight lines, or verbal tricks which sometimes taxed the readers for the appropriate words. Often whole sentences masked a curse, like Sam Spade in Hammett's Maltese Falcon: He told me to do something to myself that was physically impossible. (That may be a paraphrase, but you get the idea.) The front covers of these magazines gave you the idea as well: women in danger and men trying to come to their aid, even when in the context of the story the woman was often his femme fatale, trying not only to put him in a coffin but to nail it shut.

The magazines were devoured by readers of the day because there was no television for dramatic home entertainment. I have seen these pulp magazines at shows and in private collections, and in the modest cache including twenty-five cent paperbacks that I inherited from my father. I read and kept them for a while, but like so many things inherited, I got rid of them before I knew their value to serious collectors. It was from these stories and novels and the cheap paperbacks that many of us dug into private eye fiction as readers and later as writers.

My own writing style is far closer to the pulps than to slick paper magazines, but I think it's pretty decent. My former wife once called me a "Magnificent Hack." It was left-handed, but a compliment nonetheless. I hope that even my hack work is well written.

The real-life PIs of today are unrealistic as heroes. They will likely to do 90% of the work at their computers. They may follow cheating spouses. It usually doesn't get them into big trouble, although it may lead to a scuffle now and then. There are few killers among them, and those that are truly bad don't warn the PIs as they warned Sam Spade and Phillip Marlow, they just kill the PI and anyone else who happens to be in their way.

The fictional PI is like the Western gunfighter. The good guy gets hired, but he is soon motivated by something more than the money.

The few of us who are still doing the historical PI have our own reasons. For me it is a sense of adventure, the idea of creating a character and living vicariously through the 1940s and early 1950s. By the 1970s, which I also write about, I was old enough to go into bars, I was even a "doorman" at a Baltimore bar for about a year. Much of what I know of that time is from memory, but I make damn sure I look up the details.

Jack Bludis


[Below is the Contents page from MUNCHIES]

CONTENTS
Introduction
Baltimore Streets
The Transfer
New Guy on the Block
Pigtown Will Shine Tonight
Blondes, Blondes, Blondes
Shades of Manhattan
Munchies
Lap Dance
Truth or Lie
Available Light
Hollywood Pulp
A Model and More
Ticket to the Top
Once in a Career
Central Casting
Old Photos

Out Now: The Fantomas Centennial Omnibus Edition By Pierre Souvestre And Marcel Allain

The legendary master of murder and horror is back in this new edition of The Fantomas Centennial Omnibus Edition by Pierre Souvestre And Marcel Allain! With a special Introdction by author and new Deerstalker Senior Editor, Wade Heaton, on the Fantomas phenomenon.

"Fantomas." "What did you say?" "I said: Fantomas." "And what does that mean?" "Nothing.... Everything!" "But what is it?" "Nobody.... And yet, yes, it is somebody!" "And what does the somebody do?" "Spreads terror!"

A century ago, a new villain was born. The Founder of the Criminal Feast of 20th Century Supervillains is one hundred years old now, still surprisingly fresh and spine-tingling with its gory Grand Guignol blood spattering and grisly tortures of flesh and spirit. And even now he is being reconceived and reborn as a film by Christophe Ganz, director of Brotherhood of the Wolf. Fantomas returns yet again to haunt our nightmares. In 1911, French readers discovered their Horror-Shock, Grisly Pulp Fiction, Arch-Criminal: Hannibal Lector, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhies rolled into one. Europe’s original pulp fiction, the “Lord of Terror” Fantomas, is the anti-hero of France’s best detective thrillers. Written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, it is one of the most influential and enduring works of popular culture published in the 20th Century. From Fu Manchu, Doctor Mabuse, Lex Luthor, to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, to Dr. Evil, the chameleon face of criminality, ever changing, ever renewing is shaped by the character Fantomas, Emperor of Crime. He relishes the lurid details of criminality, crimes, and savage mayhem, clothed in royal robes, or the rags of a street musician, or the simple habit of a homicidal nun. His last chapter escapes surpass even those of the legendary Harry Houdini, then in his prime and height of world-wide fame.

The initial five books in the series are collected in this Fantomas Centennial Omnibus Edition: FANTOMAS: The Adventures of Detective Juve in pursuit of a master in crime. FANTOMAS VS. JUVE: In this continuation Fantomas appears as the leader of a gang of Apaches, and as a physician of standing. Juve tracks the criminal to his secret hiding-place, but Fantomas escapes. THE VENGENCE OF FANTOMAS: Filled with hair-raising incidents this tale is a fascinating recital of remarkable happenings in the life of the master-criminal of Paris. FANTOMAS AND THE NEST OF SPIES: In this volume Fantomas is an ambassador for a foreign power engaged in Paris in obtaining important military secrets for Germany. Detective Juve unmasks him, but the criminal again escapes. FANTOMAS AND THE ROYAL PRISONER: This volume tells of the daring exploits of Fantomas in his attempts to get possession of the King of Hesse-Weimar's famous diamond.

Out Now: Munchies & Other Tales Of Guys, Gals And Guns By Jack Bludis

Deerstalker Books is thrilled to be able to bring you, the discerning thriller reader a brand new collection of noir tales by our resident master of mysteries, Jack Bludis: Munchies & Other Tales Of Guys, Gals And Guns

"Jack Bludis is one smokin' hot crime fiction writer. When you finish reading this collection, you'll be hungry for more. -Michael Bracken, author of All White Girls.

An enthralling collection of mysteries from a two time Shamus Award finalist Jack Budis that celebrates the pulp private eye story in a trio of cities famed for their noir settings and mean streets. "From Baltimore to the mean streets of New York, to the smoke-and-gin-soaked Hollywood of the 1940s, Bludis presents a lineup of some of the finest hardboiled literature around. Page after page is filled with bullets, bucks, and broads. This is the good stuff, folks. Major high-fives for Munchies and Other Tales of Guys, Gals, and Guns!" -Richard Helms, Two-time Derringer Award winning author of Thunder Moon. This masterful volume includes the author's first published story, "The Transfer," his Anthony and Shamus Award finalist tale, "Munchies," plus "Pigtown Will Shine Tonight," "Ticket to the Top," "New Guy on the Block," "Blonds, Blonds, Blonds," and seven other enthralling short stories and novelettes.

"Treacherous characters, two-fisted action, and an inside knowledge of the mid and late Twentieth Century. Jack Bludis has a handle for dark fiction.  These are stories not to miss.  Check 'em out!" -Dave White, Two Time Shamus Nominated author of The Evil That Men.

Jack Bludis is a lifetime resident of the Baltimore area who lived his early years in "Pigtown." His Shamus Award finalist novel, Shadow of the Dalhia, is also available as a paperback and ebook.

• Bludis captures the mood perfectly with dialogue and characterization that pull you right into the story. If you like Mickey Spillane, you will love Bludis. -Jack Quick, reviewer, www.bookbitch.com
  
  
• "A collection of Bludis' short crime fiction? In a world of over-hyped, pre-packaged, filter tip crime fiction, Jack Bludis rolls his own. Lots of copycats profess to write pulp, but Bludis shows how it's done. He's a true original, always his own man, a defiantly loose cannon in the neatly ordered world of genre expectations, as idiosyncratic - and entertaining - as a nun on a skateboard." -Kevin Burton Smith, Editor at ThrillingDetective.com
  
  
• "Many secrets, but would a mystery be without secrets? Not to worry when it comes to author Jack Bludis, a master of weaving clues into unrelated events. Bludis shines in this collection of stories where everyone has a secret, and ultimately, all is revealed. -Jann Briesacher, voracious reader.

Out Now: Dirty Work [A Rick Page Mystery] By Jack Bludis

PageTurner Books and Deerstalker Editions is extremely pleased and proud to announce the release of a brand new book by our resident master of mystery and suspense, and Edgar Award Nominee, Jack Bludis: Dirty Work

The Shamus Award finalist PI returns in another 1940s noir thriller! An all new novella from multiple mystery award nominee author Jack Bludis. Page is called in when decade old pornographic photos of a major silver screen star, taken when the star was a starving new comer in Holywood, are used for blackmail. His search for the person possessing the pictures leads to murder and danger. It's a case that leads from mobsters to moguls and star-studded lineup of suspects, a case the PI will be lucky to survive.

Out Now: Sunstroke: A Novel Of Suspense By Irv Eachus

PageTurner is extremely pleased to bring readers of wonderful suspense fiction a brand new treasure from Irv Eachus: Sunstroke.

"Eachus stays well away from the dreary predictability that is the downfall of less successful works. The action never flags." Washington Post Ten years ago Frank Boyle was a Treasury agent with a promising career, a good wife, and a bad habit that eventually lost him everything. Now he's a partner in a successful little high-tech firm called Industrial Security of Los Angeles, with no personal life to speak of, a client about to be the death of him and a new bad habit named Sarah. Sunstroke opens with three seemingly unrelated dramas: a shooting in which Frank is not considered the target, the untimely return of Sarah, and a suspicious fire in Professor Gorelick's laboratory that kills a faithful assistant and destroys four years of Nobel-caliber work. By the story's showdown, the list of crimes has run to fraud, arson, murder and attempted murder in various flavors; and the list of suspects has grown to include some of the nastiest players in the high-tech corporate world. Sunstroke is a tale of two cities. 1990's West LA, even in the grip of its worst-ever heat wave, is a cool place. The Las Vegas Strip is always hot. What both cities have in common is sunlight. And Professor Gorelick's research was based on the search of a new, cheap way to turn sunlight into energy. Sunstroke is played out on both landscapes, and both are as gritty and glitzy and dangerous and fun on the story's pages as they are in real life. What the critics say about Irv Eachus' thrillers: "Lots of action, a little sex and topical issues." Library Journal "...exciting, well-written and unforgettable ... should keep readers turning pages well past bedtime" Orlando Sentinel Star Irv Eachus lives in San Francisco. He is the author of the highly acclaimed thriller, The Raid, and is currently working on the next Frank Boyle techno-thriller, Blackout. "Keeps the reader asking the ultimate question, "Then what happened?" Booklist. Don't Miss Irv Eachus' novel of nuclear terrorism, The Raid.