James Ellroy's Wisconsin Police Gazzette: Civil Unrest—is this America?
tags: Battle of Durham Hill, Great Depression, James Ellroy, Milwaukee, US History, Wisconsin
For the following post we welcome back to the blog James Ellroy aficionado and all-round good guy Jason Carter… This article is the seventh instalment in Jason's epic series exploring the connections between Ellroy and the true crime history of Wisconsin. Here are the links to Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six.
While nothing about the Great Depression was easy, 1933 would prove to be especially painful for Milwaukee. Three years of economic downturn had lacerated the gross national product, and eliminated nearly 27,000 businesses. In 1933 alone, the Cream City weathered an eviscerating 51,000 job losses.
From the Depression's inception, Milwaukee's residents stretched every resource available to survive, often immolating savings accounts, insurance policies, and interpersonal relationships in the process. Mounting complaints over the city's bureaucratically choked response to the crisis eventually transmogrified into violent protest. In February, 1930, a mob of 400 dirty and disheveled men paraded through Milwaukee's streets to City Hall. According to historian Paul Glad's extensive writing on the era, they carried with them a petition asking Mayor Daniel Hoan on behalf of unemployed workers to replenish bankrupt welfare services with funds from the city's coffers. Such services ordinarily provided the destitute with free food, clothing, shelter, and medical services. Mayor Hoan ultimately rebuffed the demonstrators, telling them Milwaukee had no available money for relief. Outside, the demonstrators blocked traffic until the Milwaukee police dispersed them. Though several demonstrators were taken to the central police station a block away, only three of them were arrested and jailed. Later that day, Hoan asked Police Chief Jacob Laubenheimer to release the three, observing that "there is a greater unemployment problem facing us now than in several years… men out of work are likely to make such demonstrations as this."
Wisconsin's trouble with demonstrators wasn't just limited to Milwaukee. Just three weeks later, a small group of unemployed laborers and University of Madison students confronted Mayor Albert G. Schmedeman. Lottie Blumenthal, the leader of the group, interrogated Schmedeman about what the mayor intended to do about 3,000 jobless Madison workers. "What can I do?" Schmedeman retorted. "What power do you think I have to create work?"
Three weeks later, the Madison council of the National Trade Union Unity League staged a protest to voice their dissatisfaction with city officials' dismissive responses to the unemployment crisis. The demonstrators soon clashed with an irate crowd of university students. In the ensuing melee, the students assaulted Lottie Blumenthal and other radical leaders, destroyed banners and signs demanding work, and scattered thousands of radical pamphlets all over the streets. Ultimately, Madison police arrested the five university athletes who had led the attack.
From 1929 to 1933, Wisconsin's milk production declined precipitously. Farm prices were already in freefall, and the only way to maintain income was to increase production, something that required significantly larger quantities of hay and other feed. Unfortunately, weather during the 1930s was exceptionally dry, and these unfavorable growing conditions placed severe constraints on available feed. Consequently, many Wisconsin farmers lost substantial income. "Farmers have been agitated and unsettled as never before," said Ernest L. Luther, Director of Wisconsin's Farmer's Institute. As protest movements began to take shape, Luther predicted social disruption if Wisconsin's population learned just how buried in foreclosures and moratoriums the state really was.
National Guardsmen brought in Governor Albert G Schmedeman to combat striking farmers
In 1933, several Wisconsin dairy farms began withholding their milk from markets to secure higher prices. While the milk price index had been in decline for years before the stock market crash, the arrival of the Great Depression had sent the index into freefall. Dairy farmers were receiving less than a third of the price they once commanded just a decade earlier.
When a large group of farmers from the Wisconsin Cooperative Milk Pool announced their plans to strike on May 13, 1933, newly elected Governor Schmedeman was ready for them, asking Adjutant General Ralph Immell of the Wisconsin National Guard to place 2,500 men under the command of local sheriffs. Crates of tear gas arrived from Washington, and according to Paul Glad, the extensive preparations brought back vivid memories of World War I for those involved. The nostalgia likely served them well, as the striking farmers abandoned their picketing for more guerrilla tactics like dumping the milk of an unprotected delivery truck, then scattering before guardsmen arrived.
Wisconsin Milk Strike
As one Waukesha County farmer reported, the striking farmers weren't always so lucky: "Yesterday, they went through Richfield […] and there they ran into a bunch of National Guard and deputies [who] surrounded the truck while one man with a gun lined them up and the rest pounded the hell out of them, and I mean pounded. One man has a fractured skull."
Waukesha County Sherriff Arthur J. Moran instigated an even more dramatic confrontation which came to be known as the "Battle of Durham Hill." Moran even timed the affair to attract as many photographers and reporters as possible.
In confronting a small group of farmers, Moran's forces first hit them with a torrent of gas bombs. Nearly 100 guardsmen then charged the farmers with fixed bayonets, driving the strikers over a hill. As Paul Glad recounts, a Wisconsin farm wife who witnessed the calamity asked "Is this America?"
The Battle of Durham Hill
Ultimately, the Milk Pool's strike efforts were unsuccessful. The organization issued a statement after ending the strikes in May, 1933, still insisting on the farmers' right to control the price of their product, yet lamenting that enforcement of said control required such violence and anarchy.
Back in Milwaukee, while the city's police were relieved to have steady jobs during a time when most Americans were hopelessly unemployed, this exceptionally rare job security came at a steep price: The Cream City's firemen and policemen bitterly accepted a voluntary 10% pay cut, intended to improve Milwaukee's finances. As most residents were out of work, the city was having difficulty collecting taxes, and actually had to halt the distribution of salaries for an agonizing four months.
When salaries resumed, officers were paid with a city-sanctioned alternative currency known as "scrip". As most Milwaukee merchants refused to accept the "scrip" at full value, the city paid its officers a ratio of one quarter U.S. dollars to three quarters "scrip". Some years later, Milwaukee's firemen received as compensation for their 10% pay cut five days of paid vacation. Milwaukee's police force received nothing.
from → 100 American, History of the Genre, James Ellroy
A Time for Violence: Stories with an Edge – Review
tags: Anthologies, Crime Fiction, Horror Fiction, Max Allan Collins, Reviews
A Time for Violence: Stories with an Edge
Anthologies have a special hold over a reader. Pick up one of the Black Lizard collections and you'll be transported back to the hardboiled world of Chandler and Hammett and the sexual obsessions of Cornell Woolrich. Picture the scene: It's 1933. The Great Depression is ravaging America. Some hardbitten scribe is sat plugging away at his Remington typewriter. Nothing but half a bottle of bourbon and an ashtray of full of cigarette buds for company. He's down on his luck and the rent is overdue, but with a little bit of wordsmith's magic the story he's working on will appear in Black Mask and Cap Shaw will be sending him a cheque to clear his debts.
Those days may be long gone but their spirit lives on. A Time for Violence: Stories with an Edge is a new anthology of crime stories comprising the work of established writers and rising stars. It's filled with noir tales by authors who, one might say, are unofficially honouring the legacy of Black Mask writers such as Raoul Whitfield and Paul Cain. In the introduction Andy Rausch writes:
The theme is violence, plain and simple. But why, you ask? Are we encouraging or promoting violence? Are we rejoicing and revelling in the physical harm of others? No, of course not. So, why violence then? Well, A Time for Violence was a cool title, which was where it began, but beyond that, it's a simple theme that inspires edgy, transgressive material. And at the end of the day, that was the real theme – edginess and transgression.
Violence takes many forms, from the emotional to the physical, and these stories seemingly cover every possible manifestation of violent act and thought ever devised by man. Don't let the title make you think this is just a compendium of gore-spattered horror, although one or two stories do lean that way. Most of the stories examine violence in its other day to day forms. The book gets off to a cracking start with 'Blood Brothers', a disturbing look at soured brotherly love by Richard Chizmar. Quarry fans will be well-served by 'Guest-Service', which sees the titular assassin running a hotel and running away from his past in the idyllic Sylvan Lake, Minnesota. There are also riveting tales by Chris Roy and Paul D. Brazill among others. I've still got a few stories to read, but that's the beauty of a collection of this kind. A dog-eared copy will sit proudly on your bookshelves, just waiting to be revisited.
A Time for Violence: Stories with an Edge is a pitch-black crime anthology, perfect for these cynical times.
from → 100 American, 100 British, Books, Crime Fiction, Genre
Vinnie Got Blown Away – Review
tags: Crime Novels, Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, Jeremy Cameron, Margaret Thatcher, Nicky Burkett Series, Reviews, Vinnie Got Blown Away
Vinnie Got Blown Away by Jeremy Cameron
Nicky Burkett wants revenge. He finds his childhood friend Vinnie dead at the bottom of a tower block with his feet sawn off. Nicky's code of conduct says he can't let that stand. Whether you're Charles Bronson in Death Wish or a wannabe diamond geezer from Walthamstow (Burkett's manor in North-East London), every male instinctively wants to return violence with violence. But Burkett has to uncover the reason behind Vinnie's grisly demise before he can wreak revenge. And that ain't easy when you're still in your teens and have got the probation service breathing down your neck.
Jeremy Cameron's debut novel Vinnie Got Blown Away was released in 1995. Lee Horsley identified the book as one of a number of crime novels which critiqued the 'failed Thatcherite efforts to bring Britain closer to the market-oriented financial system of the United States'. You might say the Iron Lady met the Iron Genre. Cameron uses his experience working for the Probation Service to critique the system. Everyone is on the make, whether they work for the system or against it. And while that worldview might seem cynical, Burkett's first-person narration has such brash charm that the reader may feel won over by this world of cockney wideboys and tropical chancers.
Here's an example of Nicky in full-flow after lifting a Ford Sierra:
Me I never knew what to do now so circled out and went home, not far off. Thought if I went quietly no one'd notice, never reckoned on looking upstairs for the chopper. Always thought they were up there for the weather or something only this one was following me twenty minutes. Did me no harm in the district mind, it was like Lethal Weapon. Took the Sierra home, dumped it, tumbled out knackered and there was the Bill in six motors. Gave Mum a turn, kept expecting them to shoot her like they do on the news.
Never had shooters so they just had to give a kicking down the nick. Got tired of that after a bit so they drew up nineteen charges. Did me no harm on the manor either, no one on the estate got more than ten before. Mum came down for the charges and the statement, couldn't make it earlier on account of she had the tea on.
There was Aggravated Vehicle and Criminal Damage and No Licence and Insurance and Unsupervised and Reckless and No 'L' Plates and a few others I never heard of. Then they stuck on Obstructing Police, knew I wouldn't go not guilty on one out of nineteen. Didn't give me a Producer, hardly worth it at fifteen. Nor tax evasion nor bullion robbery but enough to be going with. Got my brief in, Mrs Mellow that time, and I made no reply when charged.
They reckoned I ought to get some driving lessons. Not many kids my age couldn't drive proper when they nicked a motor.
The dialect might be difficult for some readers, but at a brisk 160 pages this is a novel that does not outstay its welcome. Indeed, I'll be rushing out to buy the four follow-up books in the Nicky Burkett series. Oddly enough, the novel is very American in tone and sometimes reminiscent of an Elmore Leonard caper or George V Higgins' darkly comical takedowns of the justice system. Which is ironic if, as Horsley suggests, there's a veiled anger about the Thatcherite Americanisation of Britain.
As our lives ease back into normality after lockdown, support your local bookshop and treat yourself to a copy of Vinnie Got Blown Away.
from → 100 British, Books, Reviews
Copy Boy: An Interview with Shelley Blanton-Stroud
tags: Books, Copy Boy, Gender Identity, Noir, Reviews, Shelley Blanton-Stroud
Shelley Blanton-Stroud – Author of Copy Boy
Copy Boy is the debut novel by Shelley Blanton-Stroud, an author and academic based in Sacramento.
It's the height of the Great Depression. Seventeen- year-old Jane is caught between an abusive father and manipulative mother. Then one day her father's physical abuse gets too much for her. Jane snaps, attacking her father with a crowbar and leaving him for dead in an irrigation ditch. She flees to San Francisco where, turned down for job after job, she calculates that men have more economic opportunities than women. Jane disguises herself as a man to be hired as a Copy Boy for a local newspaper – The Prospect. All goes well for a while. But every time a person reinvents themselves, the past is not far behind. Jane's new identity could unravel when she spots a photograph of her father in the paper with his arm around a girl who was later viciously attacked with a crowbar and left in a coma.
Is her father still alive? Was the assault on the girl a message and will Jane be next? It's an intriguing premise, skilfully executed, in a narrative which merges suspense with some finely realised noir period detail. I had the pleasure of interviewing Shelley Blanton-Stroud about Copy Boy:
Interviewer: Your portrayal of the Dust Bowl Depression era is brimming with rich and realistic detail. How did your family history inform your writing on this subject?
Blanton-Stroud: Thank you for that. It means a lot to me.
My novel had its origin in the family stories I heard growing up. My father, Kelly Blanton, is one of ten redheaded siblings, eight boys and two girls. They migrated to California from Texas. They lived in Federal work camps, Hoovervilles, like those described in Copy Boy and Grapes of Wrath. The children of his family (and really most of the children he knew) worked alongside their parents, before and after school, picking cotton. As he has often pointed out, it's hard to do your homework at night after picking if you don't have electricity, something that inspired him on behalf of his students when he later became superintendent of schools in Kern County. His family stories provoked me to research the larger phenomenon of the Okie migration and the experience of settling, unwelcome, in California towns unready for so many poor people in need of work.
My mother, Yvonne Blanton, is the only child of a farmer and his (also farmer) wife. Though my mother is an only child, and did not have to work in the fields, she was a victim of polio, a horrid disease of that era, which put her in the hospital with no visitors for almost a year as a toddler, also altering her ability to walk. She continues to experience great nerve pain as a result, even now, in her eighties. Yet my mother has always been beautiful, artistic, special. Her experience is at the root of research I did into Dorothea Lange, the WPA documentary photographer who also suffered from polio. Her life provides so much source material for my character Grete.
Interviewer: We are possibly entering, due to the pandemic, another Depression era. Why do you think noir is still relevant nearly a century after your novel is set?
Blanton-Stroud: Protagonists in a Noir story often squirm under the thumb of morally unfit authorities. They are alienated, often a victim of class confrontation. And even when they work to answer the plot's central question, they generally find that the real question at its core is impossible to answer. There just is no right answer. Noir auteur Megan Abbott adds to this—"In eras tinged with chaos…noir thrives."
Immoral authorities, alienation, class confrontation, unanswerable questions, chaos? This is a very noir epoch.
Interviewer: Jane disguising herself as a boy is central to your narrative. Gender identity is freely discussed now and considered quite fluid. Did you find much material on gender identity from the period?
Blanton-Stroud: Well of course there have always been cross-dressing women. Even in the 18th century, women enlisted and had careers as soldiers and sailors while pretending to be men—they made much more money doing so than they might have made in female professions. History also describes many women putting on maleness to protect themselves against rape or attack. But also, of course, there have always been women whose cross-dressing reflects their sexual preferences or their attitude toward the rules and limitations of gender. In San Francisco at the time Copy Boy is set, the LGBT community was first fully forming, particularly in the North Beach area. The first lesbian bar, Mona's on Union Street, opened in 1934, featuring cross-dressing waitresses.
My character, Jane, cross-dresses to get work in the Great Depression. But she's not just motivated by extreme need. She's also motivated by ambition. She discovers that "putting on the male" allows her to behave in ways that lead to her professional success. Yet Jane's age and the extreme circumstances that send her to San Francisco also make her more open to the idea of human fluidity than a typical young woman might be in 1937.
Historically, even when women have worn men's clothes for practical reasons, like to get a job or earn more money, doing so has meant they were willing to disrupt cultural expectations. They were, as Jane is, difficult women. That disruption is at the heart of things.
Interviewer: You have had a lot of experience helping writers. Did this come in handy when writing your first novel?
Blanton-Stroud: You might think so! However, this actually flowed in the opposite direction. Deciding to be a fiction writer in my fifties required that I put myself at risk in a hundred new ways. Working with peers in critique groups, submitting my work to authoritative strangers, risking rejection, attempting to improve post-rejection—all this, I found, really helped me in my teaching and my professional coaching. I know how it feels to take such risk and keep at it in spite of disappointment, and I remember this when I'm setting up teaching processes, trying to make them as helpful and useful and humane as possible.
Interviewer: Jane struggles to escape from one world and connect with another. Is this a theme which is important to you and does it come from personal experience?
Blanton-Stroud: What a great question. It's really important to me. I don't have the drive to "escape" some people do. However, I'm obsessed over whether we are who we are at birth, our particular DNA determining everything, or whether we're a product of our childhood experience, or whether we can just "decide what to be and go be it," as the Avett Brothers sing. I like the fact that Jane believes in her ability to do that, to make herself what she wants. And even though she tries to clean up her Okie accent, she can't entirely—the dust gets in you. I believe we should be able to take our authentic selves with us without it getting in the way of entering new worlds. That obviously doesn't work a lot of the time. We sometimes have to switch codes to pass in the short term. The friction caused by this "faking" it fascinates me.
Thank you so much for your fascinating questions. I've really loved answering them.
from → 100 American, Books, Crime Fiction, History of the Genre
The Ticket Out by Helen Knode – Review
tags: Crime Fiction, Film Noir, Helen Knode, Hollywood, James Ellroy, Reviews, The Ticket Out
Ann Whitehead is a film critic for a counter-culture rag in LA. What started as a dream job has become an unfulfilling nightmare. She has seen so many movies that the magic has gone. She has seen lives destroyed in pursuit of the Hollywood dream. Ann wants out, but the murder of a young film student, Greta Stenholm, will plunge her into the dark heart of the movie biz. Greta had been working on a script, now missing, about the real-life unsolved murder of the socialite Georgette Bauerdorf : 'A Black Dahlia with class,' quips one detective. Is this a case of murder imitating art?
Helen Knode is the ex-wife of crime novelist James Ellroy. Like Whitehead, Knode was a film critic for many years, writing reviews for the LA Weekly. She puts her inside knowledge of the film industry to good use. Greta Stenholm is loosely based on Kathryn Bigelow. Knode met Bigelow in 1989, when her directorial career was just taking off. Bigelow became the first woman to win a Best Director Academy Award in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. Bigelow won her Oscar for directing a film in the traditionally male-dominated war genre. As Knode puts it, 'I think that what Bigelow wants, which is to be a female director of action, is strictly speaking impossible, given Hollywood's gender categories.'
Whitehead has a similar drive to succeed in a man's world. But to do it, and to solve Greta's murder, she will have to work closely with LAPD detective Doug Lockwood. Lockwood has a bad rep for his role in the Burger King siege, a scandal which did about as much good for the LAPD's image as the Rodney King or Rampart affairs. Whitehead is apprehensive around Lockwood at first. She's the bohemian liberal and he's a cop in the authoritarian LAPD, but it's not long before an attraction develops. This might seem like a cliche, but Knode makes it believable and, more importantly, likeable. Knode's 'feminist noire' has a healthy dose of hardboiled romance: 'I am obsessed with romance and men and women and the female principle and the male principle and how in this day and age, romance seems to have turned into something like pathology. Nobody believes in it, and yet people are falling in love all the time.'
The thin line between love and hate in Ann and Doug's relationship is mirrored by the film critic's soured view of the movies. This is brought home beautifully when Whitehead reminisces about a trip to the Viennale film festival in 1993. She has a potential dream-come-true moment when she meets the renowned cinematographer John Alton. Alton's unconventional style, such as ominous low camera shots, made him a legend to film noir buffs. By the time Whitehead meets Alton though he is a jaded nonagenarian completely bored with cinema:
Here was a guy, I thought, who'd worked for MGM in the 1920s; he'd grown up with the movies, he was as old as the movies almost. But he couldn't have cared less about them. I pointed this out, and he agreed. He'd left Hollywood in the early '60s because he was finished with pictures. I asked why. He said it was because pictures were bad. Why bad, I'd asked – in what way, bad?
We were sitting together at a small table. Alton had put both his hands on my forearm and he'd said, "There was no longer any Art."
I first read The Ticket Out a few years ago. I reread it again recently as I felt drawn back to it with the rise of the MeToo movement. The novel is not about sexual abuse, but it brilliantly dissects show-business hypocrisy. Knode's style is less outrageous than Ellroy's, but it is just as gutsy, maybe even more so. After all, Ellroy is fond of portraying long-dead Hollywood figures from the 1940s and 50s who can't call their lawyers and sue him from the afterlife. Knode has some thinly-veiled portrayals of Tinseltown's living legends which are so scabrous that it will leave you shaking your head and asking – could she really mean that guy? I mentioned this to Knode once and her response was tantalising: 'Sacred cows make for the tastiest hamburgers, Steve.'
The Ticket Out is a gripping noir thriller that will leave you wanting to read more about Hollyweird culture and the indomitable Ann Whitehead (fortunately for us, there is a sequel). By the time you get to the last page Knode will have you thinking that, in noir terms at least, John Alton may have been wrong – there still is Art.
from → 100 American, Books, Crime Fiction, Film, Uncategorized
100 British Crime Writers
tags: 100 American Crime Writers, 100 British Crime Writers, Books, Esme Miskimmin, New Releases, Steven Powell
This autumn sees the release of 100 British Crime Writers, an anthology of essays on the most iconic British scribes who ever turned their hand to writing crime and detective fiction. Edited by Esme Miskimmin and published as part of Palgrave Macmillan's renowned Crime Files series, 100 British Crime Writers is a companion volume to 100 American Crime Writers which I edited.
I'm honoured to have worked as a contributor for 100 British Crime Writers which promises to be a valuable and comprehensive resource for any student, scholar or just plain fan of crime fiction.
And if you enjoy reading it, why not check out 100 American Crime Writers! It was published in 2012, got some great reviews and is still selling well
Here's some more information on the book:
100 British Crime Writers explores a history of British crime writing between 1855 and 2015 through 100 writers, detailing their lives and significant writing and exploring their contributions to the genre. Divided into four sections: 'The Victorians, Edwardians, and World War One, 1855-1918'; 'The Golden Age and World War Two, 1919-1945'; 'Post-War and Cold War, 1946-1989'; and 'To the Millennium and Beyond, 1990-2015', each section offers an introduction to the significant features of these eras in crime fiction and discusses trends in publication, readership, and critical response. With entries spanning the earliest authors of crime fiction to a selection of innovative contemporary novelists, this book considers the development and progression of the genre in the light of historical and social events.
Mr Campion's Seance – Review
tags: Albert Campion, Books, Margery Allingham, Mike Ripley, Mr Campion's Seance, Reviews
Albert Campion is one of the most beloved characters in the history of detective fiction. To write a Campion novel, and do justice to the character created by the great Margery Allingham, is no easy task. But Mike Ripley has risen to the occasion with Mr Campion's Seance, the latest addition in the Campion series which he has brought back to life with a Lazarus-like effect. Other Campion titles by Ripley include Mr Campion's Abdication, Mr Campion's War and Mr Campion's Visit. All of these novels have been officially sanctioned by the Margery Allingham Society as Ripley has proved adept at the cunning plots, cocktail wit and period detail which make the Campion novels so irresistible.
Mr Campion's Seance is Ripley's most ambitious novel yet with a narrative that stretches from the war-torn 1940s to the Swinging Sixties. In this novel we meet Evadne Childe, bestselling author of mystery fiction and Campion's 'godsibling'. The authoress has been offered gongs from, in no particular order, the Detection Club, Mystery Writers of America and Buckingham Palace. But the latter is less impressive in her eyes after The Beatles (who you shouldn't listen to without wearing earmuffs) were appointed OBE's in 1965.
Evadne might be in trouble. The murder of a Cockney/Maltese gangster named Tony Valetta is strikingly similar to a murder she described in one of her novels. Then, a robbery occurs which is almost identical, detail-by-detail, to a robbery from her fiction. Is Evadne being fitted up, or is she responsible for these dastardly crimes? Or is, as the title implies, someone taking their criminal orders from the spirit world?
Ripley gives the longstanding Allingham fans much of what they want from a Campion story – there is the tryptych of eccentric coppers – Stanislaus Oates, Freddie Yeo and Charles Luke – our amateur sleuth deals with. Then there is Campion's indomitable manservant Magersfontein Lugg, a former burglar whose knowledge of the London Underworld is rivalled only by his familiarity with the capital city's public houses. But while there are plenty of Allingham references, there are also many of the quintessential Mike Ripley bon mots which those of us who read the Ripster's 'Getting Away With Murder'column have come to love.
One is never sure when Ripley is toying with the reader. Is Evadne Childe a sly anagram I wonder? Or is it a reference to Robert Browning (there's some discussion of Browning in the novel), whose poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came was a favourite of my undergrad days. One of Evadne's 'novels' The Robbers Are Coming To Town was the provisional title of Allingham's seminal work The Tiger in the Smoke. Is Campion chasing his most elusive culprit yet – metafiction!
Amidst all the wit and wordplay, this is still a gripping detective story at the heart. I was interested to learn how the robbery in the novel was inspired by the Eastcastle Street robbery, which has been almost forgotten today but should be just as fascinating as the Great Train robbery to true crime buffs.
Mr Campion's Seance is another wonderful addition to the series and a great way to ward off those lockdown blues. Highly recommended.
from → 100 British, Books, Crime Fiction, Uncategorized
HRF Keating: A Life of Crime – Review
tags: Biographies, HRF Keating, India, Inspector Ghote, Reviews
Henry 'Harry' Reymond Fitzwalter Keating was one of the most prolific and distinguished crime novelists and literary critics of the twentieth century. But by the time of his death in 2011 he was referring to himself as a 'has-been'. This might seem difficult to believe now – Keating's creation of Inspector Ghote is one of the most beloved of fictional detectives. So why did he end his days with this rather melancholy view of his achievements?
HRF Keating: A Life of Crime is the first biography of Keating and is also the literary debut of Keating's widow, the actress Sheila Mitchell. Mitchell's biography of Keating is an intimate and affectionate portrait of an author who achieved the elusive combination of literary acclaim and financial success. However, the final chapters are tinged with sadness. Not only because they deal with Keating's declining health, but also his increasing despair at the slow death of publishing. His books got fewer and fewer print runs and were dogged by miniscule publicity budgets. But before we come to this somewhat downbeat ending, Mitchell skilfully and engagingly chronicles Keating's education at Trinity College, the launch of his career in journalism and his early attempts at writing fiction.
Keating had a number of short stories and novels published before he hit the big time with his introduction of Inspector Ghote of the Bombay (now Mumbai) police in The Perfect Murder in 1964. Keating's writing was praised for its rich in detail and accurate portrayal of India, but ironically he didn't visit the country until about a decade after the first Ghote novel was published. He first travelled to India after he was invited as part of a publicity campaign by Air India. Ghote's incisive intelligence and gentle, unassuming manner is credited with dispelling the stereotypical 'Goodness Gracious Me' humour about Indians which had been common at the time. Among his many other works Keating wrote science-fiction, a novel in verse and created the series character DCI Harriet Martens, but his first and true love on the page was always Inspector Ghote.
Mitchell's portrayal of Keating is teeming with joyous little details. His preferred writing conditions were absolute silence, which must have been difficult to achieve as they raised four children together. His aversion to noise was such that he was practically traumatised after sitting through an overly loud production of a Tom Stoppard play. By temperament, Keating was the most English of writers. He was once mugged while walking near a dark canal and politely asked the assailant to give him his wallet back once he had removed the dosh, which the obliging mugger dutifully did.
Keating's passing immediately launched a revival of interest in his work. Penguin reissued several Ghote novels in their Modern Classics series. Audiobooks of his novels, several narrated by Mitchell, have become popular. And more and more contemporary novelists have spoken out about their love of Keating's work. It's comforting to know that Keating was wrong to think of himself as a 'has-been'. Interest in his work will continue to grow.
HRF Keating: A Life of Crime is a fine biography worthy of its illustrious subject.
from → 100 British, Books, Uncategorized
James Ellroy and Fallen Angels: Since I Don't Have You
tags: Anthologies, Cornell Woolrich, Fallen Angels, Film Noir, James Ellroy
Between the commercial failure of the first big-screen adaptation of a James Ellroy novel Blood on the Moon (as Cop in 1988) and the Oscar-winning success of L.A. Confidential in 1997, there was another Ellroy adaptation which has been unfairly forgotten today.
Since I Don't Have You
Ellroy's short story 'Since I Don't Have You' was adapted as part of the Showtime noir anthology series Fallen Angels which was first broadcast in 1993. All six episodes of the first season are standalone narratives based on the work of legendary crime writers: Chandler, Woolrich, Thompson etc. Only two episodes were adapted from works by authors who were still alive at the time. 'Dead End for Delia' was adapted from a short story by William Campbell Gault, who was by that time an octogenarian (he died shortly after the series aired). The other living author was James Ellroy, who was only in his forties but had already established himself as the leading crime novelist of his generation.
Several L.A. Quartet characters appear in 'Since I Don't Have You': Okie transplant to L.A. Turner 'Buzz' Meeks (Gary Busey) is working as a security boss and troubleshooter for Howard Hughes (Tim Matheson) and a bagman for Mickey Cohen (James Woods). He considers both his employers to be 'world-class shitheels'. But Meeks owes money to the quick-tempered hoodlum Leotis, so he has no choice but to do what his bosses tell him and work his way out of a crippling debt. Both Hughes and Cohen have fallen for the same woman, Gretchen, and Meeks has to find her and bring her to a party thrown by schlocky grade-Z producer Sid Weinberg. Weinberg is carrying a torch for a starlet named Glenda Jensen who vanished into thin air fifteen years ago. Meeks finds himself in a dangerous conflict of interest and has to follow a trail of dead bodies before Gretchen makes her dazzling appearance at Weinberg's Hollywood party.
Gary Busey as Buzz Meeks and James Woods as Mickey Cohen in Fallen Angels
'Since I Don't Have You' is overtly comic, outrageous and packs in a lot of story into thirty minutes of television. It holds up fairly well, and is probably the best of the Ellroy TV adaptations. The first L.A. Confidential TV pilot filmed in 2003 is dismal, but that didn't stop CBS ordering a new pilot in 2018 which has still not been aired. Adapting Ellroy for television has proved as difficult as adapting Ellroy for the big screen.
A second series of Fallen Angels followed in 1995. Looking at the two series as a whole, 'Murder Obliquely' is the most erotic story and Walter Mosley's 'Fearless' is the bawdiest. 'The Black Bargain' tries to capture the surreal, nightmarish quality of Cornell Woolrich's fiction but gets too heavy-handed with satanic symbolism. My favourite episode is probably 'Fly Paper'. Adapted by Donald E Westlake from a short story by Dashiell Hammett: it is a gripping, fast-paced tale featuring a wonderfully hardboiled performance by Christopher Lloyd as the Continental Op. There are several other novelties of the show worth mentioning. A number of episodes were directed by Hollywood stars. Tom Hanks directed 'I'll Be Waiting' and appears as a button man very similar to his later role as Sullivan in Road to Perdition. Tom Cruise gained the only directorial credit of his career on the show and it's a belter of an episode. 'The Frightening Frammis' is adapted from a Jim Thompson tale and features Peter Gallagher as the wandering grifter Mitch Allison. Cruise alternates the tone of the episode between sinister and comic with directorial panache and it features a nice homage to noir classic Detour. Just imagine for a moment, if Cruise had turned to directing to salvage his reputation after the Scientology scandals of the early noughties rather than regurgitating the MI and Top Gun franchises.
A book companion to the TV series was published in 1993. It featured the original short stories that were adapted alongside the script for each episode. James Ellroy wrote the preface to the book. It's a typically insightful piece of writing by Ellroy in which he diagnoses our ongoing fascination with noir as a form of Romantic escapism from the spiralling crime rates of contemporary life which are sensationally reported in the tabloid press:
Fallen Angels: an ambiguous title applicable to the characters who rage in these stories, their creators, and you, the audience – especially you, who share a bond with all of Hammett's children.
You sense the darkness around you and want to know why. We have been haunted by that curiosity and wish to explore it with you for unfathomable personal motives and the near-paradoxical need to hold hands with a friend when night falls. You sense that the deepest human truths boil forth in fiction; we seek to render newscast body counts powerless through the alchemy of our horrific perceptions. We want to touch fire with you, to ensure both of us a tenuous safety from the flames.
Fallen Angels aired at a time when anthology series – Tales From The Crypt, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone – were in vogue. But most were rooted in the sci-fi or horror genre. Fallen Angels was the only one, to my knowledge, to offer viewers the seductive solace of film noir. If you are struggling with the boredom and frustration of quarantine, made worse by the media-saturation of 'newscast body counts' then seek out the show. It is viewable on YouTube.
A quarter of a century has passed since Fallen Angels was first broadcast on television, but more than ever we need it to ensure 'a tenuous safety from the flames'.
from → 100 American, Books, Film, Film Noir, Genre, James Ellroy, Uncategorized
The Mystery of Jean Hilliker's First Marriage – Solved
tags: Easton E Spaulding, James Ellroy, Jean Ellroy, Unsolved Murders
Jean Hilliker and the 'Spalding Man'
Jean Hilliker
One of the most enduring mysteries of Jean Ellroy's (nee Hilliker) life is her first marriage. When James Ellroy was re-investigating his mother's murder in his memoir My Dark Places, he was stunned to discover that his mother had been married before she met his father Armand Ellroy. Ellroy found out about the marriage when he met Jean's niece Janet Wagner Klock: 'She said Aunt Jean was married once before. It was a very brief marriage. She was married to a young man named Spalding. He was an heir to the Spalding sporting goods fortune.'
Ellroy, along with his co-investigator Bill Stoner, looked into the claims, but they were never able to find a date or location of the wedding: 'Jean moved to Los Angeles. She might have met the Spalding man there. They were married somewhere. It wasn't Chicago. It wasn't in LA County, Orange County, San Diego County, Ventura County, Las Vegas or Reno.' After such an exhausting search Ellroy might have been tempted to believe Jean's marriage to the Spalding man was a myth. However, partial confirmation was found as Jean and Armand's 1947 marriage licence 'stated that this was the second marriage for both parties.'
The Marriage of Jean Hilliker and Easton Ewing Spaulding
I can now reveal that the wedding took place in Yuma County, Superior Court on November 5, 1940. I have obtained a copy of the marriage licence. Jean was married to Easton Ewing Spaulding. Jean's family got the Spalding/Spaulding names mixed up, but then the wedding took place in great secrecy: 'Leoda (Jean's sister) never met the Spalding man. Jean's friends never met the Spalding man. Nobody knew his first name.'
This is what I have been able to find out about Easton E. Spaulding. I have taken a lot of this information from the book, The Spaulding Heritage, which was written by Jewell Spaulding Akey in 1970 and is now available online.
Easton was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1902 to Albert Starr Spaulding and Nellie Locke Burrows. In 1908, Albert and Nellie moved their family to Long Beach, California. Nellie died in childbirth the same year. Albert Starr Spaulding had great success as a real-estate speculator in Los Angeles. He purchased and subdivided an area of land 'between Sunset Boulevard and Fountain Avenue to the east of Fairfax Avenue.' He used inventive methods to get potential buyers interested 'Spaulding offered a free streetcar ride, lunch and a lecture on the allure of the area, which was midway between the studios and up-and-coming Beverly Hills.' The area is now named Spaulding Square after him and is one of the most historically preserved areas in LA.
The Spaulding Family. Easton Ewing Spaulding is on the back row, fourth on the right.
Easton followed his father into the real estate business. His marriage licence to Jean Hilliker lists his occupation as a broker. He had been married twice before he met Jean. In the early 1920s he married Pearl Phelps. They had a son, Frank Tillman Spaulding, born in 1923. He divorced Pearl and married Beatrice 'Bebe' McCarthy Clark. They had a daughter Ann, born in 1935. After he married and divorced Jean Hilliker, Easton married for a fourth time. In 1945, Easton married Emile Hensel in – you guessed it – Yuma County.
Once again, the wedding took place in secrecy, but it was reported in the Morning Herald (a Pennsylvania based newspaper) after a tip-off from a source inside the Superior Court:
Didn't Emily Hensel, sister of Betty Hensel, in whom Cary Grant is interested, get married in Yuma last Monday to Easton Spaulding, wealthy Beverly Hills man? The clerk there says that a license was issued under those names and that a ceremony was performed by Judge Henry C. Kelly…
The marriage lasted until Easton's death in 1986. Emile died in 2014. Easton was a Beverly Hills resident and records show that he was living there until at least the 1970s. Armand and Jean lived together in Beverly Hills at North Doheny Drive, 'the address was ritzier than the pad. My mother said it was just a small apartment'. They moved to West Hollywood after their son Lee Earle (now James) was born in 1948. Beverly Hills had a population of 26,000 in 1940. It was a rapidly developing community at the time (it had less than a thousand people in 1920), and was presumably big enough for Jean not to worry about bumping into her ex-husband Easton.
Those are the facts, just the facts. Here are some of my thoughts:
Jean first visited LA on December 12, 1938. She had won a glamour contest as the 'Most Charming Redhead'. She stayed at the Ambassador Hotel. She took a screen test. She was paid $1,000 and was given a tour of Hollywood. The Spaulding's had connections in Hollywood. Many Hollywood stars lived in Spaulding Square. Perhaps she met Easton this way. Perhaps he persuaded her to move permanently from Chicago to LA. Perhaps they met after she moved to LA.
Easton's marriage to Jean was something of an outlier in his life. Yes, he had been married and divorced twice before but those unions had been long enough to produce children. His marriage to Jean appears to have been short and disastrous. It does not appear in the book The Spaulding Heritage, so presumably (as with Jean) none of his family were at the wedding and he probably didn't tell them about it. The marriage was dissolved shortly afterwards. Armand Ellroy abandoned his first wife, Mildred Feese, to live with Jean in 1941. Easton was short and balding. Armand was tall and handsome. Armand was a few years older than Easton. Perhaps Jean abandoned Easton for Armand. Maybe they were already divorced by the time Jean met Armand. We don't know. Did Easton pay alimony to Jean until she remarried, or was their marriage too short to warrant that?
Jean Ellroy was murdered in 1958. Armand was questioned by police and ruled out as a suspect. Their son was his alibi at the time Jean was murdered. Armand had custody of the boy at weekends. Armand would have made for a natural suspect if he did not have such a strong alibi. His divorce from Jean had been bitter and acrimonious. Leoda Hilliker always suspected Armand had murdered Jean, 'my father got a kick out of the notion'. Easton Spaulding, it seems, was never interviewed by the police. His name is never mentioned in Ellroy's detailed account of the original investigation. It's probable that the police were unaware of Jean's first marriage. Ellroy recalls overhearing detectives talking to his father, 'The cops were saying their case was dead. Jean was such a goddamn secretive woman. Her life just didn't make sense.'
Jean Hilliker was indeed secretive, but at least we now know the identity of her first husband.
Author's Note: I informed James Ellroy of my findings prior to the publication of this article.
from → 100 American, James Ellroy, Uncategorized