200th Post: Extended Review of BLOOD'S A ROVER by James Ellroy

To celebrate my 200th missive to the blogosphere, I hereby bring you my expanded review of the new James Ellroy novel, BLOOD'S A ROVER. This appeared in a shorter form over at Gerard Brennan's Crime Scene NI blog, but for anyone who wants a more in-depth preview of this book, read on. Due to its length, this piece has been formatted via CSS voodoo for easier reading. Special thanks must go to my agent Nat Sobel for sending me my advance copy of this fine novel.

BLOOD'S A ROVER by James Ellroy: Extended Review by Stuart Neville

After eight long years, James Ellroy finally brings us the conclusion to the American Underworld Trilogy, and his most personal novel since his 1987 breakout, THE BLACK DAHLIA. BLOOD'S A ROVER fulfils yet confounds every expectation.

The novel takes its title from the A.E. Housman poem, 'Reveille'. The couplet in question reads: "Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep." The imagery of the title implies the scope of these 600-plus pages of conspiracy, violence and obsession that traverse all levels of political society, as well as the book's many geographical settings. But the wider theme of Housman's poem -- the brevity of life, and the imperative to live it well and fully -- perhaps gives a better clue to the soul of the novel.

Following a brief prologue that drops the reader into the middle of a bloody armoured car heist in 1964, the novel-proper begins its four-year journey in 1968 by introducing Ellroy's triad of protagonists. Cop-turned-narco-chemist Wayne Tedrow Junior is back, older and more battle-hardened than when we last saw him spattered with the blood of history in THE COLD SIX THOUSAND. FBI heavyweight Dwight Holly is promoted from supporting player to centre stage as he works for and against a fading J. Edgar Hoover and his nefarious schemes. And there's a new face: Donald 'Crutch' Crutchfield, a young would-be private investigator who stumbles, begs and blackmails his way into the murky waters of Ellroy's American nightmare. Of course, we also have the all-star cast of historical figures that is a signature of the American Underworld Trilogy. We have Hoover in physical and mental decline, Howard Hughes at rock bottom, Richard Nixon on the ascendant, and any number of political and showbiz players of the time. As with the previous entries in the trilogy that began with AMERICAN TABLOID, the historical figures are shown no pity as the author delights in dragging them through his mire.

The plot is a classic Ellroy labyrinth: the Mob attempts to create a new Havana in the Dominican Republic; Hoover and the FBI set out to bring down the Black Power movement; a dismembered body in an abandoned house is connected to bad voodoo in Haiti by a trail of hijacked emeralds. These seemingly disparate stories overlap and intertwine to form a dense, propulsive narrative that has one constant: a woman named Joan Klein, political agitator and object of obsession for all three protagonists.

So far, so Ellroy, you might think. Yes, all the Ellroy trademarks are present and accounted for. Three-headed point-of-view? Check. Document inserts to fill in the blanks? Check. Borderline oedipal fixations on women? Check. Dirty cops, dirtier politicians, brutal violence, booze, drugs, guns, snappy chapters, fragmented prose, startling imagery, it's all there. But what surprises the reader, what sneaks up and beats us around the head with a leather sap, is that Ellroy takes everything we expect from him and turns it on its head. He takes his time, allowing us the comfort of his familiar structures and stylistic tics, then in one shocking revelation after another we realise that nothing in this story can be taken on face value, not even the narrative itself. When the author takes our expectations and uses them against us, it is virtuoso stuff, the work of a master.

And here's the biggest revelation of all: prepare to forget everything you think you know about James Ellroy's politics. Those ugly facets of the macho persona he writes so well -- the racism, misogyny and homophobia -- might well have led you to believe Ellroy is so right-wing he makes George W. Bush look like a pinko. And that's apparently what he wants us to think; he wilfully plays up to that reputation, describing his own views on his Facebook page as "reactionary". But if a novel can give an insight into a writer's true nature, then BLOOD'S A ROVER belies that public image. In these pages, Ellroy mercilessly examines the cost of fascism to man and society. He shows us the broken lives left in the wake of government agencies acting outside their own laws to crush those who oppose them, and the terrible price the men who misuse power must pay for their crimes. That's not to say Ellroy has gone red on us; the far left is treated with equal disdain as his fictional ideologues ultimately prove to be as misguided and self-serving as their real-world counterparts. Taking in the overall arc of the trilogy, the true message becomes clear: those who abuse power to serve their own political and personal agendas at the cost of society will suffer for their sins, whether they lean to the left or the right.

James Ellroy's deconstruction of post-war American history is at its very core a political statement covering a total of around 1800 pages over three books. Many won't like what he has to say about the country's not-so-distant past, and by association its present and future. By forcing us to look again at events and personalities we thought we knew, even if it is in the guise of fiction, Ellroy also makes us look at the world we live in today with a questioning eye. The symbolism of the gemstones that reappear throughout the novel crystallises when a Haitian character explains: "Emeralds represent 'Green Fire' in voodoo text. They shine light on a dark history."

The ferocious polemic of BLOOD'S A ROVER would not have a fraction of its impact if it were not balanced by its surprising humanity. The character Don 'Crutch' Crutchfield is ostensibly based on a real-life private eye who still operates today, but the depiction on the page is closer to Ellroy's own confessions of a misspent youth. Crutch is a voyeur, a degenerate who spies on women, tails them, and breaks into their homes. His private eye gig provides a means to scratch this itch. Ellroy has spoken openly about his early days and the unsavoury pastimes he indulged in. Crutch becomes an avatar for the author's younger self, revealing more of Ellroy than any fiction he's written since he confronted his own mother's brutal murder in THE BLACK DAHLIA.

Wayne Tedrow Junior, a naïve sheriff's deputy when we first met him in Dallas at the time of Kennedy's assassination, has become a shell of a man, hollowed out by the horrors to which he has been privy. The metaphor of zombification as he is seduced by the voodoo lure of Haiti is apt. The chance of forgiveness from a woman who should hate him, but instead takes him as her lover, drives him to forsake everything he has stood for until now.

In the character of Dwight Holly, J. Edgar Hoover's pet thug, Ellroy explores most deeply the human cost of violence. At the core of Holly's journey is a love affair that is, uniquely in Ellroy's world, not based on obsession or expediency. It is a real honest-to-God relationship that offers hope of redemption, albeit tainted by the duplicity Ellroy seeks in all things.

The female characters in BLOOD'S A ROVER stand in contrast to those who populated his earlier works. They are more than objects of desire; they are not there simply to frustrate, entrap and betray the male protagonists, or serve as surrogates for whatever ghosts haunt the author. There are aspects we can recognise: some are older than the men who desire them, filling the oedipal role; one carries a scar, continuing the tendency for Ellroy's women to be physically or emotionally marked. But their characterisation and roles in the story carry more weight than we have ever seen from Ellroy in the past, particularly the Red Goddess Joan. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that shortly after completing BLOOD'S A ROVER, the author turned in a memoir called THE HILLIKER CURSE that deals with his relationships with the women in his life. One gets the impression Ellroy has worked out some inner turmoil that is reflected in these pages, and the novel is all the richer for it.

The meaning of Housman's poem, that man must not waste his life, begins to resonate as the protagonists strive for atonement against desperate odds. This emotional maturity gives BLOOD'S A ROVER a beating, bleeding heart that arguably no other novel in James Ellroy's oeuvre has had before. And that heart is what makes it all so visceral, beautiful and horrific. BLOOD'S A ROVER is everything and nothing you wanted it to be, and the trilogy as a whole must be considered a landmark in American literature. Simply staggering.

Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy: Perks of the Job

There are many, many perks to having Nat Sobel as your agent. Here's one of them:



My doorbell rang at 8:30 this morning, and it being a Saturday, I was a little discombobulated. I woke up pretty sharpish when I found this baby on my doorstep. Apart from the early hour, the timing is perfect. I'm just finishing up John Ajvide Lindqvist's LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (which, by the way, is the best vampire novel since Bram Stoker's DRACULA). So, I will be cracking open Ellroy's long awaited conclusion to the Underworld USA trilogy some time this weekend, and I can't wait. I have been told that BLOOD'S A ROVER is a masterpiece.

I shall blog about it when I'm done (fancy a review, Mr Brennan?), though that might be a week or two. I am a tortuously slow reader; Ellroy's isn't the easiest writing to chew and digest, and this is a pretty hefty chunk of book at more than 640 pages. I have leafed through, and from the odd sentence that I've read, it seems closer in style to AMERICAN TABLOID than THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, but that's only a first impression. Oh, and the first section of the book is titled "CLUSTER FUCK".

This is going to be good.

My First Public Reading

So, night before last, I did my first ever public reading. It was a strange experience, but one I enjoyed a great deal. There was a decent turnout, and a few familiar faces, such as an old friend I hadn't seen in a few years, and a couple of teachers from my old school.

I remember mentioning to a few published writers I've met before that giving readings was something I was not looking forward to. Some writers do it very well. Declan Hughes and Tana French, for example, both enunciate and project beautifully, thanks I'm sure to their theatrical backgrounds. John Connolly also turns readings into performances of sorts, which I imagine he learned through experience. I've seen video footage of James Ellroy, who plays up to his cantankerous public persona, great showman that he is. I've heard Barry Eisler is also an excellent raconteur, and some have said his entertaining readings have contributed to his great success.

I've seen other writers who mumble and stumble their way through it, and of course the impression they leave is less memorable.

So, where do I stand on the Mumbly Stumbler to Polished Performer spectrum? Somewhere in the middle, I think. I practiced the two pieces I was going to present, reading them aloud, looking for phrases that were liable to trip me up. I'm glad I did, because knowing them beforehand saved me a lot of mistakes. But I should have practiced more; I'd go so far as to say I should have had the pieces close to memorised. This is for two reasons:

1) I didn't make enough eye contact. Readings where all you see is the top of the author's head while they stare at their pages are less than riveting. I did try to look up now and then, and managed it a few times, but nowhere near enough. I think this is the difference between an author performing, as it were, and an author simply reading aloud. It takes eye contact to fully engage the audience, to let them know you're reading to them, not at them.

2) I stumbled when I got distracted. Only a few times, but that was still too many. When I was absorbed in the narrative, it all went smoothly, the dialogue was natural, the prose flowed. But when something pulled my mind away, perhaps worrying about some words ahead, or becoming self-conscious, then I stumbled, misread, and fluffed words. And when you do that, you also pull the listener out of the story.

So, if I may be so presumptuous as to rate my own reading, I'd give it a C. Good effort, but could do better.

A Sub-Genre is Born: Norn Noir

My blogging friend Gerard Brennan just published a short story on a new Noir fiction zine called A Twist of Noir. You can read the story here, and if you have a moment, congratulate the man himself.

In the process, I believe Gerard may have created a new sub-genre by splicing Noir with Norn Iron, a common pronunciation of my homeland. That sub-genre is Norn Noir. You heard it here first.

BLOOD'S A ROVER by James Ellroy: Looks like it'll be worth the wait

A blurb has appeared over at the Sobel Weber Associates website about the long-awaited conclusion to James Ellroy's American Underworld trilogy, BLOOD'S A ROVER. I, and I know many others, can't wait to get my hands on this book. It's looking like it'll appear in Autumn 2009, so only another year to go.

Details on the novel's protagonists are sketchy (two rogue cops and a kid private eye are mentioned), but there are a few tidbits about plot and settings. We've got the FBI infiltrating black power militants, the Mob having a crack at the Dominican Republic, and "voodoo vibe in Haiti", which apparently "be bad gre-gre". Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover will also reprise their roles as pervasive tumours in American society.

Nat Sobel was telling me a little about the book the other day (one of many perks of having such an excellent agent). Now, in my experience, Nat is never prone to excessive enthusiasm or hyperbole, but he is very excited about BLOOD'S A ROVER. He reckons it's Ellroy's best work to date. The word "masterpiece" was used, in fact. Make of that what you will. Personally, I can't wait.

PS: If you check the Sobel Weber home page, you'll see my ugly mug a couple down from the great man himself. I can't tell you how surreal that feels. Check out the other two featured books, too. THE FALCON'S TALE looks intriguing, and the massive movie deal is hardly surprising given the premise. And SNOW ANGELS looks like another breakthrough for Scandinavian crime fiction, which has seen such success with the likes of Jo Nesbo and Henning Mankell.

Watch Out, America: The Big O by Declan Burke

Today, the 22nd of September, marks the US publication of THE BIG O by Declan Burke by Harcourt. As The Beatles did in 1964, and Led Zeppelin just a few years later, THE BIG O is sure to sweep across America, fuelled by its own tidal surge. Or something.

Some of you will know Declan as the Grand Viz over at the excellent Crime Always Pays blog. I've had the dubious pleasure of going on the beers with the man himself, and can attest to his upright character. Declan was kind enough to sign a copy of the book for me a couple of weeks ago, and it is now atop my teetering To-Be-Read pile. While I cannot provide a review, having not read it just yet (I'm currently immersed in John Connolly's THE UNQUIET, and Bruen and Starr's THE MAX and Adrian McKinty's THE DEAD YARD are ahead in the queue) but some notable dignitaries have. And if their word isn't good enough for you, then I don't know whose is. Namely:

"Declan Burke’s THE BIG O is one of the sharpest, wittiest and most unusual Irish crime novels of recent years … in a similar tradition to, say, Carl Hiaasen, in that there’s a satirical edge to his work that gives it a real bite." – John Connolly, author of THE UNQUIET

"Declan Burke’s crime writing is fast, furious and funny, but this is more than just genre fiction: Burke is a high satirist in the tradition of Waugh and Kingsley Amis . . . but he never forgets that his first duty is to give us a damn good read." —Adrian McKinty, author of THE BLOOMSDAY DEAD

"THE BIG O has everything you want in a crime novel: machinegun dialogue, unforgettable characters, and a wicked plot. Think George V. Higgins in Ireland on speed." – Jason Starr, author of THE FOLLOWER

"This is an extremely funny crime novel that takes Irish crime fiction in a whole new direction. Under the cracking comedy of the book lurks some very subtle and highly skilful plotting and prose." - Brian McGilloway, author of BORDERLANDS

Need I say more? I wish Declan every success with his American debut, and I'm sure it's just the beginning.

Gregory Mcdonald

The author Gregory Mcdonald died this week. Mcdonald wrote one of my favourite ever books, FLETCH, a lesson in economy, characterisation and tight plotting. While the first Fletch movie was enjoyable enough, I never felt it or Chevy Chase did the source material justice.

Fletch is one of the few books which I can distinctly remember buying and reading for the first time. I was in my mid teens, and I bought it from a charity shop in Ballycastle, along the Antrim coast from the seaside village of Cushendun, where I was staying with my best mate and his family. They have a beautiful cottage at the mouth of the river, overlooking the sea. On a clear day you can see the Mull of Kintyre across the water. I started reading the book in the kitchen, and I can remember pausing occasionally to show my friend the funniest passages. Twenty years on, we still sometimes repeat the phrase "Fuck Frank" for no apparent reason.

My copy of Fletch cost 40p (the price sticker is still on the cover), and that was excellent value for money considering I have read it at least once every couple of years in the two decades I have owned it. It stands alongside William Goldman's Marathon Man, Thomas Harris's Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Mario Puzo's The Godfather as being among a handful of books I have read over and over, and will probably continue to read time and time again for as long as I have the ability to do so.

It's disheartening to read in some of the online obituaries that, despite his massive success, Mcdonald still had to fight to get published, and that his experience of having his books turned into movies was often negative. But he knew how to tell a good story in 200 pages, and that's an achievement in itself.

Book Rabbit!

I recently discovered what I think may be the most exciting book website since Amazon - BookRabbit.com.

As I've been investigating the world of online book marketing, I realised that unlike movies or other media, there is no common meeting place for book enthusiasts. There are countless blogs, low-population forums and websites dedicated to reading and writing, but to try to leverage them for marketing is a daunting task. They are simply spread too thin. The new Book Roast blog is a valiant effort, but still there is no IMDB.com for books.

Until now, that is. At least potentially. BookRabbit.com is a website at once a social networking site and online store for book lovers. They offer a selection of titles that rivals Amazon in both choice and price, but the shopping experience is wrapped up in a library of 'bookshelves' uploaded by the site's users.

Here's how it works: You upload a picture of your bookshelf (here's mine, though it's really a pile on the floor) and then tag your books. The system then finds other users who have the same books, so you can browse what else they have, say hello, comment on the books, or even go and buy them. It's a very well put together website, with bags of potential. It's only a couple of months old, but already I see big things ahead for it - IF it takes off.

The most interesting thing, though, is the potential for author marketing. When you register, you can designate yourself as an author. Using RSS, you can hook it up to your blog, so you can maintain your journal in one place. You can talk about your books in the same place readers are browsing and buying them. And community blogs like Book Roast can feed right into it. It's the step forward in author-reader interaction I believe the Internet has been crying out for up to now. Really, I think it's brilliant, and it deserves to succeed. And the only way it'll do that is by people like us getting involved.*

*One small issue - it's a UK site, so not much use for Americans wanting to buy, but you can still interact.

Book Roast!

Some friends of mine have embarked on a new project. Book Roast is a new venue for the promotion of authors and their work, run by people who are passionate about reading and writing. And culinary puns.

My Take on American Tabloid

Further to yesterday's post, I've been bumped up the queue in Moonrat's Celebrate Reading series, and my article on American Tabloid by James Ellroy can be found there now. As part of the piece, my agent Nat Sobel kindly agreed to answer a few questions about working on the book with Ellroy, and he also shared a couple of tidbits on the third in the trilogy, Blood's a Rover, and the author's future plans.

Thanks to Nat for taking the time to answer my question, and to Moonrat for letting me post the article.

THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy: Love it or hate it?

In my previous post, I mentioned The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Having finished it in record time (but about a year after the rest of the world), I must say I was completely blown away by this book. I know opinions on it range from the glowing, to the ambivalent, to outright hatred, so I've been trying to put my finger on what I loved about it.

And I've mostly failed.

All I can say for sure is it hit me right in the gut like no other book has for a long time, the last being Ellroy's American Tabloid (which I think has the very best last line of any novel I've read). The Road hit me so hard, in fact, that I actually dreamed about it for a couple of nights after it was done. The one aspect I can specifically name as affecting me was the relationship between the boy and his father, the depth of their love and dependence, and the terrible choices that love might mean for them. Essentially, that's the core of the book. The post-apocalyptic setting is, to me, a secondary consideration. Their journey could just as easily have been through the American South during the Depression.

The high-water mark in end-of-the-world stories has always been The Day of the Triffids, for me. And there are many other books within the broad sweep of speculative fiction that tackle this kind of scenario, I am Legend being among the most notable, along with movies like 28 Days Later and various tales of life after nuclear war. Can The Road be compared to any of them?

Well, yes, of course it can. It must be, simply because it will be labelled as a genre piece, even if its genre is incidental, rather than fundamental, to its story. But, honestly, those other post-apocalyptic tales didn't enter my mind as I was reading The Road. A big difference is that while books like Day of the Triffids explore the new desolation as part of the storytelling, The Road simply gets on with its primary business: the relationship between father and son. While the mechanics of their survival are part of the story, they are not the spine of it.

Here's a question, though: If The Road was a first novel, would this Pulitzer winner make it over the transom to an agent or editor?

My opinion - absolutely not. Any agent or editor would respond with a form rejection. And you know what? They'd be dead right. This award-winning, Oprah endorsed, triumph of a novel would be an insane choice had it been a debut.

Here's my reasoning: an author of Cormac McCarthy's skill and experience has earned the right to stretch and break the boundaries. No punctuation, flip-flopping point-of-view, unmarked dialogue, no chapters, episodic structure, fragment sentences, a bleak and desperate theme - all lunacy in a novel, and an agent or editor would rightly run a mile if presented with these in a debut. When a reader opens a book, they are entering into a contract of trust with the author. In return for their investment of time and brain-power, the author will guide them on a worthwhile journey, confidently and skilfully, to a satisfying conclusion.

An author of Cormac McCarthy's stature has earned that trust. New authors have not. This is why new authors arguing that they can depart from certain conventions "because McCarthy did it" are entirely wrong in that assertion. McCarthy can do it because he has earned the trust that new authors haven't. Another example is Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, with its stuttering fragmented prose - you need to pay your dues, prove you can do it, before making such stylistic choices.

And one last note on The Road's style - I don't know if it's by design, or just a side-effect of the structure, but a big part of its page-turning power is down to those constant breaks in the narrative. We all know the psychology of the short chapter -- if there's only a few more pages, the reader will keep going -- but McCarthy has stretched that idea even further. At every moment that I considered putting it down, I looked ahead and thought, well, the next bit's only tiny, so I'll keep going.

And going, and going, and going…

I'm Back - for a little while, anyway

I have a few days of respite from my recent craziness, so I thought I'd pop up and say hello to my blogging friends (especially seeing as Josephine Damian has been making me feel guilty about staying away :P). I've been a busy boy with all sorts of things lately, and I will return at a later date to tell you what I've been up to. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a little of what I've been reading lately...

Rope Burns, by F.X. Toole

For those of you who don't know, Rope Burns is a short story collection based in the world of boxing. It was adapted for the screen as Million Dollar Baby, which deservedly won four Oscars. F.X. Toole was the pen name used by boxing trainer Jerry Boyd. He was also a model and a bullfighter in his lifetime. He took up boxing, and went pro, in his forties. He didn't become a published author until his seventies (an especially astute agent read one of his short stories and snapped him up). If ever there was a lesson in not giving up, this is it. Sadly, F.X. Toole passed away before Million Dollar Baby took the Oscars by storm, but he left behind a collection of stories that manages the rare feat of being both brutal and beautiful. Check it out, along with a posthumously published novel, Pound for Pound, which I intend on reading very soon.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

Now, opinions are divided on this one. I know at least two friends of this blog were less than dazzled with this Pulitzer winner. I picked it up over the weekend, having meant to read it for ages, and I've got to say I'm absolutely loving it. Although I'm a fast writer, I'm a painfully slow reader. It takes me ages to get through a book, partly because I get so little time to read, and partly because I tend to reread passages as I go, making sure it's all sunk in. Like Rope Burns, I've found myself chewing my way through this book in record time. True, it's hardly a sprawling epic at less than 240 pages, but it's rare that I find a book that grabs me so hard I have to keep going. I'm really finding it hard to put this one down. A lot of that is about the style, and I may post later in the week to expand on that. Anyway, for those of you who didn't like it, I understand, it isn't for everybody, but we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I think it's terrific.

My ever expanding To-Be-Read pile has a few more interesting bits and bobs to go yet. The Mark by blogging editor/author Jason Pinter, to name but one. Plus, I'm looking forward to re-reading American Tabloid (one of my all-time favourites) and The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy in anticipation of the third part of his American Underworld Trilogy, apparently titled Blood's a Rover, which I believe is due in the coming months.

And somewhere between all that, some writing might get done...

Happy New Year (and other stuff)

First of all, Happy New Year to all my blogging friends. As I get older, I'm finding the Christmas season is as much about learning for me as anything else. The kicker is that usually they're things I should have known all along. Here are three things I learned this Christmas (a.k.a. Conduit states the bleedin' obvious...)

• A small gesture for you can mean the world to someone else.
• A kind word can mean the difference between quitting and going on.
• A little romance goes a long way.

What I'm Reading

I have once again put down a huge bestseller half-finished because, frankly, it's rubbish. I find this happening more and more often. Josephine Damian has been blogging about this very thing. I'm not a fast reader, and have little spare time to devote to it, so that time is precious. I'm gettting sick of realising too late that I've wasted a significant amount of that time on a lazy author going through the motions, providing me with two dimensional characters, plotting for plot's sake, twists for twist's sake, and trite cliches.

It was a very pleasant surprise to then pick up a book by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr called Bust, as recommended to me by Chris Holm, and find it to be the most fun, entertaining, surprising, joyously trashy, wickedly nasty novel I have read in a very long time. I believe it's part of a series so I'll be hitting Amazon for the rest.

Every Day Fiction

For anyone that's interested, my flash fiction piece Opening Time will appear in the January 3rd edition of Every Day Fiction. I'll post a link when it's out there.

Ira Levin

I just discovered via agent Lori Perkins' blog that Ira Levin died this week. Although not prolific, he managed to write some tremendous novels, often with entirely bonkers concepts (Mengele makes baby Hitlers! Lapsed Catholic girl makes baby Satan! Suburban men make robot babes!). He carried these ideas off with such unflinching disregard for 'believability' that the reader has no choice but to be swept along.

Rosemary's Baby is one of the finest horror novels ever written, with an ending so creepy it'll linger with you long after you've finished the book. It also happened to make one of the finest horror movies too, and even after forty years it remains a lesson in the power of subtlety in expressing the unspeakable. When I visited New York recently I spent a little while gazing up at the Dakota building, and while mindful of its place in Beatle history, it was really the The Bramford I was seeing.

Sigh. I guess I'll have to crack out my well-thumbed paperback of Rosemary's Baby and give it another whirl.

Seeking Recommendations...

I'd like to read some good quality commercial crime novels, preferably set in New York. Doesn anyone have any recommendations? Nearest thing to that I read lately was Interpretation of Murder, which I enjoyed a lot, but it was set a century ago. Anybody have anything more up to date?

Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box

I don't often comment about what I've been reading, but I'm especially enjoying Heart-Shaped Box (hereafter known as HSB) by Joe Hill at the moment. As I'm sure you know, Joe Hill comes from pretty good writing stock, namely Stephen King. You don't have to dive too far into HSB to know he's his father's son. There's a certain directness, a one-on-one feel, to the voice. It's as if it were an old friend telling the tale. There are also familiar tics, such as repeated phrases coming from radios and TVs, or the stretches of back story. It's very reminiscent of King's late seventies to early eighties work. In other words, King at his best.

There are differences, though, and they're certainly enough to allow Hill to stand apart from his illustrious parentage. He writes leaner and cleaner, for a start, staying well clear of the bloat that King is prone to, and the tone is more contemporary in an indefinable way.

Anyway, it's a bloody good read, and well worth checking out if you haven't. I'm also enjoying it for the rock and metal references. But the reason I post about it is the remarkable story of its publication.

It wasn't kept secret for long that Hill was son to arguably the twentieth century's most successful author. But, it has never been overtly used to sell the book. Would I have checked it out if not for his dad? That's debatable. What has been stated, though, is that Hill's agent didn't know for several years, and neither did his editor or publisher. In other words, Joe Hill never used his father's name to grease his way to publication. I think that's very admirable, and I'm not sure I'd be big enough to avoid such temptation.

He let the book stand on its own merits, and as many an agent said, good writing trumped all. I believe Miss Snark coined that phrase, and Nathan Bransford has paraphrased it on more than one occasion. I must admit, I have often viewed that phrase with a little skepticism. After all, Katie Price (Google her, my American friends) got a lucrative book deal purely on the basis of having enormous bazongas. She once described her writing process as talking into a Dictaphone, and handing it to some bloke who goes off and turns it into a story.

Agents often talk about 'platform' and its ability to shift books. It's not limited to non-fiction; many a celebrity has 'written' a novel for a large advance. That someone with Joe Hill's pedigree, someone who could have simply whispered dear old dad's name to have publishers waving their chequebooks, did it the old-fashioned way, and actually wrote a damned good book - well, I find that both heartening and inspirational.

Well done, Joe Hill. You deserve your success.

Progress Report - Word count 67,084 (wp) 84,000 (pr)

Just a mini post to say things are progressing well. I hadn't written anything since Wednesday, what with getting stuck in lifts and whatnot, plus I spent yesterday working on my website, which I hope to have online by the end of the week. So, this evening I sat down and churned out almost 2500 words. It's a bank holiday tomorrow, so I'll have time to work some more tomorrow between the novel and the website.

On a different note, I'm currenly reading Story by Robert McKee. So far, a very interesting book. I'll post more about that when I have the time.