From Boston To LA: Crime Writer Dennis Lehane Drinks In Some Sunshine

Carolyn Kellogg at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on Dennis Lehane's move to LA from Boston and the crime writer's novels, films and TV work.

Dennis Lehane is one of Boston's best-known writers. Born and raised in the community of Dorchester (or, as he would pronounce it, "Dorchestah"), he's got a Bostonian no-nonsense, tough-guy edge, and his books, including "Mystic River" and the six-book Kenzie-Gennaro mystery series, are set on the city's streets.

And yet here he is eating lunch by the ocean in Santa Monica. Massachusetts remains snowbound, while here we can see the Pacific glittering blue, tourists passing, mercury pushing 80 on a postcard-perfect Southern California day. The great Boston writer is now an Angeleno.  

Lehane lists a couple of factors in moving cross-country with his family: His wife likes the warm weather, their young kids have a great quality of life, and he has a ton of work in Hollywood. Recent completed projects include "The Drop" (James Gandolfini's last film) and a consulting producer role on "Boardwalk Empire." Ben Affleck, who directed and starred in an adaptation of Lehane's "Gone Baby Gone," is slated to do the same with his Prohibition-era drama "Live by Night."

Which brings us to Lehane's newest novel, "World Gone By" (William Morrow: 320 pp., $27.99), a continuation of the "Live by Night" story. In it, Joe Coughlin, the gangster son of a Boston police captain, has set up shop in 1940s Tampa, Fla. Rum-running has grown into corruption and graft that looks almost respectable.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-dennis-lehane-20150308-story.html

I reviewed Lehane's Live By Night for the Philadelphia Inquirer and you can read the review via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/11/live-by-night-dennis-lehanes-prohibtion.html

Raymond Chandler To Get A Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame

Carolyn Kellog at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on the late great crime novelist Raymond Chandler, who will receive his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

One of Los Angeles' greatest noir writers will be getting a permanent place in the sun: on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Raymond Chandler is one of 30 people who will get such stars in 2015.

Most of the stars on the Walk of Fame honor people we see on the screen; others in the class of 2015 include Will Ferrell, Julianna Margulies and Daniel Radcliffe. There are also many stage actors, radio stars and film directors. When it comes to writers, there are few.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-raymond-chandler-star-hollywood-walk-of-fame-20140626-story.html

You can also read my interview with Chandler biographer Tom Williams via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/03/my-crime-beat-column-mysterious.html

And you can read my Crime Beat column on Raymond Chandler's influence on crime novels and films via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/11/on-raymond-chandlers-influence-on-crime.html

'The Great Gatsby' Review (The Book, That Is, Circa 1925)

Carolyn Kellogg at the Los Angeles Times offers us a look back at the Times' 1925 review of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby.

Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" opens wide this Friday. Eighty-eight years before -- to the day -- the Los Angeles Times ran this review of the original "The Great Gatsby," the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Today, perception of the book's reception in 1925 varies -- some say it was successful, others that it was a dismal failure -- but our review, by Lillian C. Ford, is purely positive. And she captures something of what has made the book a classic.

"The Seamy Side of Society," read the headline, with this below: "In 'The Great Gatsby,' F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a New Kind of Underworld Character and Throws the Spotlight on the Jaded Lives of the Idle Rich." The full book review follows:

F. Scott Fitzgerald, who won premature fame in 1920 as the author of "This Side of Paradise," a book that first turned into literary material the flapper of wealthy parents and of social position, whose principal lack was inhibitions, has in "The Great Gatsby" written a remarkable study of today. It is a novel not to be neglected by those who follow the trend of fiction.

Wisely, Mr. Fitzgerald tells his story through the medium of Nick Carroway [sic], who, after graduation from Yale in 1915 had "participated in the delayed Teutonic migration known as the great war." When the story opens, Carroway had left his western home and had gone east to learn the bond business. He was living in a tiny house at West Egg, Long Island, near an emblazoned mansion owned by the great Gatsby, an almost mythical person who lived sumptuously, knew no one, but entertained everyone at his great parties given Saturday nights.

Very gradually this Gatsby is revealed as a restless, yearning, baffled nobody, whose connection with bootleggers and bond thieves is suggested, but never mapped out, an odd mixture of vanity and humility, of overgrown ego and of wistful seeker after life.     

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-great-gatsby-review-book-1925-20130506,0,3860329.story 

Woe Is Poe: The TV Show 'The Following" Loses Its Literary Grip

Poor Poe. Carolyn Kellogg at the Los Angeles Times points out that Edgar Allan Poe is maligned in the new TV show The Following.

Woe to Edgar Allan Poe. In life, the writer was ill-served by fortune: orphaned as a toddler, an indebted college dropout, Poe moved often, usually to dodge creditors. His beloved wife (and, um, first cousin) died in the Bronx at age 24; two years later Poe himself was dead. The circumstances of his death remain mysterious -- the 40-year-old left Richmond, Va., en route to Philadelphia and turned up five days later at a pub in Baltimore, where he was delirious, wearing someone else's clothes and was at the end of a deathly bender or something else that drove him into the arms of the grim reaper.

Yes, his stories were dark. Characters are buried alive, blackmailed, overwhelmed by guilt; they exact revenge and try and fail to escape fate; they are tortured and even murdered.
What is not in any of his work: A serial killer. Or a death cult.

So, to "The Following." In the show, Kevin Bacon is former FBI agent Randy Hardy, who locked up an English professor-turned-serial killer. The professor, Joe Carroll (played by James Purefoy) was a Poe expert.

By some twist of logic, we're meant to believe his Poe expertise led him to slaughter comely co-eds in a dorm. But... that's so un-Poe! In "The Murder in the Rue Morgue," sometimes called the first detective story, we're on the side of the investigator, not the criminal. When we're meant to observe the creepy gothic horror of his stories, it's the sense of inevitability or fate that gives the reader a frisson, not the gore: someone is buried alive, or dissolves in a moment.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-woe-is-poe-the-tv-show-the-following-is-a-horror-20130121,0,3709889.story

Note: I agree with Carolyn Kellogg, and I think The Following sort of rips off Michael Connelly's The Poet and Thomas Harris' Red Dragon. 

Yet despite its failings, I still liked the TV show. Kevin Bacon is very good and so is James Purefoy an the supporting cast.

The above photo by Sarah Shatz/Fox show Kevin Bacon at the scene of the crime.

You can read about Poe in an earlier post via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/04/my-first-on-crime-thrillers-column-for.html

LA Times Video Chat With Crime Writer Michael Connelly About Harry Bosch and 'The Black Box'

Carolyn Kellogg the Los Angeles Times offers a video interview with crime novelist Michael Connelly about his new crime thriller The Black Box and his LAPD character Harry Bosch.

Bestselling author Michael Connelly joined the Los Angeles Times for a video chat on the publication day of his new mystery, "The Black Box."

In the book, set in present day, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch investigates a cold case: a murder committed during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. That was the same year readers were introduced to Bosch in Connelly's first book, "The Black Echo."

In the interview, Connelly talks candidly about what it's been like writing Harry Bosch stories for 20 years. It's less about plot, he explains, than character. In recent books Bosch's daughter Maddie has become a part of his life, expanding his emotional range to include the responsibilities and worries of a parent.

You can read the rest of the piece and watch the interview via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-michael-connelly-video-chat-20121127,0,1071256.story

You can also read my interview with Michael Connelly froma few years ago via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/04/killers-cops-and-crime-reporters-q-with.html

A Farewell To Ernest Hemingway's Wyoming Cabin?

Carolyn Kellogg at The Los Angeles Times reports that the Wyoming ranch where Ernest Hemingway finished his novel A Farewell to Arms has been sold.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/04/a-farewell-to-ernest-hemingways-wyoming-cabin.html