A Witness To Anarchy: Joseph Wambaugh On The 1965 Watts Riots - From Inside A Black-And-White

In light of the street riots in Ferguson, Missouri and assaults on police officers around the country, it is interesting to look back at the 1965 Watts riots from the view of a police officer inside a black and white patrol car.

Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant and author of best-selling and critically acclaimed novels and nonfiction books about LAPD officers, such as The Onion Field, The Choirboys and Hollywood Station, offers a look back at Watts in 1965 in the Los Angeles Times.

7 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 12, 1965, about 2,000 people gather at 116th and Avalon. Tension is still high after the mob violence of the previous night following the arrest of an alleged drunk driver, but the people are not rioting.

A short time later, random shots are fired at a police vehicle on Imperial Highway, but there are no reports of massive rioting. Many of the officers in police divisions north of 77th Street Station listen on police radios and do not believe that the volatile unrest near Watts will spread to other parts of South Los Angeles.

The next afternoon, however, calls go out to officers at home, even those who work plainclothes assignments, ordering them to report to 77th Street Station in uniform. The nameless voice on the line adds: “Leave the necktie and soft hat but bring your helmet and baton. You're about to witness anarchy.”

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

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0811-wambaugh-watts-riots-20150811-story.html

Note: You can also read my interview with Joseph Wambaugh via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/11/semper-cop-interview-with-novelist.html

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

Unpublished Raymond Chandler Work Discovered

Michael Schaub at the Los Angeles Times reports on the discovery of a unpublished work by crime novelist Raymond Chandler.

Most fans of Raymond Chandler associate the author with his hardboiled mystery novels and Philip Marlowe, his tough 1940s private detective with a taste for nicotine and alcohol. But it turns out there was another side to the iconic writer.

Los Angeles author Kim Cooper discovered an unpublished comic libretto written by Chandler in the Library of Congress, Sarah Weinman writes at the Guardian. The short text, containing the lyrics to an opera called "The Princess and the Pedlar," has been in the library for almost 100 years.

 

Chandler, who was born in America, raised in England and moved back to the U.S. after college, registered the libretto with the Library of Congress in 1917. That year, America had finally joined World War I, and Chandler traveled to British Columbia to enlist in the Canadian Army. The two events coincide: He enlisted Aug. 14; on Aug. 29, the Library of Congress registered his libretto.     

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

 

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-unpublished-raymond-chandler-work-discovered-20141203-story.html 

Michael Connelly Sends LA Detective Harry Bosch Into 'The Burning Room'

Steph Cha offers a good review of Michael Connelly's latest Harry Bosch crime thriller, The Burning Room, in the Los Angeles Times.

Twenty-two years ago, Michael Connelly introduced the world to Harry Bosch, a determined cop with a haunted past and a heart of gold. Bosch was an old soul at the start of "Black Echo," a homicide detective in his early 40s with an infamous, colorful career and two tours in Vietnam to boot. In "The Burning Room," Bosch is in his mid-60s, reluctantly nearing the end of his career after 18 novels' worth of action and mystery. He's the oldest detective in the Open-Unsolved Unit, entering his final year on his Deferred Retirement Option Plan. "To him, every day he had left on the job was golden."

As part of a new departmental initiative, Bosch is paired with the youngest officer in his unit, a 28-year-old "slick sleeve" and rising star named Lucia Soto. The two form an amiable, productive partnership — not only is Soto smart, she's as hardworking and dogged as Bosch, driven in part by a formative tragedy in her childhood.

The novel centers on two cold cases with real reverberations in the present day. The first involves the recent death of paraplegic ex-mariachi Orlando Merced, caused by blood poisoning from the bullet lodged in his spinal column when he was shot in Mariachi Plaza 10 years earlier. The shooter was never found and the prevailing theory was that Merced was the victim of a stray bullet in a gang-related confrontation. Merced became a political symbol, trotted out regularly in a replica of his bloody shirt to add fuel to a mayoral campaign focused on the neglected communities of East Los Angeles.

 

As a result, Bosch and Soto's new case is high profile, high priority and politically sensitive. Merced's death opens fresh avenues of inquiry, his corpse offering up the only good clue to be had in years — the bullet comes from a rifle, throwing doubt on the theory of random violence.

While the Merced case cooks on one burner, Bosch discovers Soto investing precious time in another cold case, an apartment fire on Bonnie Brae that killed nine people, a woman and eight children in an unlicensed day care — an unsolved arson and multiple homicide. When Bosch learns that Soto was one of the children who survived, he finds a way for them to work both cases together. This plot bifurcation spreads out the book's momentum but not to ill effect. The device works thematically, both cases centering on crimes that claimed poor Latino victims, crimes that were never cleared.

 

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

 

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-michael-connelly-20141102-story.html 

 

You can also read my Q & A with Michael Connelly about his novels, the Internet, crime novels, crime, Clint Eastwood, and the current state of journalism via the below link:

 

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

Patrick McGoohan: The Spy Who Started It All

Susan King at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on one of my favorite actors and one of my favorite TV programs, Patrick McGoohan and The Prisoner.

There's never been a TV series quite like "The Prisoner," which premiered in England in 1967 and debuted in the U.S. the summer of 1968 on CBS.

Best described as James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka, the cult series revolved around a British secret agent (Patrick McGoohan) who wants to resign from the service. Deemed too dangerous to retire, they kidnap him and send him to an idyllic, though completely isolated, seaside resort called the Village.

There residents are assigned numbers instead of names and their every movement is followed by monitoring systems and security forces. And if someone tries to escape, they encounter a mysterious white balloon called Rover.

For 17 brilliant, surreal episodes, McGoohan's No. 6 was in constant battle with No. 2, a revolving door of henchmen who did the bidding for the unseen leader, who is naturally No. 1.

 "At the time, it was so original and unique," said McGoohan's daughter, actress Catherine McGoohan. "It completely took the secret agent spy story to a different level."

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

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-the-prisoner-20140426,0,3274542.story?track=rss#axzz301hdF2xr

You can also read an earlier post on Patrick McGoohan via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/09/patrick-mcgoohan-reliving-work-of.html

Note: I'm also a huge fan of Patrick McGoohan's earlier TV series, Secret Agent (Danger Man in the U.K.). I purchased the DVD complete collection and over the course of this past year, I watched all of the Secret Agent episodes. Secret Agent is an intelligent, cool and clever show that holds up after all these years.

Benjamin Black's "Black-Eyed Blonde" Offers Soft-Boiled Raymond Chandler

I don't much care for continuation novels. The authors have passed on and their iconic characters, like James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, get plenty of exposure on film and TV. Do we really need to see these well-known characters continue in print as well? A continuation novel is especially hard to accept when the original writer has a singular voice and style. 

Case in point is the new continuation novel featuring Philip Marlowe, the late Raymond Chandler's iconic private eye. Is there a more singular, stylish writer than Chandler?

David L. Ulin, the Los Angeles Times book critic reviewed the Marlowe continuation novel.

Raymond Chandler is among our most stylized writers, an innovator of what we might call high noir, with its cut-glass imagery, its cynical world-weariness (although never ennui). Such a posture defines him — or, more accurately, his detective, Philip Marlowe — as a wise-cracker with repartee as sharp as a fedora's brim.

And yet, the more I read (and re-read) Chandler, the more I appreciate his vision of Los Angeles, the "big angry city" he described as "no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness" in his 1953 novel "The Long Goodbye."

This issue of place, it turns out, is one of the challenges faced by Benjamin Black's "The Black-Eyed Blonde," a new Marlowe book written under the auspices of Chandler's estate. Black is the pseudonym of Man Booker-winning author John Banville, who since 2007 has published a series of crime novels that take place in Dublin, where he lives. As he admits in the acknowledgments, Southern California is a less familiar territory, and one it appears he had no particular inclination to learn.

... That becomes most glaring when Black turns to the city: "I got up from my desk and took my pipe to the window and stood looking out at nothing in particular. In an office across the street, a secretary in a tartan blouse and wearing earphones from a Dictaphone machine was bent over her typewriter, tapping away. I had passed her in the street a few times. Nice little face, shy smile; the kind of girl who lives with her mother and cooks meat loaf for Sunday lunch. This is a lonely town." It's a pleasant pastiche, although it doesn't earn its closing line — but it can't compare to the depth, the nuance, of the real thing.

"When I got home," Chandler writes in "The Long Goodbye," "I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. … Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs."

If it seems unfair to hold "The Black-Eyed Blonde" to such a standard, it's a standard the book demands. Why take on the territory of Chandler when Chandler was so perfectly himself? "The Black-Eyed Blonde" is a competent enough little mystery; the missing persons case leads to murder and betrayal, and the privileged are revealed to be corrupted, as we knew they were.
But that's the thing about Chandler — the mystery was never quite the point.

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

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-benjamin-black-20140309,0,6408768.story?track=rss#axzz2vJl3XG10

You can also read my column on Raymond Chandler via the below link:

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

Crime Writer Andrea Camilleri, 88, Wins Award, Takes On Imbeciles

Hector Tobar at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on Andrea Camilleri, author of The Age of Doubt.

The Italian novelist Andrea Camilleri accepted the prestigious Pepe Carvalho prize for lifetime work at the BCNegra noir literary festival in Barcelona last week. And he made it clear that, at 88, he’s still got a lot of crime writing left in him

Camilleri was born and raised in Sicily and writes in a mixture of Italian and Sicilian. His novels are populated with a host of characters and settings, including corrupt politicians, illegal trash dumps, goat herders, the underground sex trade and, of course, the Mafia. Camilleri’s alter ego is Inspector Salvo Montalbano, the protagonist of more than a dozen novels published in English by Picador and Mantle.

The fictional Montalbano also lives in Sicily. Born in 1950, the fictional Montalbano is getting on in years too. And, like his creator Camilleri, he has no plans of retiring.

“He feels older than he is because he’s spent his whole life surrounded by imbeciles,” Camilleri told the Madrid newspaperABC. “That’s what 90% of criminals are, and if you live surrounded by imbeciles, life isn’t very nice, but he’s terrified of retirement. What will he do? Walk the dog?”

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

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-crime-writer-andrea-camilleri-88-award-imbeciles-20140211,0,2457282.story#axzz2tVoiaIcD 

When Dashiell Met Raymond, Or The Day Hammett Met Chandler

Carol Kellogg at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece about when the two giants of crime fiction met.

Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, the two masters of classic noir fiction, met just once. That was 78 years ago today, Jan. 11, 1936, in Los Angeles.

The occasion was the first West Coast get-together for Black Mask Magazine. A photograph (see above) taken at the end of the meal shows 10 pulp writers gathered patiently around the end of a table. Chandler and Hammett are both standing: Chandler has the pipe. Hammett, the tallest, is at the far right.

Of the 10, it was Hammett and Chandler whose work would become the most enduring. But there was no way of knowing that at the time -- while both authors contributed to Black Mask, the two were at very different places in their careers.

Hammett was the more successful, by far. He'd published his first Continental Op novel in 1929 and "The Maltese Falcon," featuring detective Sam Spade, in 1930. "The Maltese Falcon" wasn't yet a film, but his novel "The Thin Man" was. Released in 1934, it was a commercial and critical success. "The Thin Man" was such a hit that Hammett had been persuaded to come to Hollywood to help write the sequel.

By comparison, Chandler was a novice. He'd published a half-dozen short stories and that was it. He was much less accomplished than Hammett, and on top of that, six years older. Chandler didn't begin writing until he was in his 40s -- and then only after getting fired from his job at an oil company.
No wonder Chandler didn't make much of an impression on Hammett -- who, apparently, never bothered to write a word about him.

Later, of course, Hammett and Chandler would be tied together as top detective writers of their age -- or any age, for that matter. 

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

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-when-dashiell-met-raymond-20140110,0,7730928.story#axzz2qBPPCqXv 

Reading A Novel Exercises "Muscles" In The Brain, Researchers Find

Hector Tobar at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on what researchers found out about the brain when they conducted a study of people who read Robert Harris' novel Pompeii.

We all know that reading a novel can transport you, delight you and intrigue you while you’re reading it. Now, thanks research by scientists at Emory University, we know that immersing yourself in a novel causes measurable physical changes in the brain that can be detected up to five days after the reader closes the book.

The Emory researchers, in a paper for the journal Brain Connectivity, compared the effect to "muscle memory."

"The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist," neuroscientist Gregory Berns said, according to a report in the journal Science Codex. "We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else's shoes in a figurative sense. Now we're seeing that something may also be happening biologically."

 

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

 

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-reading-a-novel-makes-muscles-in-the-brain-researchers-find-20140103,0,6975108.story#axzz2pWGhyTTL 

Joseph Wambaugh's Hollywood Confidential: The Actor, The Comic And LAPD Vice

Joseph Wambaugh, former LAPD sergeant and best-selling author of classic police novels like The Choir Boys and Hollywood Station, and nonfiction classics like The Onion Field and Echoes in the Darkness, offers a good piece in the Los Angeles Times. 

A prominent obituary in The Times last Sunday took me back to a night in 1962 when I was working the vice detail out of Wilshire Division. We were trying to bust after-hours drinking spots engaging in illegal alcohol sales, prostitution and drug activity. I had been the undercover operator on a recent takedown, and on this particular night our sergeant and one vice team were trying the same tactic on a second persistent offender, this time in a residential area. My partner and I, along with another vice team, were providing backup, out of sight but on the tactical radio frequency.

... Even then I was having thoughts about a writing career sometime in the future, and I constantly scribbled notes and saved them. As best I can recall from those old notes, here is how it was related to me from the moment both men produced identification.

Vice Cop No. 1 said: "Hey, this guy is Lenny Bruce! Lenny freaking Bruce!"

Indeed it was. Lenny Bruce, the notorious stand-up comic who specialized in obscene attacks on establishment figures (including cops), was standing on the curb and shaking his head when asked if the bag of dope belonged to him.

The other passenger, a tall, fair-haired young man with an upmarket Brit accent, was volubly denying any knowledge of how the bag could have gotten onto the taxi seat. They were told that since neither claimed ownership, they would both be booked for felony possession. The taxi was about to be sent on its way when the tall guy said, "Wait!"

He went straight to the sergeant and asked his name. When he heard an Irish surname, he informed the sergeant that he too was Irish and that he had labored long in British theater with limited success, but that he was in Los Angles to promote a soon-to-be-released movie, "a role of a lifetime," that would make him and the film known throughout the world. He mentioned the name of the movie, but it was no more familiar to the cops than was the actor's name.

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

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wambaugh-otoole-bruce-lapd-20131222,0,5009465.story#axzz2oEhn32N9

U.S. Navy Suspends Contracts With Second Firm In Bribery Scandal Over Foreign Ports

Tony Perry at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on the on-going Navy bribery investigation of  foreign ports.

In a widening scandal, the Navy cut ties Wednesday with a second international company over "questionable business integrity" involving lucrative contracts to service U.S. ships in foreign ports.

The Navy announced that it has suspended contracts with British-based Inchcape Shipping Services Ltd. and its affiliated companies. The firm has provided "ship husbanding" services to U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean.

Navy officials said that the suspension of Inchcape is not connected to the investigation into another longtime contractor in the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

The investigation into Glenn Defense Marine Asia has led to criminal charges in San Diego against two Navy commanders, a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, and two Malaysian business executives.

Also, two admirals have been put on leave, a Navy captain transferred to a lesser job, and another captain relieved of command of his ship.

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

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-navy-suspension-20131128,0,3918434.story#axzz2m4VsKRUD

You can also read an earlier posts on the Navy bribery investigation via the below links:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/11/two-top-us-naval-intelligence-officers.html

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/09/us-navy-commander-navy-contractor-and.html

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/10/hookers-part-of-alleged-navy-bribery.html

 

Case Closed: The Book That Cured Me Of JFK Conspiracies Once And For All

Hector Tobar at the Los Angeles Times tells readers that his reading of Gerald Posner's Case Closed cured him of Kennedy assassination conspiracies.

For a few years after seeing Oliver Stone’s 1991 political thriller "JFK," I was an assassination buff. I bought one of the books on which the film was based: “On the Trail of the Assassins” by Jim Garrison. I reread “Libra,” Don DeLillo’s masterful 1988 novel, in which Lee Harvey Oswald, assorted New Orleans spies and underworld figures conspire to kill the president. The assassination is the greatest mystery of our times, and in those books I found clues that left me feeling tantalizingly close to solving it.

But 20 years ago I was cured of my conspiracy-theory fever forever. A single book was the antidote.
Gerald Posner’s “Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK” was published in 1993, on the 30th anniversary of the assassination. As the title suggests, its chief protagonist is Oswald, a man with the kind of lonely, tortured and eventful biography that American culture has produced pretty routinely in the decades since. In fact, I would argue that there are echoes of Oswald’s life in figures as diverse as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and the two teenage boys who massacred their classmates at Columbine High School in Colorado.

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

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-book-jfk-conspiracies-cure-20131120,0,928971.story#axzz2ladTgHPE

Note: Like most of the military, intel and security people I worked with and knew during my years in the Navy and as a Defense Department civilian employee, I suspected that Fidel Castro killed President Kennedy. President Johnson also suspected Castro. But, like Hector Tobar, I too was cured of that suspicion by reading Gerald Posner's Case Closed. 

Ex-General Says Bradley Manning's Leaks Endangered Troops

Richard A. Serrano at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on a retired general's view of the damage caused by Bradley Manning's leaks..

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Robert A. Carr, the government’s first witness in the sentencing phase of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s court-martial, testified Wednesday that Manning’s disclosures to WikiLeaks endangered U.S. ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Carr, who oversaw the Pentagon's secret intelligence gathering but is now an executive at Northrop Grumman, said what Manning did “affected our ability to do our mission.”

On Tuesday, Manning was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act but was acquitted of the more serious charge of aiding the enemy by making the material available to Al Qaeda and other terrorist  groups. Military prosecutors now are out to win a maximum prison term of 136 years for the 25-year-old soldier.

Carr, who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency, also headed a Defense Department task force that assessed the fallout from the leaks.

Manning disclosed more than 700,000 combat strategies, State Department cables and terrorism  detainee assessments, and Carr said the U.S. military was stunned to discover so much material had been given to WikiLeaks.

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

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bradley-manning-sentencing-testimony-20130731,0,2222023.story 

'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 

California ManHunt: SWAT Team Searching For Ex-Cop

The Los Angeles Times reports on the manhunt for a former LAPD officer cop killer.

Fatigue-clad officers scoured the mountainous terrain near Big Bear after a burning pickup truck was found that may belong to a fugitive ex-Los Angeles police officer wanted in connection with a series of shootings that have left three people dead and two wounded.

The mountain community locked down schools and closed the nearby Bear Mountain Resort as television helicopters hovered overhead, showing footage of a SWAT team walking through the woods, rifles drawn.

A law enforcement source told The Times that the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department had deployed a team to the site of the truck as a precaution. Investigators were searching for a vehicle identification number on the charred truck to see if it belonged to the suspect, Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33. 

... Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2009, is suspected of shooting three police officers, one of whom died, in Riverside County early Thursday.

Dorner also is suspected of killing a couple in Orange County earlier this week who were found shot in a car. One of the victims was the daughter of a former LAPD captain named in the purported manifesto.

Dorner was believed to be carrying multiple weapons, including an assault rifle.

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

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/swat-team-searching-big-bear-mountain-for-wanted-ex-cop.html

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

Gregory Powell, 'Onion Field' Killer Dies In Prison At 79

Elaine Woo at the Los Angeles Times reports that Gregory Powell, one of two killers of an LAPD officer in an onion field in 1963, has died in a California prison. The crime was made famous by former LAPD Detective Sgt. Joseph Wambaugh's true crime book The Onion Field and the film later made from the book.

You can read the story via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-gregory-powell-20120814,0,6958401.story

You can also read an earlier post on a dedication ceremony in Los Angeles for the late Ian Campbell via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2012/08/hollywood-intersection-dedicated-to.html

Marlowe's Ghost: John Banville To Revive Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's Classic Private Eye Character

David L. Ulin at the Los Angeles Times wrote a piece on the news that author John Banville plans to write a continuation novel about Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's great private detective character.

Call me dubious. When Henry Holt announced Tuesday that it would be reviving Raymond Chandler’s detective hero Philip Marlowe— 54 years after the author’s final Marlowe novel, “Playback” — I was (to put it mildly) underwhelmed.

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Partly, that’s because the idea isn’t new: Robert B. Parker did it 20-some years ago, first with “Poodle Springs,” a novel Chandler started before his death in 1959, and then with “Perchance to Dream,” a sequel to “The Big Sleep.” If the notion of writing a sequel to the first novel in a series seems a bit redundant, then you’re beginning to see the source of my skepticism.

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

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http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-jc-the-reading-life-marlowes-ghost-20120808,0,1427687.story

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Note: The above photo shows actor James Garner as Philip Marlowe in the 1969 film Marlowe.