A Writer Writing About a Writer Writing a Book

Okay, it reads a bit like a writing class device, but it still is a Stansberry. Manifesto for the Dead unlike his other stories is set in Los Angeles, in the seventies when Hollywood and Vine was at its seediest. The main character is based on a real author, Jim Thompson. I did my WIKI research a couple of days ago, eeriely on his birthday, 9/27/06. I knew nothing about him, never seeking out his pulp fiction genre, but discovered he wrote The Killer Inside Me and The Grifters. His write-up is an unbelievable six degrees of separation mentioning Thompson's affiliations with Kubrick, Peckinpah, Redford. I'll need to watch again Farewell, My Lovely, the Mitchum version as Thompson plays the judge.

So Stansberry enters the chain of Thompson devotees. I hear Stansberry's thoughts in about tensing reality against lurid mental crimes in Thompson's words: "... up against that wall himself, clutching all those ragged ends, stories within stories that almost webbed together, the various pieces fraying and disappearing into a darkness that swallowed all calculation. Meanwhile, the killer you had created roamed the city. Your careful plan -- out of control." Echoes of The Confession in this rumination, a theme of Stansberry that the mental deviousness behind the brutal crime is equally, if not more, interesting than the blood splatter patterns. More obviously, the detective in Manifesto asks Thompson: "... Let me ask you something ... I got a chance to look at some of those books of yours. And I been wondering. They got much biography in them? Auto, I mean. Tales of the self ... I mean, you seem like a nice guy. And I ask myself, how could a nice guy write books like those. I tell myself, well, all of us, we got something a little weird inside ..." I can imagine this as a mental debate in Stansberry's head, if not actual cocktail party banter.

His voice is much more raw in this book but despite all the references to the inopportune manifestations of male anatomical parts, there is no actual sex in the book, it's more a love affair with alcohol.

Already started another Stansberry last night, the first of the Dante Mancuso series. Am I hungering to become jaded? What vicarious thrills am I looking for? Am I an author-wanna-be with less guts than Stansberry because I cannot imagine writing this luridly, vividly?

Plothunter

Why do I even bother polishing off the stragglers on my picaresque list? I have had Uwe Timm's Headhunter on my table only occasionally picking it up to read some more baffling, wandering and plot-less rants of the main character, whose name I cannot even recall. The premise sounded good -- a financial con man -- but I glean nothing from the almost 300 pages I read and how absolutely no curiosity to see what might happen. Nothing from the pages I read suggests it is moving towards any crisis or revelation.

Off to the library to pick up three more Stanberry mysteries.

Another Niche Publishing House: Hard Case Crime For Every Secret Revealed, Another is More Deeply Hidden

There used to be a second hand bookstore down by the bus depot where the books they sold all had lurid covers, mangled pages and appealed to a certain type of buyer. Oh, they stocked some political polemics there too, but I collected that bit of information from a friend, never having the nerve to do more than furtively glance in the windows and quickly move on. So it was almost in shame that I walked around the past couple of days carrying the paperback by Domenic Stansberry, The Confession, with it garish drawing of a frightened, big-busted red head and the shadowy, darkened hands of her assailant, wielding a tie to choke her.

Stansberry once again sets his story around San Francisco, this time narrated by Jake Danser, a forensic psychologist who usually testifies as to an accused criminal’s insanity. Danser’s knowledge of psychopathic behaviors and his self-aggrandizement, coupled with en pointe phrasing and structure by Stansberry, makes this book a page turner, one that has tension building from the very beginning, and tone that is fast paced and flippant in contrast to the operatic elegy of his Last Days of Il Duce.

Danser writes his story as self-analysis, a report on the mental health of someone who only wants to reveal so much about himself, mostly the attractive angles. His flirtation with a more full disclosure becomes a bit more explicit with the start of chapter seven: “Absent death, the attention flags. Every newspaper editor knows this, as does every writer of lurid tales. Those of you who do not know my story – who missed it as it ran though the tabloids – may find yourself impatient. Of what am I accused? What are my crimes, you wonder, and what is my motive for this so-called confession? To deceive.”

As Danser prepares his expert witness testimony for alleged wife murderer, a defense of situational memory loss, he quotes from Kleindst, that this syndrome is easily feigned among criminal populations and “practiced with great flair by psychopaths and other malingerers.” A few pages later, Danser on the stand displays his own kind of sociopathic behavior: “ … I paused, my eyes skittering over the jurors, drawing in first one, then another. I was flirting with them, I suppose, the way a speaker flirts with a crowd, bestowing a glance here, there (and his oral argument resumes) … But their social dexterity is a mask. Underneath, psychopaths lack compassion …”

By chapter fifteen as Danser continues his treatise, touting his expertise, he opines: “… This kind of memory loss, though, is relatively rare. At leas that is the current thinking. Most of these amnesiacs, in criminal cases, they are liars. In reality, they remember every instant. They relish their crimes. They compose memoirs, elaborate testimonials that feign innocence yet contain within them the secret admission of guilt. When cornered, they place the blame elsewhere – on some associate, perhaps, scheming against them." Okay, here you have the plot in a nutshell: Danser’s dalliance, his mistress herself being strangled, his squaring off against the prosecutor who is seen quite often with Danser’s wife, low-life, seedy private investigators, high-stakes gamblers pursued by the mob -- a cast of usual suspects.

Stansberry advances the story line with almost imperceptible increments – just the right word, an off-hand comment or aside, faint childhood memory – to plant enough doubt and no court room solid way to prove guilt.

Like the other ones of his I’ve read so far, Stansberry is writing about crime or sin or passion as having its roots deep within a person, arising from his family and surroundings. Danser mulls while jogging: “… thinking about the notion that the things that happen to us, they are not just arbitrary, but a reflection of our inner state. The turmoil of the self is the turmoil of the world.”

The Confession won Stansberry another Edgar and I continue to race through his mysteries, reserving yet another two at the library yesterday. But given the other mounds of awards that the books published by Hard Case Crime, I will also look for:

Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas
Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie
Robbie’s Wife by Russell Hill
Money Shot by Christa Faust
Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips

All Good Things Italian

I guess I'm celebrating my own Feast of St. Genaro in a way, reading nothing but Stansberry noir mysteries, eating tiramisu for breakfast and plodding along filling in the enormous monochromatic sky in my latest jig saw puzzle, Canaletto's painting of St. Mark's Plaza in Venice. Oh and drinking Prosecco as a last fling of summer. And watching Italian movies -- Scorcese's Last Temptation of Christ (with a wonderful compadre depiction of Judas by Harvey Kietel), and with subtitles, the Cannes winner The Son's Room.

But this is a book-based blog, so on to Stansberry. The Last Days of Il Duce is once again set in the old once Italian, now Chinese North Beach neighborhood of San Fransisco. It is one of his earlier books, not starring Dante Mancuso, but introducing other local characters who reappear in later stories. The introductory paragraph is one of the best I've encountered in years:

"My name is Niccolo Jones, and I'm writing this down in the prison yard at Coldwater Penitentiary. Three people I used to know are dead. Two of them I loved, the other I hated -- though lately I am less sure about the difference between those feelings. I tell myself it doesn't matter ... " How penultimately noir. Only after finishing the book, did I find out it not only won an Edgar in its category, but also was nominated for a Hammett, and he does write a la Dashiell.

Stansberry's San Fransisco is vivid, as engaging as Burke's bayous or Kennedy's Albany. These books are ones that should have been on our place-based book list last year. The sense of a lost community, still populated with living ghosts, echoing memories and faded photographs under the glass in empty neighborhood bars, not only created a threatening, dark atmosphere, but set the motivation of all characters. Family and history prevail, expressing themselves in genetic lust, avarice and ultimately, criminality.

This is not the kind of book that surprises you because you never could quite figure out who done it. Nick is not the only guilty party. The book is a development of his motivation and the crime (and lifetime of events) that brings him to shoot two. The two victims, as foretold in that first paragraph, can only in hindsight be categorized as heroine or villainess, corrupt capo or benefactor.

Hot on the heels of tearing through Il Duce, I read The Ancient Rain, thereby discovering the role of the title in a Stansberry plot. Like Il Duce, Ancient Rain evokes a time past, a series of events from decades ago that are the seeds that produce the crimes. This story is one of the Dante Mancuso series. Here Dante is gathering evidence for the defense of a man suspected as killing a bystander in an SLA bank robbery twenty-seven years ago.

Stansberry weaves character lines: the man who may not have done the crime, the daughter of the victim who becomes mentally unbalanced and impoverished financially and emotionally from witnessing her death, the vengeful detectives and prosecutors who take advantage of the post 9/11 terrorism fear to resurrect this cold case. It explores the case from the personal motives of all involved, wherein their own profiles and press are prime movers.

Taken side by side with Il Duce, and setting Dante aside, Nick begins his story in jail, admitting his guilt; Owens never reveals if he participated in the bank heist. The book plays with that ambiguity. The reader suspects but never knows for sure and the vigilante justice at the end does not feel truly just. Also comparing Ancient Rain with Hugo's Condemned Man and other books I've recently read on crime and punishment, I conclude the crime engages me more than the administering of the justice. Hugo's condemned man, because he never acknowledges either is charge or his complicity, is merely a mouthpiece for social reform, never a man learning from his remorse.

The Equivalent of a "Get-Away Day" Book

Since I only could take it out for seven days, I rushed to finish the last English horse racing murder mystery by Dick Francis, Crossfire. This was also a fitting week to read it since the get away day at "our" track was Monday.

His last four books have been co-authored with his Baby Huey sized son, Felix -- at least the physical difference is blatant on the cover when Felix stands next to former steeplechase jockey, frail Francis.

Although I am sure I'd never get an advisor willing to endorse this subject, I would love to write a graduate thesis on the structure and themes of all Dick's books. The last two are classics: a somewhat anti-social hero, major family dysfunctions, a tentative love interest, corruption in the racing industry, and absolutely gruesome, horrid tortures. Something for everyone.

Dick also frequently resorts to double entendre titles and Crossfire refers to some esoteric racing term explaining a horse's missteps, clipping his own hooves. It also applies to the hero, Tom Forsythe, a recuperating British officer wounded by an IED in Afghanistan. And finally, cross fire figures in the story's gun battle conclusion.

I'm sure Felix's contribution for the last few books goes beyond research duties. I wonder if he will join my lost of rare second generation authors, a list that now only includes Alaistar Burke, daughter of James Lee, as a most readable successor. I will always have my memory of meeting Dick Francis at the Horsing Racing Hall of Fame where he autographed his book for my older son.

I have read everyone one of his books. There are a few other authors who I consume soup to nuts: Kinky Friedman (well maybe only his earlier ones); JD Robb's In Death series; Dickens for my studies in college. Thinking over this habit last night, I am toying with hopefully a more successful book list for 2011; namely, Broadly and Deeply. I plan on finding several writers with page turning books and then reading everything they have written. How does that grab you oh silent Slackers?