A Recent Crime Novel: Texas Vigilante, by Bill Crider

A Recent Crime Novel: Texas Vigilante, by Bill Crider

a review by Rich Horton

Bill Crider (b. 1941) is best known to me as a serious book collector with great knowledge in genres close to me -- pulps and mystery primarily, but also some interest in SF and Fantasy. He was a long time English professor. He is a life-long Texan. And he also has written a great many novels, mostly in the mystery/crime genre. He has won two Anthony awards, and been nominated for several Edgars, for his mystery fiction.

I had known Bill on a mailing list for some years, but I met him first just a few weeks ago at the World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio (not far from where Bill was born). We spoke only briefly. And just recently I heard that Bill has gone into hospice. It was clearly time for me to remedy a longstanding lacuna in my reading, and get to one of his books. (Bill was also a regular contributor to Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books.)


I chose Texas Vigilante, the second of his novels about Ellie Taine. Both books were published by Dell in 1999. The first of these is Outrage at Blanco, in which, I deduce from Texas Vigilante, Ellie is raped, and her husband murdered, after which she chases down the perpetrators and kills a couple of them. Texas Vigilante is set a year or so later. (Some time in the past, it seems, based on the lack of automobiles, which makes the ebook cover picture to the right not very accurate.) Ellie has inherited a ranch in Blanco, TX, from her friend Jonathan Crossland, and she is running it with the help of Lane Tolbert, his wife Sue and their young daughter Laurie. Meantime, Sue's brother, Angel Ware, is in prison. He's guilty of a whole raft of crimes (including burning down his parents' house with them in it) -- he's a pure sociopath. The prison guard is a sociopath himself, fond of torturing Angel for no apparent reason, and one day Angel takes the opportunity to escape while on a work detail. He is accompanied by another sociopath, the teenaged Hoot Riley (who seems a bit too interested in girls even younger then he is), as well as a professional criminal (Abilene Jack Sturdivant) and an unfortunate loser (Ben Jephson). Angel is the brains of the outfit, so they stick with him, even as his obsession to find his sister and her family seems dangerous.

Lane's brother Brady is a Texas Ranger, the one who actually arrested Angel, though Sue had turned him in. Obviously, Angel wants revenge on Sue and on Brady. The story then follows Angel's path to finding Sue; Brady's attempts to track down the escapees, and Ellie and her fellow ranchers as they worry about the danger posed by Angel. There are a variety of viewpoint characters, noticeably including a couple of less influential figures: Ben Jephson, the hapless prisoner dragged along on Angel's quest; and Shag Tillman, a lazy and cowardly but generally good-hearted Sheriff at Blanco.

The story is crisply told and fast-moving. There is a fair amount of mordant humor; and a lot of glimpses on the mental processes of some evil people, as well as some good people. Angel's plan is to kidnap Laurie -- who actually seems to like Angel, and seems to be one of the few people Angel has any concern for. That goes smoothly enough, followed by an obvious attempt to lure Brady and Lane Tolbert into an ambush. He doesn't count on Ellie Taine, however ... Nor, perhaps, on the unreliability of his fellow criminals. Nor on the Texas rain.

The book delivers on what it promised -- lots of action (and violence), lots of tension, really bad guys and competent good guys. It's a fun read (for values of fun that included spending a lot of time with some nasty people). It is, as I mentioned, the second book about Ellie Taine -- as far as I can tell, however, it was also the last, which is a shame. It seems at least one more book was potentially in the offing -- though the thought of another horrifying crime perpetrated against those close to her is a bit hard to take!

It's a shame we won't have Bill Crider -- and his writing and his knowledge -- for much longer, but I am glad I had the chance to meet him once, and to know him online for longer.

Old Bestseller: The Auction Block, by Rex Beach

Old Bestseller: The Auction Block, by Rex Beach

a review by Rich Horton

It's been a while since I published a review of an Old Bestseller of the sort that I feel is the core mission of this blog: forgotten popular fiction from the first half of the 20th Century. But here's a very good example of that sort of thing. And it's published on an auspicious day! (No, not Pearl Harbor Day. Instead, the 68th anniversary of the author's death!)

Rex Beach (1877-1949) was born in Michigan, raised in Florida, and went to law school in Chicago. He prospected for gold in Alaska (unsuccessfully), and he won a silver medal as part of the US Water Polo team in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. He turned to writing about this time, and his second novel, The Spoilers (1906) was the 8th bestselling novel of that year (according to Publishers' Weekly). He had the second, third and eighth bestselling novels of 1908. 1909, and 1912 as well. The Spoilers (based on his experiences in Alaska, and on a true incident of corruption) was made into a movie at least 5 times, once starring Gary Cooper, another time John Wayne.

Beach's novels were generally adventure novels, of the "he man" school of literature, often set on the frontier. In this context, The Auction Block (1914) is an outlier: it is to an extent (if not all that successfully) a "social" novel, it is set in New York society (and the demimonde), it is a love story, and it features relatively little action (though there is some gunplay, fast cars, and fights, just not a whole lot).

My copy appears to be the First Edition, from Harper and Brothers (in fair condition, no dj). It is copiously, and quite nicely, illustrated by the famous illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (of the "Gibson Girl").

It opens with the Knight family, from Upstate New York, in some trouble. Their father, Peter, a very weak man, had lost his bid for re-election as Sheriff, due to his corrupt actions. The son, Jim, is lazy and morally degenerate. They are to move to New York City, where a political mentor of Mr. Knight has found him a patronage job. But, led by Mrs. Knight and Jim, they hatch a plan for greater riches, unbeknownst (mostly) to the daughter, Lorelei, who is beautiful and innocent and morally upstanding. This plan is to have Lorelei go on the musical stage and lure a rich man into marriage.

Lorelei agrees to the stage part of things, to help support the family, which becomes particularly important after Peter has an accident and loses his job. Lorelei is quite a hit from the start, because of her beauty, though she is a mediocre singer and actress. She soon learns that a big part of the job is to "entertain" the rich men who come to see her. She maintains her moral standards to a degree: she eats with the men and goes to parties, but doesn't drink, nor does she allow the men further liberties (though that would be more lucrative).

She impresses a cynical critic, Campbell Pope, with her freshness, and she becomes a friend to a dyspeptic middle-aged banker, Mr. Merkle, who gives her plenty of advice about steering away from the worst elements of her milieu. Her dressing room mate is Lilas Lynn, a somewhat coarser character who has become the mistress of a married steel magnate, Jarvis Hammon. Lorelei also makes a surprising friend: the notorious Adoree Demorest, regarded as the wickedest actress on Broadway. About this time, Bob Wharton, the dissipated son of another steel man, Hannibal Wharton of Pittsburg (as it seemed to be spelled often those days), falls head over heels for Lorelei, but she rejects his advances.

Lilas has plans to to trap Hammon into marriage. (Part of her motivation is revenge: she is the daughter of a steelworker who died in an accident in one of Hammon's plants.) To do so she needs to cause a scandal, and unfortunately her machinations enmesh Lorelei and Mr. Merkle, who are together only because he was rescuing her from Bob Wharton's importunings. Jim Knight, now a small time gangster, is involved as well. Before long Lilas's plans are coming to fruition; and in addition, Lorelei's nasty family is trying to blackmail Mr. Merkle. But Jarvis Hammon and Lilas Lynn have a shocking falling out, which leads to Lilas killing Hammon (in self-defense, to be fair), and Bob Wharton and Mr. Merkle help the dying Hammon hush up the scandalous aspects.

Desperate for money, the Knights scheme to trick Bob Wharton into asking Lorelei to marry him. She is completely against this, but her vile brother tricks her into an ambiguous situation, and Lorelei, not feeling well anyway after witnessing Hammon's murder, against her better instincts accepts a drunken proposal from Bob.

The marriage (due to brother Jim's plotting) happens immediately, and the Knights begin to work on Hannibal Wharton for a payoff in exchange for a divorce. But Lorelei will have none of it. She tells Bob that he can have the divorce no strings attached -- but he begs her to stick with him: he truly believes he loves her. She agrees on one condition: that he quit drinking.

The rest of the novel concerns Bob's fitful efforts at reform, with plenty of backsliding. He is pushed to get a job, and after his father (who has cut him off without a penny) blacklists him from any job with his associates, Bob has to come up with something on his own. He has surprising success, but every step forward is the occasion for a disastrous step backward, usually due to falling spectacularly off the wagon. Things come to a terrible head when they attend a country house party, and Lorelei is disgusted by the immorality of the "Society" folks on hand, especially when one man attempts to rape her. She is ready to break off with Bob completely (he was drunk and thus unable to protect Lorelei), but then she learns she is pregnant.

It's easy to see the resolution: the child helps Bob to truly face his responsibilities, and also eventually melts the hearts of Bob's parents. There is still the Knight family to deal with: they are still trying to extort money from Hannibal Wharton. And there is another crisis when Lilas Lynn, now a desperate cocaine addict, returns and tries to cause more chaos. Not to mention Jim Knight's mob connections ... But there are plenty of dei ex machinae to go around and solve all these problems. And there's a sweet if silly subplot involving Adoree Demorest and the cynical critic Campbell Pope.

It's really not a very good novel. Its attempts at social relevance: dealing with the problems of steelworkers, police corruption and mob violence, drug addiction, alcoholism, and the abuse of the showgirls working on Broadway, are decidedly clumsy if somewhat well-meant. It has all too typical racist bits, and especially anti-Semitic aspects (Lilas Lynn, the villainess, is Jewish, and described in quite absurd terms). The working out of the plot is terribly convenient.

And for all that, I kind of enjoyed it, and was even rather moved at the conclusion. As with so many of these Old Bestsellers, it's really not a mystery that it sold well -- even though I really see no great reason for a revival.

World Fantasy Convention, 2017, Part V: Day 4

World Fantasy Convention, 2017, Part V: Day 4

Last day. I'll begin with some mentions of people I talked to earlier, whom I had forgotten when doing previous writeups. I talked to Michael Damian Thomas for some time -- about his and Lynne's recent move to Champaign (where I went to college), and (with Sarah Pinsker, as previously mentioned) about music -- Tom Petty, and other concerts we've attended, and other people who are, well, getting on a bit (as are we all). Of course I've known Michael for years and years. I also had a good talk with Tegan Moore, who had a really good story in Asimov's last year ("Epitome"). She mentioned some frustration with selling her recent work, which sounds pretty ambitious -- I think she'll make it, and pretty impressively, before long.

I also had a good talk with Brad Denton, and Caroline Spector, and I managed to put in a request for a song at "Roomcon", the traditional room party at ConQuesT where Brad (as "Blind Lemon") and Caroline play excellent music. (The request was for another song about a Texas city: Robert Earl Keen's great "Corpus Christi Bay".) Others I met (some quite briefly) included Robert V. S. Redick, Jenn Reese, Caroline Yoachim, Rajan Khanna, Greg van Eekhout,  Gary Wolfe, and doubtless several more I'm embarrassed to have forgotten.

Sunday morning I came downstairs and ran into (not literally) Charlie Finlay, along with three of his F&SF writers: Austin Habershaw, G. V. (for Gemma, I think) Anderson, and Nebula winner William Ledbetter. Ledbetter's Nebula was for a story in F&SF last year, and I was impressed with stories by Anderson and Habershaw in the same quite recent issue. Indeed, Anderson went on to take the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story later that day. I had forgotten that story, perhaps because the title is in German: "Das Steingeschöpf", but I looked it up again (it was in Strange Horizons late last year, and I first read it on a morning walk when I was in Southern California for work about a year ago), and it's pretty impressive. We talked about things like the San Antonio climate and baseball.

We skipped breakfast (grabbed a snack in the Con suite), and there were panels at 10 and 11 I wanted to see. The first was on Pulp Era Influences: The Expiration Date. Panelists were James Stoddard, Gary K. Wolfe, Betsy Mitchell, and Jeffrey Shanks. Most agreed that lots of Pulp Era writers remain influential, and they mentioned as well some contemporary work explicitly in the "Pulp" mode. Betsy mentioned her ebook project, Open Road, which brings a lot of out of print work back at least electronically.

The second panel was on the Best Fantasy Novels of 2017. Willie Siros, Liza Groen Trombi, Jim Minz, and Joe Monti were the panelists. I always find these worthwhile, and there was a good discussion. I also had a good talk with Joe after the panel.

Finally, we attended Karen Joy Fowler's reading, from her upcoming novel about the John Wilkes Booth family. It was very intriguing. I did get a chance to introduce Mary Ann to Karen a bit later -- as I've mentioned before, Mary Ann doesn't read much SF, but she does read Karen Joy Fowler.

I took one more swing through the dealers' room, but didn't buy anything more. I was quite restrained this Con as far as buying books: the Crowley chapbook ("An Earthly Mother Sits and Sing"), Kij Johnson's The River Bank, Walter Jon Williams' Quillifer, a couple of old magazines, one Ace Double; and a couple of books given to me (Threshold of Eternity by Brunner and Broderick, and Tales from a Talking Board, featuring a Joe McDermott story).

So we headed out. One goal was to eat at Schlotzky's, long a favorite sandwich place of ours. Alas, the St. Louis franchises all closed over a decade ago. We've been to one in Seneca, SC (near Clemson) a few times, and to one in Joplin, MO, a few times, but we had noted that Texas, including San Antonio, has Schlotzky's, so we stopped at one on the way out of town. The sandwiches were a bit disappointing: sloppily prepared, and they were out of onions. Hey, I know there's great food in Texas (and we had some pretty good food!), but we had some disappointments too.

While at Schlotzky's, we saw on TV the news about the shootings at the church in Sutherland Springs, only about 40 miles away from the restaurant. I'll avoid any overtly political statements in this forum, however.

We headed up to Dallas, this time saving 20 minutes is Austin by taking a huge loop around the city. We also avoided a long delay in Waco thanks to our GPS guiding us off the highway to the frontage road to miss an accident-caused backup. We got to Dallas early enough to go out for pizza with Paul and Diane and the twins, David and Christopher. I can't remember the name of the pizza place -- the food was good but the service was incredibly slow. (The people at the table next to us made a bit of a scene about that.)

In the morning, first we had another of Diane's spectacular breakfasts. We decided we had time for one antique mall, and we (more or less randomly) picked one in Sherman, TX. It was a fine place, and I found a copy of Black Alice, by Thom Demijohn (Thomas Disch and John Sladek). Alas, a Book Club edition -- apparently the true first is pretty rare. We took the more normal way home, through Oklahoma to I-44, then into Missouri. We stopped in Joplin at Schlotzky's again -- it was better than the San Antonio one.

We had been playing various different Pandora stations along the way, some of mine and some of Mary Ann's, and we ended, for most of the way across Missouri, by playing a station I have intended to focus on show tunes -- based on my fondness for big cheesy tunes like "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "I Dreamed a Dream", not to mention lots of Sondheim. Mary Ann tried to prove that the phone listens to us by asking for songs from the likes of My Fair Lady -- and sure enough, not long after, "I Could Have Danced All Night" popped up -- the for Disney song, which took a while longer but eventually the phone got the hint and played something from The Little Mermaid.

We got in latish but not too late. I have to say, World Fantasy Convention lived up to what many people have told me -- that's it's a favorite convention of a whole bunch of people, for its literary and professional focus, and its relatively small size. I had a really wonderful time. As ever, the key to any Con is the people you meet -- old friends and new -- the conversations. I'll be back again as soon as I can swing it. (Alas, Baltimore next year might be hard, given we already have plans to go to San Jose for Worldcon, and to Montreal for Jo Walton's Scintillation.)

Finally, I need to mention the World Fantasy Award winners. We missed the award presentation, but here are the nominees and winners. Congratulations to them all, and I am particularly happy with Kij Johnson's award for the utterly magnificent Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe. And I should also add special congratulations to Neile Graham, another old friend from the much-missed Golden Age of the SFF.Net newsgroups. I did have a chance to finally meet Neile in the flesh, and talk with her for a bit.

BEST NOVEL

• The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
• Borderline by Mishell Baker
• Roadsouls by Betsy James
• The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
• Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

BEST LONG FICTION

• The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
• The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
• Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
• “Bloodybones” by Paul F. Olson
• A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson

BEST SHORT FICTION

• “Das Steingeschöpf” by G.V. Anderson
• “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander
• “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar
• “Little Widow” by Maria Dahvana Headley
• “The Fall Shall Further the Flight in Me” by Rachael K. Jones

BEST ANTHOLOGY

• Dreaming in the Dark edited by Jack Dann
• Clockwork Phoenix 5 edited by Mike Allen
• Children of Lovecraft edited by Ellen Datlow
• The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 edited by Karen Joy Fowler & John Joseph Adams
• The Starlit Wood edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

BEST COLLECTION

• A Natural History of Hell by Jeffrey Ford
• Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie
• On the Eyeball Floor and Other Stories by Tina Connolly
• Vacui Magia by L.S. Johnson
• The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

BEST ARTIST

• Jeffrey Alan Love
• Greg Bridges
• Julie Dillon
• Paul Lewin
• Victo Ngai

SPECIAL AWARD, PROFESSIONAL

• Michael Levy & Farah Mendlesohn, for Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction
• L. Timmel Duchamp, for Aqueduct Press
• C.C. Finlay, for editing F&SF
• Kelly Link, for contributions to the genre
• Joe Monti, for contributions to the genre

SPECIAL AWARD, NON-PROFESSIONAL

• Neile Graham, for fostering excellence in the genre through her role as Workshop Director, Clarion West
• Scott H. Andrews, for Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Malcolm R. Phifer & Michael C. Phifer, for their publication The Fantasy Illustration Library, Volume Two: Gods and Goddesses
• Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny
• Brian White, for Fireside Fiction Company

Here are links to all five installments of this con report:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V