Venetian Vase – Best UK Crime Fiction Blogs
The Venetian Vase has featured on a new list of ‘the top 30 UK Crime Fiction Blogs’. Venetian Vase comes in at sixteen. A number of criteria are measured to come up with the top thirty. Personally, I think this blog is what it is because of the readers. It’s your dedication, encouragement and enthusiasm for the writing which keeps me going. Thank you!
I’ve pasted the top ten below. Here’s the the list of the top thirty.
The top ten blogs on the list are:
1. Crime Fiction Lover
2. Crimespree Magazine
3. The CWA website
4. Do You Write Under Your Own Name?
5. Shots
6. The Telegraph – Crime Fiction
7. Damppebbles
8. Crime Book Junkie
9. Crime Time
10. Euro Crime
Short Story – Chicago Juice, Milwaukee Run
My latest short story ‘Chicago Juice, Milwaukee Run’ has just been published in the seminal online magazine Apocalypse Confidential. My previous stories ‘The Beach Blonde’ and ‘Bahamian Rhapsody’ were also published in Apocalypse Confidential, which I heartily recommend as one of the best reads online.
Here’s the opening to the story:
The message to kill me went out at 7:30.
Mayor Faison was a guest of the I-Team on Channel7 Eyewitness News. Three decades in the job, but old Freddy Faison still looks great in front of the camera. Dig those porcelain teeth and Italian silks. Faison was fielding questions from Chuck Goudie. The balls on this guy. The Faison Mayoralty was the most corrupt in the Windy City’s history: a dubious distinction akin to being the worst anti-Semite at a Nuremberg rally. Goudie’s investigative reporters covered political corruption and organized crime. By appearing on the show, Faison was sending a message that he had nothing to fear.
Except he did fear someone. Me. His driver. Terence Baumgartner III.
“Mayor Faison, you’ve been in office for twenty-eight years,” Goudie stated. “Is there any possibility that you won’t seek reelection?”
“You know what they say Chuck, in Chicago the only term limits are how long the politicians spend in jail.”
Cue studio laughter. Yeah, smile you smug cocksucker. Too bad a sex worker and mother of three Jackie DeLaurentis can’t smile. Struck and killed by a police car. Driver exonerated. Then there was Ricky Glover: disgraced journalist turned citizen blogger. Dead by overdose from a drug problem no one knew he had. Finally, there was Harold Tafler. Accountant. Mob associate. Found floating down the Chicago river. Coroner ruled it a suicide. The water’s hard in the Midwest: Two of Tafler’s fingers were broken and his body was covered in bruises. What do these unholy trinity of cadavers have in common? They all worked for Faison and they all tried to rat on him. They had stories to tell about kickbacks, bid-rigging, sweetheart deals, you could even use Chicago’s finest for murder-for-hire, providing Faison got his cut. All work done on the premises.
Faison thought he had plugged the leak, but a rumor was circulating on the street. Tafler had kept details of every crooked deal in a ledger. He had names, numbers, the whole damn thing. Did it really exist? The tough bastard hadn’t given it up under torture. I had the ledger. I had the juice on Faison. Tafler had saved my life, at least for now. But he hadn’t done it for me. He knew he was dead when the Mayor’s men found him. Tafler refused to give up the ledger because he wanted to see Faison get sent down from beyond the grave.
You can read the full story here.
Highbrow Lowbrow: Peter Weller Special
The first Highbrow Lowbrow of 2024 is a Peter Weller Special. We look at two films from the diverse career of the super-talented actor and academic Peter Weller. My pick is The New Age, a scathing 90s satire of Los Angeles’s pretentious yuppie culture. My podcast co-host Dan Slattery discusses Screamers, an underrated blend of science fiction, action and horror based on a Philip K. Dick short story.
You can listen to the full episode here. Enjoy!
Highbrow Lowbrow: Christmas Special
Happy Holidays to all of our readers and listeners! For Highbrow Lowbrow, my podcast co-host Dan Slattery and I have picked two memorable Christmas-themed films. My highbrow choice is Kings and Desperate Men, a hostage drama set on Christmas Eve in Montreal. Dan’s lowbrow pick is Die Hard 2, a movie just as Christmassy as its predecessor, but is it as good?
You can listen to the episode here. Enjoy!
2023: My Year in Review
2023 was an extraordinary year that began with the publication of Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy and ended with it being named one of the 50 best books of the year (as well as one of the eight best biographies/memoirs of the year) in the Daily Telegraph.
Thank you to everyone who has purchased, read and spread the word about Love Me Fierce in Danger. There’s still time to treat someone you love to a copy of the book as a gift for the holidays. It’s a literary biography which is the perfect noir antidote to the sometimes overwhelming festive cheer.
Some of my other highlights this year were interviews I conducted with the man who would be James Bond – Finlay Light, as well as the wonderful authors, Patricia Marques, John A. Curley, James Rice, Andrew Nette and Iain Ryan.
Finally, it was a tremendous thrill to have two of my short stories, ‘The Beach Blonde’ and ‘Bahamian Rhapsody’ published in the incendiary online magazine Apocalypse Confidential.
See you next year!
Tales From The Mall: After Hours
It was a huge thrill to appear on the podcast ‘Tales from the Mall: After Hours’ with host Brendan McCauley and author Andrew Miller (look out for his forthcoming novel Namaste Mart Confidential). In this episode we discussed the life and literary career of legendary author Ross Macdonald, with special emphasis on the two film adaptations of the Lew Archer novels Harper and The Drowning Pool.
You can listen to the episode on Apple and Spotify.
Iain Ryan: Interview with the Author of THE STRIP
The Strip is the new novel by Iain Ryan. Set on the Gold Coast of Australia in the early 1980s, The Strip begins with Detective Constable Lana Cohen joining the notorious Strike Force Diablo. An outsider to this world of machismo, corruption and casual bigotry, Cohen must quickly establish herself in a man’s world. She is reluctantly paired with Detective Henry Loch, a copper haunted by his past failures who sees the investigation into the murder of a doctor as his shot at redemption. But one murder is quickly connected to a whole series of murders which the local police have been too corrupt or incompetent to solve, and it isn’t long before Cohen and Loch are in danger of becoming victims themselves.
The Strip is one of the best crime novels of 2023. The Gold Coast setting and eighties period are vividly evoked and add a suitably sweaty ambience to the tense narrative which carries the reader along compulsively to final page. Author Iain Ryan grew up in Brisbane and knows the people, places and ethos of The Strip intricately. I had the pleasure of talking to Iain about his new novel:
Tell me about the genesis of The Strip. What first gave you the idea to write this novel?
The 1980s Queensland Police corruption scandal is the very first news story I can remember. In Brisbane—the capital of Queensland—the corruption is a matter of public record, and it is truly wild. We’re talking about absolute collusion between organised crime elements, state government politicians, and the very highest echelons of the Queensland Police. After it came unstuck, the state premier resigned, and the police commissioner went to jail. This was a major media event in Australia. It is the first news story I can remember from my childhood and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since. The Strip is based on a quote I came across during some research about how no one knows how bad the Gold Coast corruption was during the era. The Coast is only an hour’s drive from Brisbane, but the gossip is that it was probably much, much worse. That’s all I needed to get started.
The Gold Coast comes across as Australia’s Wild West—how much of this is portrayal is rooted in reality and what sort of research did you conduct?
I read what little there is in terms of historical writing. Until Matthew Condon’s recent three-volumes of reportage, no one was entirely sure you could talk about this history in Australia without consequence. So my stuff is forever indebted to his research. But a huge amount of the period detail is inherited from archival material, mainly the newspaper. I live in Melbourne and by some miracle, the State Library of Victoria has physical copies of the Gold Coast paper from the 80s.
There is a fine tradition of Australian crime and detective fiction. Could you name some Australian writers who have been an influence.
In terms of Australian crime writers, the biggest two are Peter Doyle and Andrew Nette. I actually met Peter before I read him. We were seated next to each other at a work dinner, and as soon as he heard I liked noir, he started giving me book recommendations. One of those recommendations was Derek Raymond, and this is a testament to Peter’s boldness, he suggested I Was Dora Suarez. Straight to the heart of the matter, ha ha ha. I’ve loved Raymond ever since. When I got to Peter’s own writing, I loved it too. He’s very underrated in this country. He might be the first local writer to really bring (James) Ellroy’s 90s energy into Australian noir. Andrew Nette, on the other hand, is a close friend. He lives nearby. I rate his fiction—especially Gunshine State, also set on the Gold Coast— but he plays a big role in my writing because he’s a fellow traveller. We go to the pub together.
There are other contemporary Australian writers I like—David Whish-Wilson, Garry Disher, in particular— but for the most part, Australian crime fiction is ‘literary crime’ rather than hardboiled noir. For a country with a very dark past, we’re strangely light on the grittier, weirder stuff.
Outside of Australia, you have identified James Ellroy and David Peace as influences. What is it about their work in particular that inspires you?
These two are everything to me. My biggest influences, period. Ellroy is an endless source of fascination. He was one of the first novelists I encountered who could compress a punk rock affect into writing. I know I’m talking about a guy who has a lifelong obsession with classical music, but in 1992 when the L.A. Quartet received trade paperback reissues, they landed in my lap alongside grunge and Reservoir Dogs and it all made the same kind of sense to my 16-year-old self. It all felt really exciting. In the decades since, Ellroy has remained influential. He’s endlessly reinvented his style, providing a broad canvas for other crime novelists to follow.
One of those novelists is David Peace, who took White Jazz and ran with it. Peace’s influence on me is very, very clear: reading him convinced me to try present-tense narration. I wrote my first novel The Student with 1980 on my desk, almost serving as a style manual.
I imagine I’m temperamentally much more like Peace than Ellroy, but we’re both indebted to the master.
One of the most powerful themes of the novel is institutionalised corruption, both in the police force and the church to give two examples. How much of this is a product of the early 1980s setting, and how much still exists on the Gold Coast today.
I’m no expert on contemporary policing in Queensland, but the entire state is different now. The end of the 1980s into the 90s saw huge cultural changes in Brisbane, in particular. The city went from something resembling a police state to a regular metropolitan centre throughout the late-century period and now, Brisbane is a regular Australian capital. There’s just no comparing what was with what is. It’s a pronounced, dramatic shift. From afar, the corruption these days just seems like the routine degradation of advanced capitalism, rather than what once was: a formal system orchestrated by occulted bad men.
Finally, what are you working on next?
I sincerely hope to do another three books (at least) in the series. I’ve written and submitted the next one, and by the time this is published I’ll be deep in the outlining for book three. It’s a bit of a wild ride—I still have a full-time day job— but it’s literally all I’ve ever wanted from writing and the challenge of it is pretty enticing.
The Strip is published by Ultimo Press.
The Jean Ellroy Files: Alva Herd and Easton Spaulding
Alva ‘Al’ Herd was one of the most prominent Los Angeles based businessmen of the twentieth century. He was born in Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1906 and was named after Alva Adams, three times Governor of Colorado and the father of Alva B. Adams, who became Senator for Colorado. Herd moved to Oakland first and then Los Angeles in 1921. By the early 1930s he was operating a successful car dealership in Sunset Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. Herd conducted car auctions in four states and became one of the biggest car dealers in Southern California. But by the 1940s he was broke. I spoke to Herd’s son Alan ‘Scotty’ Herd, who explained that the business ultimately failed as Herd’s customers kept passing him bad cheques. In 1947, Herd switched to real estate and made his second fortune. He never needed to change professions again.
The Jean Ellroy Connection
Al Herd’s closest friend was Easton Ewing Spaulding. The name might sound familiar to readers of this website, and anyone who has read my biography Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy, as Spaulding was the first husband of Jean Ellroy, the mother of James Ellroy. Spaulding was Scotty Herd’s godfather, who in turn named his son, Easton Alan Herd, after him. Scotty gave me a vivid account of Herd and Spaulding’s friendship and business partnership. Herd was the businessman and Spaulding was more of an investor. Spaulding came from money, his family fortune was in real estate, and he invested in Herd’s business as he needed a sense of identity. As a car dealer, Herd had provided ‘exotic’ cars to celebrities. In real estate, he also catered to the rich and famous. Herd became a celebrity himself. His IMDB page states he was a guest on The Mike Douglas Show. According to Scotty, there were many more media appearances. He also counted Hollywood stars, such as Cary Grant, as his friends. Herd and Spaulding moved in the glitziest of Hollywood circles. Spaulding’s fourth and final marriage, after his brief marriage to Jean Ellroy was annulled or dissolved, was to Emily Hensel. Emily’s sister Betty was dating Cary Grant at the time of Emily and Spaulding’s wedding.
Easton Herd wrote to me, ‘As for my Grandfather (Al Herd), he was a a pretty good salesman, dated a few starlets and married several times. So he would have been the type to meet girls and introduce them to his friends like Easton.’ This is intriguing as Jean Ellroy was a starlet, unlike ‘the Black Dahlia’ Elizabeth Short who has often been labelled a starlet but there isn’t any evidence that she had acting roles or ambitions. Jean was living in Chicago, pursuing her nursing career, when in December 1938, she won a beauty contest and flew to LA and took a screentest. Nothing came of it and she switched back to nursing. Jean didn’t have any real interest in acting. However, she married Easton Spaulding in November 1940. It’s possible that she met Spaulding through Al Herd during her brief dalliance in Hollywood.
Herd’s career wasn’t without controversy. His obituary states he ‘earned national publicity as one of the first to use creative financing packages when inflation pushed up housing prices in the 1970s’. This will hardly endear his memory to many Americans still reeling from the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Spaulding’s granddaughter Catherine Judd sent me a series of letters written by her mother Anne Kennedy. Anne had some contact with Herd through her father, although her description of him is not flattering. She describes him as her father’s ‘psychopath friend’, ‘really a shady character’ and ‘infamous’.
Jean Ellroy was murdered in El Monte in June 1958. She was on a date with a man who, due to his olive complexion, became known as ‘the Swarthy Man’. He raped and murdered Jean and has never been identified. Jean’s son James Ellroy became one of the greatest crime writers of his generation. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that Al Herd could have been ‘the Swarthy Man’. He was too old and too pale. He did have a similar slim build and widow’s peak style hairline to ‘the Swarthy Man’. However, in these true crime style investigations you can’t just take the facts that suit your narrative and discard the others. Al Herd died, aged 91, in 1997.
I do believe, however, that the more we can find out about Jean Ellroy and her mysterious, secretive life the closer we will come to understanding and perhaps solving her murder. She moved in celebrity circles, but turned her back on Hollywood to pursue her passion for nursing in the small city of El Monte. She had only lived in El Monte for a matter of months before she was murdered.
We can’t allow her to be forgotten.
If you enjoyed this article, why not treat yourself or someone you care for to a copy of Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy (Bloomsbury: 2023).
Postscript: Below is a promotional video of Al Herd showing two young women around his properties. There’s no sound and the clumsy editing suggests the footage may never have been finished for any form of promotional release, but that only makes it more weirdly mesmerising. I found the footage on the website of filmmaker Raymond De Felitta, whose father author Frank De Felitta makes a cameo appearance in Love Me Fierce in Danger. De Felitta has this to say about the footage, ‘Strangely, even in black and white LA then looks like LA now–scrubby, mephitic, debilitating. And that’s in the good neighbourhood…’
A James Ellroy Playlist: Beginnings
James Ellroy’s debut novel Brown’s Requiem was more than just the start of his literary career. It was the beginning of Ellroy’s musical obsessions, particularly towards classical music, pouring out into his writing. In the following post I am going to look at two of the most notable musical references in Ellroy’s first novel.
Fate Knocks at the Door
Brown’s Requiem is ostensibly a novel about a private detective, the Fritz Brown of the title. But it achieves so much more than the conventions of the genre usually allow. It is also a meditation on classical music. Ellroy’s favourite composer is Ludwig van Beethoven. Surprisingly, the Beethoven references in the novel are somewhat threadbare compared to that of other composers. It is almost as though Ellroy is afraid to critically analyse the master. Brown keeps a portrait of Beethoven on his wall and aspires to be the same form of Romantic, brooding hero, but when he mentions the composer in his first-person narration the effect is comical, ‘I was never a child. I came out of my mother’s womb full-grown, clutching a biography of Beethoven and an empty glass. My first words were “Where’s the booze?”’
The influence of Beethoven is so strong on Brown that he claims, admittedly humorously, that it started at birth. Ellroy himself discovered Beethoven’s music during his childhood. Ellroy was attending John Burroughs Junior High School when his music teacher, Alan Hines, played the four note opening motif of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5, which Beethoven described as ‘Fate knocks at the door’. It certainly was for Ellroy, it ignited a passion and reverence for Beethoven which has persisted to this day. The Fate motif is one of the most famous pieces of music in history. Almost everyone has heard it, and it’s influence is limitless, being easy to parody and inspiring rock and roll and disco covers.
Concerto for Orchestra
Ellroy’s original title for the novel was ‘Concerto for Orchestra’. His publisher Avon insisted he change it on the grounds that it would be difficult to market as a crime novel. The final section of the novel was eventually titled ‘Concerto for Orchestra’ in accordance with Ellroy’s wishes. Ellroy took the title from Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Considered one of Bartók’s most popular and accessible works, Ellroy later confessed to me that he now considers it to be ‘dry and academic’. The performance below by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony is both dramatic and suspenseful, and would be a good soundtrack to Fritz Brown unravelling the mystery narrative of Brown’s Requiem as he travels through Los Angeles and Tijuana.
Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy is published by Bloomsbury.
Highbrow Lowbrow: Halloween Special
Hot on the heels of our William Friedkin tribute episode, Highbrow Lowbrow is back with a Halloween Special! My pick is Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture, in which Mimi Rogers plays a woman who turns her back on her promiscuous lifestyle to join a religious cult which believes the end of the world is nigh. Be careful what you wish for!
Dan’s choice is the horror classic Saw. Forget the sequels, Dan argues. The original Saw was horror at its bare bones best. You can listen to the full episode here.
