Glen Orbik - R.I.P.

Readers of Hard Case Crime will be familiar with the artist Glen Orbik. His output was outstanding, much of it harking back to the old pulp and noir covers of yesteryear. He died on 11 May, aged 52, too young to go. 

You can appreciate his work at his website here

http://www.orbikart.com/gallery/

My thanks to Paul Bishop for drawing my attention to this ‘In Memoriam’ article which features twenty covers by Orbik plus links to his artwork:

http://www.heavymetal.com/news/in-memoriam-20-paintings-by-glen-orbik-modern-master-of-pulp-cover-art/

Here are some of his book covers I’ve scanned from my library:

 

FFB - Two angels!

Plenty of books have ‘angel’ in their title. Here are two, quite different novels.

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

This is a prequel to the Mortal Instruments Series (City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass and City of Fallen Angels). Although aimed at the Young Adult readership, most adults will enjoy it.

When Tessa Gray arrives from America in Victorian London (1878) in search of her brother Nate, she is abducted by the sinister Dark sisters. Tessa’s ordeal is prolonged – some six weeks – and painful as the sisters bring out hidden powers Tessa never knew she possessed: she’s able to transform into another person.

Unfortunately for Tessa, the sisters are preparing her for their master, the Magister, who wants Tessa for his own nefarious ends which might involve the overthrow of the British Empire no less.

Circumstances thrust Tessa into the hands of brave and reckless Will and the mysterious Jem, who are Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons – demons like vampires and werewolves.

This is a very well written atmospheric novel with fascinating characters you learn to care about. The descriptions of the mysterious Institute and the clockwork soldiers of the Magister are superb. A diminutive but deadly Charlotte and her inventor husband Henry run the Institute, one of many hidden in the shadow world where normal humans – mundanes – cannot perceive them. As Henry says of his wife, ‘You are as terrifying as you are wonderful, my dear.’

Despite many dark moments, there’s also plenty of humour:

            ‘I intend to marry Agatha,’ said Will. ‘She may be a thousand years old, but she makes an incomparable jam tart. Beauty fades, but cooking is eternal.’

I liked Clare’s apt use of Horace’s line, ‘Pulvis et umbra sumus’ (We are shadows and dust) – which was memorably quoted by Oliver Reed in Gladiator. Indeed, Clare has done her homework – each chapter features a contemporary poetry quotation – and the images conjured up of Victorian London are believable, in all their stink and squalor. Clockwork Angel is far superior to many a so-called adult fantasy novels available. The next in this new series, the Infernal Devices, is Clockwork Prince. (Not to be confused with the equally excellent Mortal Engines series, including the book Infernal Devices, by Philip Reeve).

Nobody’s Angel by Jack Clark

Eddie Miles is a Chicago cabbie and he earns his fares amidst a jungle of crime-ridden housing projects, crumbling and abandoned industrial centres and neighbourhoods laid waste and never reclaimed. For good reason, cabbies try to stay clear of the south and east parts of the Windy City. 

There are no chapters as such, but each section is marked by quotes from the municipal code regarding cabs and their passengers.  We are taken along on Eddie’s nightly journeys and share his heartbreak and nostalgia for the lost City he still loves.  Life in the cab seems to be a constant battle.  Every passenger is evaluated and diagnosed as a threat, a safe fare or a sucker that will pay steep for Eddie’s services.  But now the stakes are even higher than ever as a number of Chicago’s cabbies have been murdered by a serial killer. Eddie’s closest friend soon falls victim.

One night Eddie makes a wrong turn into a deserted alley to relieve himself and stumbles upon a serial killer in a van dumping the body of a 16-year-old prostitute.   

 
Despite the murder and mayhem, the bulk of the novel concerns Eddie’s nightly routine with rude and gracious fares, his wisecracking interactions with his fellow cabbies, and ruminations on his personal life, which is in meltdown.  Despite this, the story is never slow. Clark’s style is clipped, ironic and fascinating and his cabbie character is totally believable.

There’s a tendency to turn the pages quickly, sometimes in dread mixed with delight, just to see who is going to get in Eddie’s cab next. Funny or weird? Drunk or deadly? Before long, you know it’s probably not going to be good.

 
Some scenes threaten to be heart-breaking, while others are amusing. Life is light and shade. This could be a cabbie’s Heart of Darkness for, be forewarned, in these pages you’re entering the world of noir. In true noir, the darkness does not always herald a dawn...

Jack Clark is actually a Chicago cabbie – and it shoes in the novel. He wrote this book in his spare time and even self-published 500 copies (in 1996) and then sold them for $5 each to passengers and fellow cabbies. It took off but its readership was limited mostly to Chicago. Clark approached the owner of Hard Case Crime and it was taken on and has been very well received. Apparently, Jack still drives a cab. 

FFB - Spiderweb

Robert Bloch' Spiderweb was published in 1954; this book was one of a double offer from Hard Case Crime (2008), hence the bar-code on this image and the strapline ‘Two complete novels!’ The other Bloch novel was Shooting Star. Hard Case Crime brings to a modern audience old out-of-print classic crime novels plus new writing, with covers harking back to the golden age of pulp paperbacks.

Bloch’s novel is an enjoyable crime noir about Hollywood’s dark side. Eddie Haines is a washed-up radio jockey who can’t get airtime in LA. Then he’s befriended by Professor Otto Hermann who promises to make Eddie rich. All Eddie has to do is pretend to be a gifted self-help guru to the stars. It seems that Hermann has access to many secrets of the film stars and by using Eddie in his new guise of Judson Roberts, they can fleece unsuspecting pigeons. When Eddie meets Ellen and falls in love with her, he can’t get out of his deal with Hermann – because he too was being cunningly blackmailed…

Bloch gives away some of the conman’s secrets, which should be enlightening and educational. His characters use the psychological studies of the day to good effect to work subtle and convincing scams.

There are some great one-liners in this book. As the Professor explains about one film star hooked on astrology: ‘But she won’t so much as sleep with an assistant producer without consulting the stars.’

Bloch’s horror writing style is in evidence as well: ‘Poinsettias pressed myriad bleeding mouths to a garden wall.’

And he always likes to play with words – as evinced by some of his book and short story titles. Here, he goes all alliterative: ‘I eyed elkskin and surveyed suede.’

Of course he’s a master of the hardboiled style too; this is a great description: ‘She gave a look that would have made her a fortune as a glass cutter…’

Stephen King writes of Bloch, ‘Perhaps the finest psychological horror writer.’ [He’s keeping his options open, I guess, using ‘perhaps’.]

King’s writing pal Peter Straub says, ‘Robert Bloch is one of the all-time masters.’

I wouldn’t disagree with either of these gentlemen. Bloch is worth reading.

The admirable Michael Crichton’s writing teeth

Long before he wrote Jurassic Park, before he created the ground-breaking TV series ER, Michael Crichton was an honours student at Harvard Medical School – and wrote paperback suspense novels on the side, under the top-secret pen name “John Lange.” In effect, Crichton cut his writing teeth on these works, and you can already detect the familiar hallmark Crichton mix of crime and science in these early titles.

Lange wrote eight books between 1966 and 1972… and then vanished. The books became unavailable for decades; pulp collectors would sometimes pay hundreds of dollars for used copies. [His breakout novel was The Andromeda Strain under his own name (1969); then followed The Terminal Man (72), The Great Train Robbery (75), Eaters of the Dead (76), Congo (80), Sphere (87) and Jurassic Park (90) and so on; he became one of those authors whose every book seemed to be turned into a movie.]

Then, forty years after “John Lange” was conceived, Michael Crichton chose Hard Case Crime to bring him back, personally re-editing two of the Lange books, even writing new chapters for one of them (Zero Cool) – all still under the cloak of the Lange identity. This project was interrupted by the author’s unexpected death from cancer in 2008, just months after the second revived Lange novel hit bookstores.

Now Hard Case Crime announces it will bring all of John Lange’s work back into print for the first time in decades – and the first time ever under the Michael Crichton name. Due for release this month (October 2013), featuring gorgeous painted cover art by Gregory Manchess and Glen Orbik, the eight John Lange novels are:

Odds On (1966): The perfect heist, planned by computer, in a luxury hotel off the coast of Spain.

Scratch One (1967): On the French Riviera, a case of mistaken identity could cost an American lawyer his life when a group of international assassins confuse him for the secret agent sent to take them down.

 

Easy Go (1968): Can an Egyptologist and his band of thieves find a lost tomb buried for centuries in the desert – and get away with its treasure?

 

Zero Cool (1969): An American doctor vacationing in Europe gets caught between rival criminal gangs who both demand his help to find a legendary gem. [Note the paperback the lady's reading - it's Grave Descend, see below...]

 

 

The Venom Business (1970): An expert on venomous snakes and smuggler of rare artefacts accepts an assignment working as a bodyguard to a man everyone wants dead.

 

Drug of Choice (1970): Bio-engineers at a secret island resort promise pleasures beyond imagination – but what’s the secret behind the strange drug they’ve created?

 

Grave Descend (1970): A diver in Jamaica, hired to search the wreck of a sunken yacht, uncovers secrets deeper and darker than the waters in which the ship rests.

Binary (1972): A terrorist mastermind and a federal agent wage a battle of wits and of nerve when the villain plots to unleash poison gas on San Diego, killing a million people… including the President of the United States.

 

“Michael was one of the most imaginative and talented suspense writers who ever lived,” said Hard Case Crime founder and editor Charles Ardai, who worked closely with Crichton on editing the Lange books. “These early novels show his ingenuity and creativity at full blast and they read like a rocket. I defy anyone who picks up one of these books to put it down unfinished.”

The books are also being offered in e-book editions (without the Manchess and Orbik cover art) by Open Road Integrated Media.

 
About Hard Case Crime
Hard Case Crime has been nominated for or won numerous honours since its inception in 2004, including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Anthony, the Barry, and the Spinetingler Award. Big author names such as Stephen King, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Arthur Conan Doyle, Harlan Ellison, James M. Cain, Ken Bruen, John Farris, Robert Silverberg, Robert Bloch, Cornell Woolrich, David Gaddis, Alan Guthrie, and David Dodge rub shoulders with new authors in the ever-growing Hard Case Crime line-up. The series’ books have been adapted for television and film, with two features currently in development at Universal Pictures, a TV pilot based on Max Allan Collins’ Quarry novels in production for Cinemax, and the TV series Haven going into its fourth season this fall on SyFy. Hard Case Crime is published through a collaboration between Winterfall LLC and Titan Publishing Group. http://www.hardcasecrime.com

About Titan Publishing Group

Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981, comprising three divisions: Titan Books, Titan Magazines/Comics and Titan Merchandise. Titan Books, nominated as Independent Publisher of the Year 2011, has a rapidly growing fiction list encompassing original fiction and reissues, primarily in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror, steampunk and crime. Recent crime and thriller acquisitions include Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins’ all-new Mike Hammer novels, the Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton, and the entire backlist of the Queen of Spy Writers, Helen MacInnes. Titan Books also has an extensive line of media- and pop culture-related non-fiction, graphic novels, and art and music books. The company is based at offices in London, but operates worldwide, with sales and distribution in the U.S. and Canada being handled by Random House. http://www.titanbooks.com