Going Underground: Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, Concrete Island by J. G. Ballard, and Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

Before we get to the promised cavalcade of Richard Stark/Donald Westlake Scores, I thought I'd take a slight detour to chew over some recent non-Westlake reads (yes, I do read other books). Quite by chance, I've read three books in quick succession over the past few weeks where the main protagonist finds himself cast away or trapped in a small patch of land. Two of the books are actually very similar in their choice of urban location, while the third is more rural, but still bears a remarkable similarity to the others.

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household was the first of this triumvirate I read, and the most rural. Originally published in 1939, it's the first-person account of an unnamed British man (who, though nameless, hints throughout that he is a Lord, and well-recognised in England), his unsuccessful attempt to assassinate a European dictator, and his subsequent escape into the English countryside, all the while pursued by agents of the dictator. There's an extended sequence in the novel where our hero digs himself a burrow in the Dorset moors, and it's this section that's the most compelling and bears the most resemblance to the other two books, as he gradually loses all trace of his previously civilized nature and sinks into a filthy, degraded, but also strangely alluring existence.

Alluring, because it's at this point that he seems most free, and most happy, despite the squalor he's living in. Reduced to merely surviving, any and all problems melt away in the face of more immediate concerns: finding food, keeping warm. It's an extremely simplified way of life, but one our hero almost revels in, particularly when he is granted the occasional company of a grumpy, feral cat.

It's this acceptance of, and in turn embracing of, a downgraded existence that I was reminded of when I was reading the second book, William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009). Here, a young man called Adam Kindred is being hunted for a murder he didn't commit, so, much like Household's character, he removes himself from society and in this case goes underground in London. Again, as he divests himself of the trappings of civilization – he can't use his credit cards or contact anyone lest he be tracked – he finds a kind of peace in a triangle of overgrown wasteland near Chelsea Bridge, with a camping stove to heat his tins of beans and three old tyres fashioned into a chair.

Even when he's forced to leave this patch of ground and starts to slowly rejoin society, Kindred feels the occasional pang for his lost parcel of land, much as Rogue Male's protagonist is reluctant to leave his lair. And once again, this is probably the most vivid part of the novel, enjoyable though the subsequent chapters are. Like Household, Boyd, through Kindred, seems to be yearning for a simpler way of life, one where a small triangle of land can offer more fulfillment than a wider life of conspicuous consumption – even if it does mean having to snack on the occasional seagull.

Of course, the protagonist in the third novel of our triumvirate has even less choice in the matter than either Kindred or Lord No-Name: in J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island (1973), an architect named Robert Maitland crashes through a barrier on London's Westway onto another triangle of wasteland, and becomes trapped. His injuries prevent him from escaping, and in any case no one will stop to help him. I'm only a third of the way through the book at the moment, so I don't know if Maitland will come to embrace his new existence, but it's still striking that both Maitland and Kindred wind up in triangles of land in west London, only a couple of miles apart.

It's too early to pass judgment on Concrete Island yet, but the other two novels are both fine works. Household has a clipped style befitting his ennobled narrator, while Boyd's early tendency to pepper his prose with off-piste words – a boscy here, a ratiocination there – settles down once the narrative starts to gain momentum. But both books paint compelling portraits of individuals cast adrift from mainstream society, and, possibly with Concrete Island (we shall see...), show that going underground needn't necessarily be such a bad thing. Seagull snacking aside.

Must Be Thursday 5/8/10

And we're back with our regular if slightly pissed off guide to the comics I might be getting this week. Why pissed off? Nothing to do with the comics: Royal Mail have managed to lose a package of mine, somewhere between trying to deliver it and sending it back to the delivery office because it was too big for the letterbox. Which is an impressive feat, even by their standards. Useless bastards.

Anyway. Comics. Grr. Shitflaps. Here's what I'll almost certainly be getting:

























Dunno if it's my general foul mood or the uninspired nature of the comics themselves, but out of all these so-called 'definites', there's only one that's really that interesting to me, which is Marvel Universe vs. Punisher #1. I'll come back to that, but Red Hood: Lost Days #3 (top left) is Judd Winick's continuing exploration of ex-Robin Jason Todd's movements after he returned from the dead, scratching a Jason Todd fanboy itch that I suspect no one other than me even has, and one I'm not sure I even have. So maybe not quite so 'definite' after all...

Avengers Prime #2 (top right) is, like Red Hood, another miniseries filling in continuity gaps, this time from the end of Marvel's Siege event to the new world order of their current Heroic Age status quo. Essentially, Brian Michael Bendis and Alan Davis have sent the three main Avengers – Steve Rogers, Thor and Iron Man – off to another dimension so they can hit things and bond, thus healing the wounds from their previous relationship woes. Marriage counselling for musclebound he-men, in other words. Do we really need to witness every little character moment from the already-unwieldy massive patchwork quilt that is the Marvel Universe (and, for that matter, the DC Universe)? Bendis clearly believes we do, and since I'll probably be buying it, I evidently do too, even though I kind of... don't. Still, purty artwork from Mr. Davis, no doubt.

Captain America #608 (bottom left) continues Ed Brubaker and Butch Guice's current storyline about Baron Zemo, not a single moment of which I can currently recall. Remind me, these are the 'definite buys', aren't they? Hmm. Well, I have previously loved what Brubaker's done with Cap, so maybe it'll improve soon. Fingers crossed, eh? And finally there's the aforementioned Marvel Universe vs. Punisher, which might be a kind of homage to Garth Ennis' fun Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, except this time it's Punisher fighting zombified versions of Marvel's characters. I think. But it's written by horror writer Jonathan Maberry, so it could be a good'un.

Ooh, I just had a call from Royal Mail – looks like they found my package. I take it all back.

Meanwhile – and speaking of Garth Ennis – over in the 'Of Some Interest But Probably Not Enough to Buy Them' corner, we have this:










Crossed Family Values #3. I read the first two issues of this, which is David 'Stray Bullets' Lapham's miniseries set in the same world as Ennis' original Crossed series, and it's pretty nasty stuff, even by the standards of Crossed. It's also Just Not Garth: the writing's nowhere near as affecting as Ennis', and it was Ennis' black, bleak take on an end-of-the-world scenario (er, as if an end-of-the-world scenario could be anything but bleak) that made Crossed so compelling. So I might not bother with the rest of it. But, Avatar have announced there'll be a new Crossed ongoing series next year, the first arc of which will be written by Garth. So there's some good news at least.

And finally, we have this:













Amazing Spider-Man #639. When I previewed the previous issue, I figured it might be Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada's attempt to put wrong all the things he effed up with that One More Day story. Having now read that last issue, which largely consisted of Peter and MJ talking about their relationship (gah!), I'm not sure that is what's happening... and I'm not sure I can be arsed to read anymore to find out where it's all going. So, it's probably sayonara Spidey for me once more. C'est la vie.

Cecil Court Score: Pronto by Elmore Leonard

Moving on from Charing Cross Road on my seemingly never-ending round-up of the books I bought on my recent jaunt round the bookshops of London, we come to Cecil Court, which runs between Charing Cross Road and St. Martin's Lane. As any British bibliophile will tell you, Cecil Court is second hand book nirvana: a whole street of bookshops catering to all tastes. Being central London it can also be an expensive place to shop, but if you go in armed with a foreknowledge of what a reasonable amount to pay for a particular book is, you can still emerge with, if not a bargain, then at least a fairly priced prize.

Having said all that, this was probably a little overpriced:













A UK hardback first edition of Elmore Leonard's Pronto, published by Viking in 1993, jacket illustration by Mark Taylor. I bought this in what is usually one of the more hideously overpriced shops in Cecil Court – naming no names, regular visitors will probably know the one – but although I know I paid slightly over the odds for this copy, at least, unlike a lot of online sales, I could see the condition it was in (excellent). As for why I wanted it: I've read a few of Leonard's books before and enjoyed them, but this particular one forms the basis for the new(ish) US TV show Justified, which is ace. I don't know if much more than the character of US Marshal Raylan Givens makes it over from the book to the show – in fact I think the first episode owes more to the later Givens-starring short story Fire in the Hole, from Leonard's 2002 collection When the Women Come Out to Dance – but Givens, as played by Timothy Olyphant (brilliant in Deadwood, nearly as brilliant here), is the main reason to watch it, so I'm interested to see how he comes across in the novel.

(UPDATE: I've since reviewed Pronto – and the other Raylan Givens stories – in relation to Justified.)

Charing Cross Catch: The Dark Half by Stephen King

And so we continue with the books wot I bought during my recent books bonanza, moving on to the London segment of the splurge. I was going to blog about these ones in the order I bought them, but I want to save the Donald Westlake/Richard Stark ones – for lo, there were indeed Westlake/Stark purchases – for last, as I was rather chuffed with those, plus I've got some other things on a Westlake tip that have arrived since, so I'll have a torrent of Westlake scores to post one after the other. Our Westlake cup runneth over.

But before all that, here's a book I bought in Henry Pordes on Charing Cross Road (a solid, reasonably-priced bookshop, always worth a look) that, cunningly, still has a Westlake connection:













A UK hardback first edition of Stephen King's The Dark Half, published in 1989 by Hodder & Stoughton. I read this probably around the time it was published, as I did with all of King's books up until the mid-1990s, borrowed from Beckenham Library, and it's always been one of my favourites – not quite up there with The Stand and Salem's Lot, but not far off, certainly as good as the likes of Needful Things. It's about a literary author, Thad Beaumont, who's also written a series of violent crime novels (which are much more successful than his literary efforts) under the pseudonym George Stark. He decides to kill off his alter ego... but Stark won't stay dead, and becomes a physical entity.

There's more to it than that, but Westlake fans will have noted the surname of Thad's alter ego, and as Trent at Violent World of Parker has handily excerpted, there's a passage in the book where Beaumont explains his choice of the Stark surname and expounds on Westlake and the Parker novels. Not being aware of Westlake at the time I read The Dark Half, that's probably the first time I came across a reference to Richard Stark, although I can't say if it lodged in my brain at all. But in any case, that's why I decided to pick up this copy, as well as it being a damn fine book. I like that cover too, which is much stronger than the US one, and is by one Davies. Dunno if that's a first or last name.

Interestingly, Wikipedia reckons The Dark Half was the second best-selling book of 1989, behind Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger, which I've also read. And actually, glancing back at the best-sellers for the 1980s, it looks like I read the number one best-seller for the three years before that too, something I don't think has happened before or since. Curious.

Parker Progress Report: The Black Ice Score by Richard Stark

This one I finished off just before going away nearly two weeks ago, which'll give you some idea of how behind I am with blogging (not that anyone other than me cares, I'm sure). It's the eleventh of Richard Stark/Donald Westlake's Parker novels, and it's a strange one. There's a heist, and there are the usual twists and turns, but Parker himself feels kind of absent from the book, for the most part acting merely as adviser and planner for the score, which is actually carried out by agents of an African nation.

I'd read somewhere that the African robbers were portrayed comically by Westlake, but in fact they aren't, not really: they're inexperienced at taking scores, which is why they bring in Parker, to help them retrieve their country's stolen diamonds (shades of Westlake's The Hot Rock from a couple of years later there). But they're quite well drawn by Westlake, particularly during the Stark Cutaway in Part Three, where we witness the score (during which the Africans acquit themselves admirably for first-timers) and get filled in on some of the characters' backgrounds. Manado and Formutesca in particular are well realised, and there's some nice switching of expectations with those two, culminating in a scene where another character completely misreads them and as a result seals their own fate.

And I think that's the book's only real problem: Westlake seems a lot more interested in his African protagonists than in Parker, so Parker ends up a slightly spectral presence. By the end of the novel I kind of wanted to follow Formutesca's next adventure more than Parker's. So, not as engrossing or kinetic as the likes of The Score or The Split, and not quite so good on character as The Man with the Getaway Face, but better than I'd been led to believe. Oh, and our Stark Stooge here is Hoskins, a con man whose only purpose in the novel seems to be as an occasional irritant. Not one of the more interesting Stooges.

Next up was going to be The Sour Lemon Score... but I'll hopefully be able to make a slight Parker detour before then, depending on the postman. More on that soon. And also I've got lots of Stark/Westlake book scores to blog about, both from my recent bookshop jaunt and from... elsewhere...

Badgers Books Bargain: Carol by Patricia Highsmith (Uncorrected Proof)

On to the second bookshop I visited during the past week's bookshop bonanza, Badgers Books in Worthing, West Sussex. This is a great shop, four or five rooms stuffed to the rafters with old books, on shelves and in piles, but not to the extent that the shop felt chaotic. They had a couple of sizable fiction sections, with lots to look at, but being an online dealer also (via AbeBooks, of course), I imagine the best stuff is snapped up via the internet (and in fact I have a feeling I've bought from them online myself...). However, still a really good shop, well worth a look if you're in the area, and I did manage to find something to take away with me:














An uncorrected book proof of Patricia Highsmith's Carol, published in the UK in 1990 by Bloomsbury. Essentially it's a trade paperback advance copy of the hardback, for press and the like, with info missing (page 5, for example, bears the legend "BLURB: Copy to follow"). You can see the cover sports a picture of Highsmith herself, which isn't the cover of the actual book, while the back cover carries info on pub date, price, extent etc. So it's not so much a first edition as an advance edition. Makes a change, eh? And only three quid.

Carol was actually Highsmith's second novel, published under the original title The Price of Salt in 1952, and under the nom de plume Claire Morgan. But it took till 1990 for a UK hardback edition to appear, by which time it'd been retitled. It's the most autobiographical of Highsmith's books, dealing with a lesbian affair between a shop worker and a suburban housewife, although in reality the housewife, though based on a real person, was someone Highsmith was smitten with but never actually had a relationship with (I think...). Should be an interesting read though. Of all the Highsmiths I've read (excluding the Ripley novels, which are in a class of their own), the ones that have struck me most are the least typical – The Cry of the Owl, The Tremor of Forgery – and Carol certainly sounds atypical, at least for Highsmith.