Category: Eat This Book

SURREAL TRAPDOOR The Riddle of Julian Sands Part 1

I’ve had a lifelong fascination with people who mysteriously disappear, especially those who get lost in the wilderness. On January 13th, British actor Julian Sands was reported missing by his family. Sands, an experienced hiker and mountaineer, had set out alone for the San Gabriel Mountains , 50 miles northeast of Los Angeles.  He never returned. On January 18th his car was located near Mt. Baldy , one of  his favorite trails.

Julian Sands

Julian Sands is/was 65 years old and made his home in North Hollywood. His break-out role was in the British period piece, A Room with a View , which coincidentally starred Helena Bonham Carter as an ingenue -before she found her goth persona and her partner, Tim Burton.  Sands continued to work in many diverse films and series, including The Killing Fields, The L Word, Smallville, 24 and even Dexter! 

How could he simply disappear? How could a seasoned climber come to grief?

Dr. R. J. Koester

For answers, I looked to my friend, bear biologist, Sarah Poole. She told me about search and rescuer, Dr. Robert J. Koester, who’s an expert in understanding the behavior of lost people.

Here’s what I learned from his video, which you can watch here on YouTube.

 

      • It is very easy to get lost. Dr. Koester describes a case of an experienced 65 year old hiker who had a habit of walking 80 steps from the trail for a washroom break. (That’s right, eighty not eight!)  Her skeletal remains were found two years later.
      • Lost people DO tend to wander around in circles. People wander in random patterns and can travel great distances. They are often found far from the area where they were supposed to be.
      • Lost people tend to travel downhill rather uphill. People believe that down is  safer and that they will be more likely to find help there. Sadly that is not necessarily true.
      • People get lost by making a mistake. At first, they believe their instruments or maps are faulty so they can travel a significant distance before they realize they are lost.
      • People get an adrenalin rush when they discover they are lost. This is a normal physiological response. The worst thing one can do is to panic. The first thing to do is to calm down; a simple drink of water can be enough.

So what happened to Julian Sands? The San Gabriel Mountains are about an hour’s drive from LA, stretching between the city and the Mohave Desert. Winters are wet and snowfall can be heavy.  Ice-climbing and snow trails are popular with mountaineers and Baldy Bowl is a favorite. This is where Sands was headed.

 

Mt. Baldy

Mt. Baldy’s real name is Mt. San Antonio. At over 10,000 feet, it’s the highest peak in the mountain range.  Winter climbing on the Baldy Bowl requires ice axes and crampons with ascents of 45 to 50 degrees. Rockfalls and avalanches are common. This January severe storms in the area led to extremely dangerous avalanche conditions and search and rescue operations had to be curtailed. Julian Sands remains missing.

Not long after, a number of bogus reports surfaced, claiming that Sands had been spotted alive and well.  Unfortunately, this is a common scenario, born of romanticism and desperate hope – and perhaps too much bingeing on Netflix.

One hiker, 75 year old Jin Chung, was rescued from Mt. Baldy around the same time after he went missing for two days. He’d gone off on his own leaving his  two hiking companions on another route. Fortunately, after they alerted search and rescue, Chung was found with only mild injuries.

As Dr. Koester warns hikers: tell people where you are going; take emergency survival supplies with you and never hike alone.

More to come in Part 2!

EAT THIS BOOK: Five Moves of Doom by A. J. Devlin

Great news, Readers!

I just finished Five Moves of Doom, the third book in the PI “Hammerhead” Jed Ounstead series – and it’s terrific! Set in gritty East Vancouver, protagonist Jed has an unusual occupation: he’s a retired professional wrestler.

What makes for a gripping story, as in Fellini’s classic film La Strada and even hit Canadian comedy series, Trailer Park Boys, is the classic trio of characters representing brains, brawn and heart. Hammerhead Jed embodies all three in one person– and author A.J. Devlin pulls this off brilliantly. Jed is first and foremost a physical person. That, sometimes to his detriment, is his self-identity. But clients and bad guys tend to underestimate his intelligence – and that is always to their detriment.

In Five Moves of Doom, Jed is hired by former UFC fighter, Elijah Lennox, to find Elijah’s million dollar, diamond-encrusted championship belt. Trustingly, Elijah had it on display at his martial arts studio, but now it’s gone missing. Jed recovers the belt thanks to his smarts and underworld contacts, though finding it seems too easy. Then Elijah ends up dead and Jed’s heart drives him to find the murderer and bring them to justice.

Jed’s quest draws him into the murky realm of illegal fighting.  Devlin has created an ogre of a villain in Cassian, the ringleader, who wears the dog tags of his victims round his neck as trophies. (To me they’re more like the shrunken heads worn by a cannibal king!) Taking on Cassian draws Jed into some very dark places, many within himself. It takes a skilled writer to draw the reader along to explore Jed’s troubled path and Devlin pulls it off.

There are two aspects of the Hammerhead series that I especially enjoy. The first is the sheer physicality and choreography of the fighting scenes. Too often, fights in crime fiction are a bit predictable resulting in an urge to flip the page. Not so here.  Devlin knows fighting and that shines through in every scene. (Learn more about AJ’s fighting background on Cyber Café here.)

I also love Devlin’s secondary characters like Jed’s cousin, Declan, Irish barkeep and former IRA commando, who always has his family’s back. The chapter written from Declan’s POV is a tour de force of writing. My personal favorite is Sykes, Jed’s shady entrepreneur and informant, who in the previous book was bookmaking on dachshund racing.  This time out, Sykes has taken up goat yoga. That’s right goat yoga.  Both are comedy gold and even better, Readers, both weird activities are real.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

FIVE STARS ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

MOST IMPORTANT: WHERE TO BUY THE HAMMERHEAD JED SERIES!

Five Moves of Doom, as well as Cobra Clutch and Rolling Thunder, are available for purchase on Amazon, Indigo, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and anywhere paperbacks and eBooks are sold.

In addition, Cobra Clutch is now available as an audiobook on Audible and wherever audiobooks can be found.

Order the “Hammerhead” Jed mystery-comedy series through bookshop.newestpress.com, which features a Find Your Local Bookstore link to support indie bookstores and shop local.

Finally, AJ is proud to have partnered up with his friends at the terrific Western Sky Books in Port Coquitlam, where copies of all three “Hammerhead” Jed books with personalized inscriptions can be requested and purchased online exclusively through their website WesternSkyBooks.com.

EAT THIS BOOK: Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad

I am an intrepid armchair adventurer. One of my earliest memories is listening to a report that Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary had summited Mt. Everest - on the radio. (Yes, I'm that O-L-D.)

Mt. Everest has fascinated me all my life. I devoured John Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air, about the notorious 1996 climbing disaster and became a long-time subscriber to Outside Magazine. In 1997, my daughter and I heard Krakauer speak at OISE about another of his books, Into the Wild. He  changed our thinking forever.

Into the Wild is the story of 19 year old Christopher McCandless, who, disillusioned by modern life, turned to a nomadic existence and changed his name to Alex Supertramp. He ended up dying in an abandoned school bus in Denali National Park, Alaska after a failed attempt to live off the land. Before I would have written off McCandless as a victim of misadventure (he ate a poisonous plant), but Krakauer illuminated his tragedy. Nature isn't a gentle spiritual healer: nature just is.

When Amazon recommended, Lost in Valley of Death by Harley Rustad, it took me a whole two seconds to buy it. Rustad's book struck me as a fusion of Into the Wild  and The Cold Vanish, a gripping collection of true stories about people who'd vanished in the wilderness by a search-and-rescue expert, Jon Billman,  

Rustad, like Krakauer and Billman, is a writer for Outside Magazine which values excellence in non-fiction writing. Even better, he's Canadian!

His beautifully written and meticulously researched book examines the tragic life of another lost soul, Justin Alexander Shetler, who vanished in India's Parvati Valley or the  "Backpackers Bermuda Triangle". There are definite similarities between McCandless and Shetler, but at age 35, Shetler was older and more experienced and what happened to him underscores the downside of living in the digital age.

The Parvati Valley lies in Northern India in the Himalayan Mountains. This remote and rugged region is a spiritual destination for Sikh and Hindu pilgrims: legend has it that Shiva, the Destroyer God, meditated there for 3000 years. What is also true is that the valley is a source of potent black hash. Though marihuana and hash are illegal in India, local authorities turn a blind eye to its use, at least by the locals. Not only do the police lack the resources for enforcement, the hash brings in Western tourists and significant economic benefits to the area. The Western search for spiritual enlightenment is big business.

Several travelers go missing every year in the Parvati Valley.  Some disappear intentionally and reside there illegally before being discovered and deported. Others are victims of hiking accidents or fall afoul of bandits and/or drug dealers. The ferocious rapids of the Parvati River ensure that the bodies of the disappeared are rarely recovered.

Shetler was far from being a wide-eyed tourist. He'd travelled throughout Asia and made many friends there. An accomplished nature guide and tough survivalist, he'd survived the break-up of his parents' marriage, sexual abuse and a near-fatal car accident. A keen, deep-set spiritual void turned him into a nomad, constantly seeking fulfillment from the world around him. He assumed and shed many identities in his short life: environmentalist, Buddhist monk, IT entrepreneur, motorcycle rider and sadhu disciple. 

His emptiness was fueled by an obsession to document his adventures on social media. Far from healing him, the pressing demand for content from his followers let the demons of marketing invade his soul.  He became a brand in pursuit of an identity. Perhaps this desperation is why he resorted to buying and selling hash to finance his spiritual journey and to trusting the wrong people. 

Rustad's book is a cautionary tale for those who fail to understand what Western tourists represent to an impoverished population.  And a warning that even the mightiest man may be slain by one arrow.

RATING: 5 STARS!!

EAT THIS BOOK: HELL and GONE by Sam Wiebe

Eat this book!

I was delighted when author friend, Sam Wiebe, announced his latest Dave Wakeland thriller, Hell and Gone, the third in the series about the introspective Vancouver private investigator (Harbour Publishing). 

The first two Wakeland books were stand-outs: Invisible Dead was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award and Cut You Down was short-listed for both the Hammett and Shamus awards. But Hell and Gone is the best Wakeland novel yet!

The book opens with a harrowing robbery and shoot-out, one of the most gripping action sequences I’ve read in recent memory. Wakeland witnesses the crime, tries unsuccessfully to help the victims and struggles with PTSD as a result.  He’s determined to bring down the perpetrators, but this puts him in conflict with his business partner, Jeff Chen.

Hell and Gone focuses on Jeff, who up till now was more Wakeland’s foil: the moral, stable, non-violent half of the partnership. Sam delves into the intricate historical ties to crime in Vancouver’s Chinese community and the traps that can befall the modern generation of business owners like Jeff. His portrayal of Wakeland’s PTSD is especially believable.

The plot offers enough twists and betrayals to rival Dashiell Hammett himself. (Sorry no spoilers!) You’ll stay up all night to get to the last page.

And for emerging writers, I highly recommend Sam’s online Mystery Writing Mastery courses. The 14 beginner’s lessons are free.

My rating: Five Stars!

 

EAT THIS BOOK: Forgotten Writers #8 – Robert Ray – Murdock PI Series

More shelf clearing, Readers!

Next up: Murdock for Hire, Book 2 in the hard-boiled PI series by Robert Ray,   featuring boat- building private eye,  Matt Murdock.

Author Robert Ray is a pretty cool guy.  Born in Texas in 1935, which makes him 86 years old, he describes himself as “author, teacher, dangerous thinker”.  In university he majored in languages, learning Russian, Chinese and Hindustani!  He bagged a PhD and has spent his professional life teaching writing at the college level.

Penguin published Ray’s first books in the Murdock series from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. I remember their witty titles: Bloody Murdock, Dial M for Murdock, Merry Christmas Murdock and Murdock Cracks Ice.  Then there’s a 20 year gap before the next two books in the series: Murdock Tackles Taos (2012) and Murdock Rocks Sedona (2015). Also a change of venue from California to New Mexico and a change in publishers to Camel Press Publishing  a mid-list publisher of genre fiction located in Washington State.

So what happened?  A familiar and unhappy scenario for many writers.  They publish a series of books then the publisher drops them because (a) their editor and in-house champion left the company or (b) the books didn’t sell quite enough. Quality doesn’t count, not even Hammett nominations, only biz revenues.  Authors’ careers increasingly resemble the business curves of  commodities.

So what happened to Ray in the intervening 20 years? Quite a lot as it turned out.

He returned to his teaching roots and with co-author, Bret Norris, created The Weekend Novelist, a step-by-step manual for wannabe authors busy with their day jobs.  It proved to be such a huge success that Ray went on to write two more follow-ups: The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery with his friend, Jack Remick as well as  The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel.  Ray believes that  the books have taught more than 10,000 people how to write!

Ray also wrote a standalone thriller, The Hitman Cometh as well as several business texts and a book on tennis.

Today, with the help of Jack Remick, he maintains a vibrant blog on his website. Every Tuesday and Friday they write together at Louisa’s Bakery and Cafe in Seattle, a city where he and his wife live with three cats…so far.

I like this guy!!

Re-reading the opening chapters of Murdock for Hire, I’m struck by Ray’s spare, journalistic prose,  which zips you through the pages. The subject matter is pure “Wolf of Wall Street” stuff. Hapless businessman Eddie Hennessey tries the kinky sex and drugs of an exclusive hookers’ club and ends up unpleasantly dead. Murdock, who more than a little resembles Travis McGee (he loves boats and hot women), is asked to investigate.  It’s an enjoyable pulp read, the same but different.

BOTTOM LINE:   My copy of Murdock for Hire  is paperback, not first edition.  Prices on Abe Books, Amazon and Biblio range from $2 to $6.  Thierry value: $11.30US*

DECISION: Donate to Little Library

*Thierry value = most outrageous price you can humanly get away with. Named in honor of Mr. Brainwash who sold old used T-shirts for $500+. (See Banksy’s documentary, Exit through the Gift Shop.)

 

 

 

EAT THIS BOOK: Forgotten Writers #7 – Stephen Paul Cohen

Back to clearing my book shelves, Readers!

Next up: two books by Stephen Paul Cohen, featuring investigator Eddie Margolis: Heartless (1986)  and Island of Steel (1988). Both published by William Morrow.

Stephen Paul Cohen is/was a real estate lawyer living in Minneapolis. His two private eye thrillers earned rave reviews in leading US publications. The New York Times called his writing “smart, desperate, gritty”. The Wall Street Journal gave it the ultimate praise:  “literate”.   I remember the emotional intensity of Cohen’s writing, something all we writers strive for.

Flipping through Cohen’s books 30 years later,  I realize that he’s writing noir – and nice juicy pulp fiction, too. The gritty street life he creates feels very real.  Just the same, he relies on many PI thriller tropes, which readers expected and wanted: Eddie Margolis, the hero, is a a desperate alcoholic who decides to avenge his best friend’s murder. He deals with corrupt rich and powerful men and beds deceitful dames. He’s betrayed by a lover. You know how it goes.

But that doesn’t mean the books are bad. Far from it. Genre publishers look for “the same but different”. By that criterion, Cohen’s books certainly deliver.

So what happened to Stephen Paul Cohen? There’s very little about him on the internet.  His books are available on Amazon.ca, but only as used copies.

One source of information is Allen J. Hubin’s review of Island of Steel on the Mystery File website.  Comments suggest that publishers may have dropped hard-boiled fiction in the early 1990s, because cozies sold better.  A fair observation, but I also believe that Cohen’s writing was ahead of its time. He was writing noir, which wasn’t popular then, but has since had a big resurgence .

I further suspect that unfavorable reviews may have played a part. In 1989, the year after Island of Steel came out, Cohen co-authored a speculative fiction thriller, Night Launch, with then Senator Jake Garn. The book should have been a slam dunk for both authors, but  Publishers Weekly gave it a thumbs down.  Did William Morrow drop Cohen because of that?

Ten years later, Cohen apparently tried writing again. His drug trade thriller, Jungle White, was published in Thailand by White Lotus Press, but not elsewhere. (Did Cohen move to Asia, the way a few of my friends have done?) A reviewer on the Things Asian website hated Jungle White so much he wrote a lengthy and damning review, renaming the book, “A White in the Jungle”.  I haven’t read it so I can’t comment either way.

All writers get the rare bad review. Most of the time the reader simply didn’t “get” the book. But when they feel compelled to vent to the whole world about it, I suspect a more self-centred motive is at play.  I have to ask the question: Did the Things Asian review make Cohen quit writing for good?

BOTTOM LINE:   My copies of Heartless and Islands of Steel are used Avon paperbacks, not first editions.  Prices on Abe Books, Amazon and Biblio range from $4 to $12.  Thierry value: $18.97US*

DECISION: Keep as rare books. 

*Thierry value = most outrageous price you can humanly get away with. Named in honor of Mr. Brainwash who sold old used T-shirts for $500+. (See Banksy’s documentary, Exit through the Gift Shop.)

 

 

 

EAT THIS BOOK: Forgotten Books #6 -The Neon Flamingo by W. R. Philbrick

Eat This Book

 

 

 

 

I read my first T.D. Stash novel  while vacationing with the family at a tourist lodge on Lake Temagami. Despite being exhausted after canoeing with a 3 year old, I sat up all night to finish The Neon Flamingo. Its Florida Keys setting was as removed from Northern Ontario as you can imagine.

Gripping and smoothly written, W.R. Philbrick’s book has stayed with me, mostly because its hero, T.D. Stash, was so unusual for the late 1980s. He was a screw-up – a  stoner and sometime fisherman desperate enough for cash to do favors for friends – legal or not so much. He often made dire situations worse.

I quickly read the next two books in the series, The Crystal Blue Persuasion and Tough Enough. Then waited in vain for more.

A few years later I met W. R. Philbrick at a crime writers’ conference. He happily signed my copy of The Neon Flamingo then passed on the bad news that his editor didn’t want any  more T.D. Stash novels. A damn shame!

I suspect that TD Stash series was too dark. In other words, too intense, truthful and violent for 1990s readers. Like Liza Cody’s Bucket Nut, the books were fine examples of noir – and thus decades ahead of their time.

So what happened to W. R. Philbrick? I’m happy to tell you that he’s written over 30  novels under three pseudonyms, including the Connie Kale and J. D. Hawkins crime series.  He’s had great success as a YA author, winning multiple awards.  His YA adventure story, Freak the Mighty,  was translated into several languages and is studied in classrooms throughout the world. Later it became a successful film.

BOTTOM LINE:

The T.D. Stash books are not  available on Amazon in print or digital form. Abe Books carry only a very few used paperbacks listed between $3 to $8US.

DECISION: Keep this rare book.

EAT THIS BOOK: Never Going Back by Sam Wiebe

Novellas are relatively rare in crime fiction where formats are far more rigid than in literary and speculative fiction.  Short story lengths greater than 5000 words are tolerated…barely. And novels must be no less than 65,000 and no more than 95,000 words.

No doubt the formats are dictated by business rather than artistic imperatives. The story or book length a publisher believes will hold readers’ attention spans.

So what is a novella exactly? A long story or a short novel? As an author whose work naturally tends to fall in this category,  I believe a novella is a story with a linear plot but with more texture, atmosphere and complexity of character than can be captured in 5000 words or less.

The Orca Rapid Reads Series  breathed life into the crime fiction novella. Mostly because of this series, the CWC Awards of Excellence have had enough entries to create and sustain a novella category. (CWC defines a novella as a story between 8000 and 20,000 words.)

The Rapid Reads series is aimed at adults who are ESL students, who have difficulty reading or those who simply want a fast satisfying read. Although the language is uncomplicated, the books are not simplistic. They are hard-hitting, with adult themes and they often focus on social issues.

It’s a challenge for an author to streamline their writing style without losing its essence. That’s why Orca contracted with leading Canadian crime fiction authors for the 68 books in the series, including my friend, Sam Wiebe.

Sam’s novella, Never Going Back  (Orca, 2020)  is one of the latest books in the Rapid Reads series.  Its protagonist, Alison Kidd, is a tough young woman, a master thief who’s just gotten out of jail. She hated prison and she’s determined to go straight, but the local crime boss blackmails her into pulling off a risky job. If she refuses, her brother will be killed. Can she outsmart her old boss and save her brother and herself?

Sam’s hard-hitting, critically acclaimed Dave Wakeland series and his debut novel,  The Last of the Independents, are both written very much from a man’s point of view. I was intrigued that Sam chose a woman hero for Never Going Back. Could he pull it off?

I’m delighted to say that, yes, Sam did! Alison Kidd is a terrific and likeable character.  (More books and stories with strong women, Sam!) The plot has the twists and turns of a switchback highway and the suspense that goes along with it. An excellent thriller!

EAT THIS BOOK:  5 STARS

 

 

EAT THIS BOOK: Forgotten Writer #5 – Lia Matera and Star Witness or UFO’s and Me

As a kid I was space mad. I longed to become an astronaut or an astronomer. And while I was growing up, sightings of UFO’s were prominent in the news.  I became convinced that space aliens were visiting  our planet.

Maybe that’s why I have fond memories of Lia Matera’s thriller, Star Witness, the fifth book in her Willa Jansson series. The book opens with a hit-between-the-eyes description of a horrific road accident: a sporty Fiat has dived into the roof of an old Buick, squishing the driver. The owner of the Fiat, Alan, has vanished. When the police locate him, he claims he was abducted by aliens. They’re the ones who dropped his car on the Buick!

It falls to grumpy lawyer, Willa Jansson to defend Alan and his incredible alibi. But delving into reports of UFO’s and encounters of the third kind, her skepticism dissolves. Holy Cartman’s anal probe!

Matera did a deep dive into UFO’s and weird encounters and included a listing of books and videos at the end of Star Witness. In her foreword  she describes how  her personal skepticism took a journey much like Willa Jansson’s.

Even today in Canada, we have firm believers in UFO’s. (Check out the meet-ups in Toronto alone!) Many years ago, I met and chatted with one of BC’s leading UFO believers thanks to my friend, retired filmmaker, Chris Windsor.

Chris had studied film making at UBC while I slogged away at my doctorate in organic chemistry. His student film, Roofman, was a huge hit with audiences at the university. That success and his talent landed him a job making industrial training films in Alberta. Mind-numbing and soul-destroying to be sure, but at least he was earning a living in his chosen profession.

In his spare time, Chris began working on a documentary about UFO’s.  By then I was living in Victoria and writing my PhD thesis. Out of the blue one afternoon, Chris phoned. Would I help him out on a film shoot? He and his cinematographer were in town to interview the President of BC’s UFO Society.

Boy that was a hard choice – cranking out dry scientific prose or skiving off with two friends  to explore UFO’s. Hell, yes!

The three of us headed off in Chris’s car to interview the UFO President at his house in a rural part of Vancouver Island. He turned out to be a  kindly middle-aged man who lived in a tidy, respectable middle class home: he looked and acted like our dads though if memory serves, he did don a tinfoil hat.  And his belief in UFO’s was absolute.

I’ll always owe Chris for that amazing life experience. I don’t know what happened with his UFO documentary, because shortly after that I handed in my thesis, graduated and moved back to Ontario.

So what happened to Lia Matera and Chris Windsor? Lia Matera , herself a  lawyer, was chief editor of the Constitutional Law Quarterly and a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School, when she took up crime writing. She wrote the Willa Jansson and Laura Di Palma series of crime novels, twelve books in all, plus a dozen short stories. Her work collected several nominations for leading awards: the Edgar, Anthony and Macavity. She won the Shamus award in 1996.

Matera wrote from 1987 to 1996 then very little thereafter though Ellery Queen Magazine published her chilling tale, “Snow Job” as recently as 2019. Did she go back to law? Did she retire? The crime writing world is poorer for it!

Chris did go on to make a feature film, Big Meat Eater, a horror comedy that was released in 1982.  It got favorable reviews and was a finalist at the 1983 Genies  for Best Original Screenplay, but it never became a huge hit.  Chris told me that unfortunately, as a Canadian film it was eclipsed by the American film, Eating Raoul, another horror comedy about cannibalism.

Andrew Gillies, Chris’s star in Roofman and Big Meat Eater went on to have a long career as a stage and film actor, with roles in The Virgin Suicides and Orphan Black. 

Sadly, Chris left the film business. He may simply have burned out. To learn about the arduous art of film making, read his excellent article in the Georgia Strait here. He now lives in Asia where he has worked for many years.

VALUE: So what’s my used paperback copy of Star Witness worth on Abe Books? About $2 to $8US.  It doesn’t appear to be available in Canada

BOTTOM LINE: Keep. In honour of UFO’s!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eat this Book: Forgotten Mystery Writers #4 – Liza Cody and Bucket Nut

Back in the 1990s, the Crime Writers of Canada had an unusual guest speaker from the UK –  a woman!  Indeed a young woman! She’d just written crime novel with a fascinating protagonist, decades ahead of her time. And it had won the prestigious CWA Silver Dagger Award.

Liza’s hero, Eva Wylie, is a female wrestler – and gay. The book I’ve pulled from my shelf is Bucket Nut, a pejorative phrase thrown at women who don’t pass het-male beauty standards. Or as the Brits put it “a face that could stop a clock”.

Bucket Nut is written in Eva’s voice and vernacular, every word pitch-perfect. Here’s a sample para:

“I know you think I’m stupid. Don’t try to tell me different, because I know, see. And maybe I’d done a stupid thing. All right.  But even clever people can do stupid things. You don’t have to be all-round stupid to be conned. Clever people can be fooled, too. Hasn’t anyone ever taken you for a sucker? Well okay. I’m not judging you, so don’t you sit there and judge me!”

Set in the sordid world of low-rent wrestling,  Bucket Nut shows Liza’s knowledge of a tough and gritty Britain.  Like other great crime novels, it explores the social issues of sexism, poverty and the class system while solving the mystery.  Eva is no saint and she relies on her fists and muscle more than is wise.

In creating Eva, Liza Cody was inspired by real-life British wrestler, Klondike Kate, who, she says, looked like a rain barrel in a leotard.

After the CWC meeting, I chatted with Liza, who, though tall, was about as far removed from the world of female wrestling as can be imagined. Born with dyslexia, she attended art school, became a graphic designer and worked day jobs, including doing hair styles on the wax dummies at Mme Tussaud’s!

When the digital world eclipsed the old mechanical world, Liza could take up writing, because of the computer spell-checker.  Her experiences in the art world served her well in creating – or documenting – bizarre encounters. During our chat, she entertained us about a cop at her gym who wore a complete “Dr. Frankenfurter ” under her uniform!

So what happened to Liza Cody? She didn’t disappear at all. She just didn’t come back to Canada!

I’m delighted to report that she’s had a very successful career in the UK.  Her Anna Lee novels about a woman private investigator, became a TV series in the UK and the USA.  And she continues to write: dozens of short stories, many published in Ellery Queen Magazine as well as five standalone novels.

Her most recent work, Lady Bag,  stars an elderly homeless woman whose pet greyhound is her best friend. One day outside the National Gallery, they meet the Devil…   I’m definitely going to read that one!

VALUE: So what’s my used paperback copy of Bucket Nut worth on Abe Books? About $4US.  And the Thierry* value: $66US.

BOTTOM LINE: Keep. In honour of wild women protagonists!

 

*Thierry value = most outrageous price you can humanly get away with. Named in honour of Mr. Brainwash who successfully sold used, outdated T-shirts for $500+. (See Banksy’s documentary, Exit through the Gift Shop.)

 

 

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