JOHN HARVEY'S FAR CRY: Harvey Hits His Century

I've always been bothered by OPS, or Opening Paragraph Syndrome, where writers craft a few lines of glorious, flowery, descriptive prose, before lapsing into something far flatter, and in some cases, sub-utilitarian, for the rest of the book. John Harvey's Far Cry opens with a two-page scene that is stunningly atmospheric in its tone, but the difference is not that he sustains it for the rest of the book, but that, even though the tone changes in the next chapter, as it must, Harvey's prose remains at that same high standard throughout a long and complicated novel.

There is no one writing crime who is better at the minutiae of day to day living than Harvey, making small details come alive, but more importantly, using the life those details provide to reveal his characters and his story. Far Cry concerns two missing children, nearly fifteen years apart, but daughters of the same woman, Ruth. In Cambridgeshire, DI Will Grayson is concerned that a serial molester, and possibly killer, has been released from prison, and his obsessive pursuit of that suspect threatens his career until the second of Ruth's daughters goes missing, and he and DS Helen Walker are moved to that case. Of course, the cases are connected, and of course the first disappearance is part of the story. Harvey winds the stories together deftly; that the 'solution' to the loss of the first daughter is not a surprise doesn't make it less effective; the second case, as it weaves in and out of Grayson's pursuit of Mitchell Roberts, provides more than enough suspense.

But what rivets the reader is the way Harvey is concerned with issues of parenthood and loss, the different ways we cope with loss, the different impacts it has on our lives. This is part of his fine descriptive eye, with his interest in the quotidien. The effect of crime goes beyond the criminal and victim, it can also be serious for the families, and for the police as well. Harvey is careful to show all his families in an equal light, while pointing out the subtleties of relationships, of class, of expectations, on family life. He's always been good on the pressures of police work on relationships; but here Grayson and his family serve partly as the reminder of how fine the line is between happiness and tragedy. The story moves between East Anglia, Cornwall, and north London, with the human dimensions unchanged regardless of setting. This is what Harvey is a master at doing, perhaps better than any crime writer in Britain, detailing the impact of society on real people, while chronicling crime and punishment within it.

This is, apparently, John Harvey's 100th book. He is something of a national treasure, in an understated English way; though his books are firmly grounded in the English provinces, they are never provincial. But as a jazz fan, I wish only that every time a lover of jazz turns up in Harvey's writings, he weren't always such a lonely guy. This is one of John Harvey's best novels, which means it's one of the best, full stop.

Far Cry by John Harvey,
William Heinemann £14.99 ISBN 9780434016921

NOTE: This review also appears at Crime Time: www.crimetime.co.uk

EDD CARTIER: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

NOTE: Edd Cartier died on Christmas Day, 2008, and I wrote the following for the Guardian on 10 January 2009. It was a labour of some love, because I've been a fan of the pulp magazine Shadow since I was in college, and was able to turn that fascination into a 55 page paper for Richard Slotkin's American Studies class. It was a great pleasure for me, while writing it, to get back in touch with Bob Weinberg--we've met twice in the past 40 years--and he was, as ever, both knowledgeable and helpful. But it was an even greater pleasure to pay hommage to Edd Cartier, an illustrator it would seem almost impossible to dislike. I just learned today that the paper will not be able to run the obituary, after all this time that was inevitable. So here it is now, as it would have run for a British audience, and I hope you enjoy....

EDD CARTIER: PULP ILLUSTRATOR
At the height of the Great Depression, the Shadow was America's greatest hero, with bi-weekly novels appearing in the largest-selling pulp magazine, and adventures, voiced by the likes of Orson Welles, on the nation's most-popular radio show. It was at the height of the Shadow's popularity that Edd Cartier, 22 and just out of art school, began illustrating those pulp novels. The magazine's cover artists could paint dynamic oils, with bright colours and emotive backgrounds, all designed to lure readers in. Interior drawings were more problematic. Pulp magazines got their name from the cheap paper on which they were printed; it soaked up ink, making fine-line drawing difficult. Cartier solved the problem with strong strokes and simple designs, using white space to create lighting effects and diagonals to emphasize the swirling mystery of the Shadow, hidden under a black slouch hat, with blazing twin .45 automatics erupting from beneath his cloak.

Cartier is regarded as the greatest of all Shadow illustrators, whose influence was felt deeply by contemporary artists like Jim Steranko or Michael Kaluta when they revivied the character for paperbacks or comic books. 'He was perhaps the finest pen and ink illustrator ever to work for the pulp paper magazines,' says Robert Weinberg, author of The Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. But Cartier's importance went beyond one character. In the late 1930s he teamed up with editor John W Campbell, who turned Astounding magazine into the flagship for what is now called the 'Golden Age' of science fiction. Cartier illustrated stories by Campbell discoveries like Robert Heinlein and Issac Asimov, but proved a perfect fit for a second, fantasy, magazine called Unknown, which Campbell was launching. Campbell wanted 'realistic' fantasies, and Cartier's art could make the oddest creatures believable. 'Cartier used humour as one of the major elements to illustrate stories. He became one of the most influential artists to work during the Golden Age, roughly 1939-1943', says Weinberg.

Edward Daniel Cartier (Edd came from originally signing his art Ed D Cartier) was born 1 August, 1914 in North Bergen, New Jersey. His father ran Cartier's Saloon, a bar, dance-hall, garage and machine shop near Teterboro airport, where Edd's uncle was a mechanic. He grew up fascinated by aircraft, hanging around with early flyers like Charles Lindbergh, Igor Sikorski, and Howard Hughes, who called him 'Kid'. His sense of wonder at the futuristic world of flight would be echoed in the sleek spaceships he drew for Astounding. Cartier studied applied art at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, under the noted illustrator Harold Winfield Scott. Another instructor was William James, who was the art director for Street and Smith's, the leading pulp publisher. Cartier's ambition was to draw western illustrations, and James hired him to produce drawings for Wild West Weekly, and other Street and Smith titles like Movie Action and Detective Story, paying eight dollars per drawing.

When the Shadow's regular artist, Tom Lovell, decided to pursue a career as a painter, James hired Cartier full time. He made his debut illustrating 'The Sledgehammer Crimes', which appeared on his 22nd birthday in 1936. The quality of Cartier's illustrations was immediately apparent even outside the world of the pulps. The renowned painter Norman Rockwell offered him a job as an assistant, but Scott advised against it, saying 'you'll become another Rockwell; you should remain on your own'. Cartier took the advice, but later said he'd always regretted it.
Cartier's army service during World War II began by drawing maps, but he was serving as a tank machine gunner when he won a Bronze Star for bravery, and was severely wounded, at the Battle of the Bulge. He was wounded again, earning a second Purple Heart, when his hospital train was blown up. After the war he resumed illustrating sf and the Shadow, painted five Shadow covers, and drew for Street and Smith's other big title, Doc Savage. He particularly enjoyed working with the pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard, doing covers for his humorous tales like 'The Indigestible Triton'. 'I'm capable of drawing, but I'm not capable of writing these stories, or these thoughts,' he recalled.

As paperback books and television began to kill off the pulp magazines, and Cartier moved into book illustration, most notably with the specialist sf publishers Gnome Press and Fantasy Press. His drawing for Gnome's 1950 calendar features a large-nosed Father Time welcoming the baby New Year, who wears a space helmet and rocket pack on his back. He also used the GI Bill to resume his studies at Pratt, taking a fine arts degree. He worked as a draughtsman for an engineering company, and then as art director for a company specializing in business art, calendars, logos, even lottery tickets. In 1992, he received a life achievement award from the World Fantasy Convention, and recently he had provided the introduction for a reprint of two Shadow novels. He suffered from Parkinson's disease, and produced his final drawing for his family's 2005 Christmas calendar. It showed Santa handing a gift to the Shadow.

He died on Christmas Day, 2008, in Ramsay, New Jersey. His wife of 63 years, Georgia, predeceased him in 2007. He is survived by two sons.

JACK KEMP: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obit of Jack Kemp is in today's Guardian, you can find it here. As with the Indy's Doc Blanchard piece, his sporting career was of less interest than other facets of his life to a British audience , though in Kemp's case I thought it was particularly instructive, in that he was an unfancied quarterback leading teams in an unfancied league. I made a mistake while I was trimming it: Kemp was cut by only four NFL teams, not five (!). He was actually on the taxi squad of the New York Giants when they lost the NFL title game to the Colts in 1958; the so-called greatest football game ever played.

The two salient points cut from my precis of his football career were , first, that after taking Sid Gillman's Chargers to two title games in the league's first two years, Kemp broke a finger in his throwing hand. Gillman, who had John Hadl in waiting --just as the Bills would have Darryl Lamonica behind him-- tried to hide Kemp on waivers, but the Bills (and two other teams) claimed him, and he went to Buffalo for the $100 waiver fee, a supply-side bargain by any standards. The other was that he was arguably the AFL's most successful quarterback (Len Dawson is usually picked as the league's best, or Joe Namath, who benefits from his image and the big win over the Colts in Super Bowl III) not because he played in all ten AFL seasons but because he took six teams to title games, and won twice. I love the image of him, at the right, with the single-bar helmet, no chin strap, throwing from a leap like a prototype Doug Flutie, though Jeff Garcia might be a closer comparison. Kemp was very much like Flutie; although he was undersized, his arm was actually very strong, and he could throw just as well on the run as from the set. His persistent shoulder injuries probably had something to do with that.

I mentioned he co-founded the AFL players' union, which came about as a direct result of the boycott of the 1965 All-Star game when the players were subjected to segregated facilities in New Orleans. Kemp's Buffalo teammate Cookie Gilchrist was one of the boycott's leaders, with Kemp's support, and it got the game moved to Houston. Ironically, his ex-Charger teammate Keith Lincoln stole the show at the game itself, shortly after the Bills had beaten the Chargers (by then in San Diego) for the AFL championship.

Kemp also intervened with Gilchrist earlier in the season. Cookie bristled under coach Lou Saban, not necessarily the most flexible of guys (nor in fairness was Cookie) and in one game, incensed he'd had only five carries in the first half, he took himself out a game and told Willie Ross to go in. Saban put him on waivers, and, as had happened with Kemp, three teams claimed him for $100. But before the waivers expired, Kemp talked Gilchrist into apologising to the team, if not Saban directly, and he was reinstated. Cookie gained 122 yards in that '64 AFL title game, which the Bills won. After the All-Star game, Saban traded him to Denver for Billy Joe.

I'd written that Gerry Ford and Bill Bradley were among the sportsmen who went into American politics, though Ford didn't play pro football, he was a college All-American. NFL star Whizzer White and baseball pitchers Vinegar Bend Mizzell and Jim Bunning were others who preceded Kemp. Steve Largent, JC Watts, Heath Shuler and former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne were football figures who followed him to Congress, all of them conservatives. Athletes in general tend to believe in individual achievement, even when they come from team sports. They usually emphasize their own hard work over their God-given abilities. Kemp (and Largent) were both examples of players making the most of limited physical talents, but the bigger picture, of the NFL as a monopoly, and its ultimate success as a revenue-sharing socialist collective never seems to sink in with them.

Kemp, by the way, served in the Army reserve while pursuing his NFL and CFL career; it wasn't until he was established in the AFL he was called up for active duty, and ruled unfit due to that injured shoulder. Ron Mix told how Kemp would often have multiple shots to the shoulder before games, to allow him to play, and throw; that he could play pro football but be unfit for the Army is another small irony.

Politically, I would have liked to examine the paradox of the way in which Kemp's fairly liberal social positions were contradicted by the easily perceptible effects of his policies. Like many conservative ideologues he seemed able to relate policies to personal experience, but unable to project beyond his own experience. Even Dick Cheney takes an enlightened view, for example, on gay rights; his daughter's experience runs contrary to his ideology, but though it affects his personal conduct, it doesn't change his ideology. I'd call that a lack of wide empathy. I also thought the link between Reagan (and Thatcher) economics and the current financial crisis is straightforward and obvious, though listening to 'Lord' Saatchi discussing the thirtieth anniversary of Thatcher's ascencsion on the Today programme, one wonders if it isn't straightforward at all to the presenters asking the questions.

It was also interesting that Kemp wasn't chosen as Bush's running mate in 1988; he would have been a stronger candidate than Quayle, but Bush never agreed with Kemp and Reagan's 'voodoo economics' and also likely did not want a potential usurper operating as VP. Hence the appointment to HUD, a thankless and almost invisible job. It's to Kemp's credit that he left Congress and took that post, and shows that he was, indeed, a true believer.

There's a nice piece by Greg Easterbrook in the Sunday New York Times; he grew up in Buffalo idolising Kemp, then coached some of Kemp's grandchildren (he had 17!) in pee-wee football. It's funny to read about Kemp putting his arm around the right-wing columnist and calling him a 'socialist' because he voted for Obama, and detailing all the ways the country would be ruined by Obama's socialism.

And finally, I did find it intriguing that his two sons both were pro QBs; Jeff went to Dartmouth and then 10 years in the NFL, despite, like his father, having limited natural ability. Jim played nine years in the CFL.

EUGENE IZZI'S THE CRIMINALIST: A Forgotten Friday Entry

Eugene Izzi was found hanging outside the window of his Chicago office in December 1996, the noose anchored to his desk. His death was ruled suicide, but it took place in strange circumstances. When I wrote about it for the Financial Times, I dismissed the idea of murder (in his pockets was the manuscript, on disc, of a novel about a man who infiltrates a white supremacy group, and there was a suggestion that such a group might have been seeking revenge for his own infiltration of them) but did consider that he might have been enacting a scene from the novel, which then went wrong. But in Izzi's 1996 novel Players, a career criminal arranges his own death, in order to provide for his family, and after publishing 16 novels in just ten years Izzi might have been feeling a similar need.

Izzi broke onto the scene with 1987's The Take, and his third book, Bad Guys (1988) was a classic which already set up his main themes of corruption, betrayal, revenge and other difficult personal choices. Izzi wrote feverishly, and in some of his books the material can seem out of control, but when he was at his best, he was among the best and most hard-boiled writers in the field. He was George Pelecanos, but more into the corruptions of the criminal and cop world, and offering less in the sense of redemption coming from the hard work of everyday life.

The Criminalist was his second novel published posthumously (the first, A Matter Of Honor, was a sequel to Bulletin From The Streets, two books which seemed to take off from Elmore Leonard's City Primeval, but neither in a very convincing fashion). It is one of his very best, having the same sense of powerful anger all his books do, while avoiding that headlong speed-rap prose that particularly detracted from some of his longer novels, including those two Leonard pastiches.

Dominick diGrazia is the criminalist of the title, a sort of super-cop who operates as a lone wolf within the Chicago Police Department. DiGrazia is a trained forensic scientist who prefers to remain on the street, and he has powerful friends in high places to cover his back in the political snakepit that is the CPD. When a corpse is discovered in an alley, maimed in the same way as a famous unsolved murder from twenty years earlier, DiGrazia manages to take over the investigation himself.

Since DiGrazia’s ex-partner, now retired, had been the original investigating officer, and since the original victim was the sister-in-law of a cop, who was accused of killing her, the strands of the story are set up carefully. The most detailed and labyrinthine plots exist within the police, which we see primarily through the eyes of Janice Constantine, a veteran beat cop who becomes DiGrazia’s temporary partner.

Many of Izzi’s core personal themes throw themselves up here, the ones that appeared to reflect aspects of his own life: abusive parents, distrustful marriages, the inability of people to transcend the hands dealt to them by life. But his usual sense of rage is tempered here by care and even sensitivity; using a female point of view seems to help give him some distance, and, unlike some of his novels, he's here concerned about keeping the reader guessing about what is true and what isn’t. The investigation may reach its conclusion with a slight anti-climax, but the story plays fair even as it carries you along. You could also look at it as a precursor to TV shows like CSI, in that Izzi took the popular forensic strand of crime writing, and transferred it to actual investigators. This time, his adapting of his work to popular trends worked perfectly, and it deserved to be a springboard to greater success.

We can speculate about what sort of conditions conspired to grant Izzi the artistic peace to keep this novel so well under control. We can also speculate further about the locked-room mystery he left behind with his death. We can regret that this was the last Izzi novel we got to see (the family apparently decided not to release the novel which was on his person when he died, just as they honoured his wish to keep his second novel, The Eighth Victim, out of print—it's not great, but it's not THAT bad!). The Criminalist was said by some sources to be Izzi's best-selling novel, though when I interviewed his editor, Jennifer Sawyer-Fisher, she said the book had received only a 'small boost' from his death. When I originally reviewed The Criminalist ten years ago, I said that, given the circumstances of his death, 'it’s heart-warming to read something so good'. That's still true, and after George V Higgins, he's the writer I'd most like to see get back into print.

THE CRIMINALIST Avon Books, USA, 1998

PRECISIONISM IN AMERICA

I've written an essay, 'There's Nothing Sentimental About A Machine', about Precisionism, which you can find over at Untitled: Prespectives, here. It's based on a 1994 book, Precisionism In America 1915-1941, and covers some of my favourite artists. I find the connection between artists like Charles Demuth and writers like William Carlos Williams particularly strong, and fascinating, as you might guess from Demuth's painting on the right. I'll try to get more postings about art onto Untitled in the near future...I'd like to be more Presicionist about that, and less Futurist, but...

MR INSIDE, DOC BLANCHARD: My Independent Obituary

My obituary of Doc Blanchard is in today's Independent, you can find it here. Obviously, the paper's main interest was in the way Blanchard's actions prevented a tragedy over an Essex village, but equally obviously, his fame in America was down to his exploits on the football field; even when I was boy, the legend of Mr Inside and Mr Outside was still current.

The obit was supposed to be brief, but even so, some of the things I felt were crucial to his story were cut, and there were others I had left out myself to keep the piece short, so I'll tell you about them here.

The 1944 Army-Navy game was moved to Baltimore by President Roosevelt. Traditionally played at a neutral venue (usually in Philadelphia) in 1942-43 it had been held at the academies, but Roosevelt recognised the great interest in the undefeated Army team and its propaganda value, and also ordered war bonds sold along with the tickets.

After going undefeated in '44 and '45, and being national champions both years, Blanchard missed the first two games of the 1946 season to injury, and played the rest of the year at less than 100%. The meeting of the unbeatens, against Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium, one of the greatest non-baseball events at that now-destroyed venue, ended in a 0-0 tie, which, as usual, acted in Notre Dame's favor and they were awarded the national championship. That tie was the only blemish on the three years Davis and Blanchard played together under Red Blaik. Late in the game, Blanchard was stopped in the open field by Notre Dame's quarterback Johnny Lujack; it is often contended that the fully-fit Doc would've scored. Davis won the Heisman that year, Lujack the next, and Notre Dame end Leon Hart would win it in '48: I'm not sure there's been another college game that featured four Heisman winners.

Of course Army had some advantages in those years, not least that many of the players other colleges would have recruited were in the services, Blanchard among them. He was a year older than he would have been otherwise. Absent the war, he would have played at North Carolina. He was sent to his father's school, St. Stanislaus, in Bay St Louis, Mississippi, the Rockachaws. According to some sources, he was recruited by both Army and Notre Dame, but fell short academically. But he chose North Carolina to be closer to home, where his father was ill, and where the varsity coach was his mother's cousin. The academic bit was certainly real; Doc graduated 296 out 310 in his class, and there was the lingering suspicion it was his football skill that got him admitted to West Point.

The deal Blanchard and Davis originally made to play pro football was made with General Maxwell Taylor, before public outcry forced its cancellation. This became an issue last year, when an Army player was allowed to go to NFL camps, and again there was an outcry. While they were making their movie, Davis injured his knee seriously; he left the Army when his four years were up and played for the Los Angeles Rams, part of one of the greatest offenses the NFL has ever seen, but he was never the same player.

Blacnhard's number 35 will be retired this season; along with teammate Joe Steffy. Army had retired only two numbers previously: Davis' 41 and Pete Dawkins' 24. Dawkins went from Army football to a Rhodes scholarship and Oxford blues in rugby; he is the man who invented the overarm throw-in at the lineout.

But it's a puzzle why Davis and Blanchard didn't see their numbers retired together, and even more of a puzzle why Blanchard, who chose a career in the military, and even returned to West Point to coach, had to wait while Davis was honoured first. Maybe because Doc stuck with the Air Force after it became a separate service?

The politics of the service academies are beyond me, but the magnitude of the Army-Notre Dame rivalry was something I wish I could have conveyed. You could look up John Ford's movie, The Long Gray Line, if you'd like to get something of a feeling for it--the perfect film for Ford, as Irish and military loyalties crash head to head. Anyway, I am grateful the Indy gave me the chance to write about him. Although I should point out that I had the correct spelling of 'shotput' in my original copy.

JEREMY DUNS' FREE AGENT

My review of Jeremy Duns' spy thriller Free Agent has been posted at Crime Time (here). It's an interesting revisionist version of the Sixties James Bond style thrillers, and at its best when it's considering the history of the time through the lens of present research. This approach does have its problems, though....as the breakneck pace of the 'field work' in a Nigeria torn by the conflict in Biafra, tends to overshadow the more atmospheric, and compelling part of the story, set in Sixties London, and MI6. It's the first of a series....

SWEDISH CRIME DOMINATES EURO BEST-SELLER LISTS

There was an interesting piece in the Guardian yesterday (here) about the top-selling authors of fiction in seven leading European book makets. The survey was done by Rudiger Wischenbart and Miha Kovac, based on trade magazines in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands; you can find their fascinating Booklab blog here. From there you can also link to their original findings, which make far more interesting reading that the Guardian's potted summary.

Although the Guardian bills it as a 'diverse reading culture across Europe', the authors' own blog points out more accurately that none of the writers in their top 40 come from outside Western Europe (apart from Paulo Coehlo, 'Brazilian Portuguese'). Although Wischenbart told the Guardian you 'might have expected as many as 80% of the best-sellers to have been written in English', 13 of 40 still amounts to 1/3, though you'd have to agree that 2/3 of western Europe's best-sellers being non-English language is impressive.

Of course eight Swedes, from a country of only eight million people, is even more impressive, with four from the Netherlands following suit. Although Stieg Larsson was number one in five of the seven countries (based on chart position and length of stay factored together), Henning Mankell at 10 was the next highest placed Swede, while five English-language authors placed in the top 10: Khaled Hosseini (2), Ken Follet (4), John Boyne (7), Ceceila Ahern (8) and Elizabeth Gilbert (9). Of course, two of those are Irish, one American, and one Afghan-born, which lessens slightly any English national triumphalism.

The list is limited to 'adult' fiction, so Stephenie Meyer, who would place second overall, is excluded, as is JK Rowling. Both have multiple titles included in their totals, which is another problem when trying to compare like against like. I had thought Boyne's The Boy In Striped Pyjamas, was originally done as a young adult title, but became 'adult' as a result of the movie tie-in. Movies also boosted Ahern, for example, when PS I Love You came out. One other anomaly: Robert Saviano's Gomarra, obviously boosted by its movie tie-in, was marketed in some countries as fiction and others as non-fiction, and it's unclear from the chart and its notes whether it was thus excluded or included.

The other Swedes included Lisa Marklund (12--and she's going to be collaborating with James Patterson), Jan Guillot (15-- interestingly, Guillot's books, while wildy popular in Germany, haven't made much impression in English markets), and Jens Lapidus (17-- whose 'Stockholm Noir' trilogy, first volume titled Never Fuck Up, has yet to be published in English). Johan Theorin and Asa Larsson also make the list, along with Mark Levengood, an American-born Swedish-speaking Finn whose fame came via the Eurovision song contest and whose book, I assume, is non-crime.

I'm surprised at the paucity of American writers included. Apart from Gilbert, the only others were Patricia Cornwell, Patterson, and Mary Higgins Clark, all of whom placed in the 40s. Also down in that territory were England's Martina Cole and Nicci French, and the Indian/Australian Aravind Adiga. The top ten also includes Carlos Ruis Zafon, which may vindicate leaving the title of El juego del angelo in Spanish, and the German neo-feminist porno writer Charlotte Roche. And though I'm as encouraged as the Guardian by seeing Katie Price in close proximity to a French Nobel Prize winner, I question whether it's accurate of the paper to describe Price as 'an author writing in English', since she doesn't actually write her books at all.

JAMES CARLOS BLAKE'S PISTOLEER: A Forgotten Friday Entry

THE PISTOLEER (1995)
by James Carlos Blake

PORTRAIT OF WES, SERIAL KILLER

I wouldn't really call James Carlos Blake's work forgotten, or even ignored; in fact,it's usually marketed as 'literary fiction' and sold outside the crime sections of bookstores. This novel,though nominally a western, was published in the UK in 1997 by Canongate, a publisher of both fine and eclectic tastes and high standing in literary circles, yet still it sank like a corpse wearing concrete espadrilles. I don't believe any of Blake's other books have been published here, though in the US they've appeared steadily, from imprints like Harper Perennial, eclectic publishers on the literary side of the bookstore divide.

I've written many times about how the crime novel and the western are inextricably linked; Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough's recent study of 1930s robbers, which Michael Mann is filming, made the same point, and Blake works in that territory, making the links evident. His 'Dillinger' novel, Handsome Harry, is excellent, but all his books tend to be set between the turn of the last century, through the Depression, and if you replace horses with Fords and six-guns with tommy guns, you can see clearly the smooth continuity of the genres.

Although Blake’s sympathetic portrait of John Wesley Hardin in The Pistoleer might seem to owe more to various Billy the Kid stories than to modern crime novels, there is another interesting connection, between the modern, serial killer 'heroes' and the outlaw whom death seems to follow around. As in many of Blake's books, the criminal's story begins with abuse in childhood (classically, the outlaw’s usually comes at the hand of legal, rather than parental, authority) and then takes the structure of the road novel as a framework for a series of deaths, the final one usually being his own. And in The Pistoleer Hardin is presented as a prototype version of the serial killer, a sociopath if not a psychopath, who almost needs the death that becomes his stock in trade.

In westerns, killings often make some men more attractive to some women, and again, it is one of Blake's tropes to include the outlaw's women in his stories, and not merely as eye-candy. This too is a major part of the Thirties gangster mystique, and not just for Bonnie and Clyde. In The Pistoleer, Blake uses multiple points of view, and some of the best sequences are those narrated by women. Not only do he show the how ladies love outlaws, those ladies have their own perspective on the phenomenon, a perspective not usually a part of the genre. Sadly for modern writers, serial killers never seem to have that same attraction for women.

This perspective might seem surprising from a writer as superficially hard-boiled as Blake, but in fact he can also become overly romantic; but this novel certainly doesn’t suffer for it,and his other books contain a couple of absolutely devastating endings. Here, the kaleidoscope of narrators give him lots of scope for irony, and provides a panoramic view of the West which few novels have time or scope to attempt, much less deliver. The depth of the story, and the quality of the writing, show why publishers refused to consign Blake to the ghetto, but it's worth moving this book into the western sections. When it came out I compared it to Geoff Aggeler’s Confessions Of Johnny Ringo and Loren Estleman’s Bloody Season as among the best “bad man” novels of the 1990s, and it remains just as good today.

AUGUST KLEINZAHLER'S GUARDIAN PROFILE

There was a very fine profile of my old friend August Kleinzahler in yesterday's Guardian review section (here), by James Campbell. Gus is hot right now, not only winning a Lannan award, but generating big heat in the vicious world of poetry by attacking not only establishment poets like Adam Kirsch and William Logan, but also the sainted Garrison Keillor. Campbell is very good in the way he lets his profile take both sides of the story, letting his picture of August answer Kirsch's analysis. Of course the photo of August that accompanies the piece does that too: wearing his Al 'the Blast' Gallo hat he looks every bit the retired Jersey gangster, but the cat he's holding suggests something else.

I've written about August before at IT, (here), when the NY Times asked him to celebrate the election in poetry, and no sooner had I done so than he won the Lannan award, showing the power of influence Irresistible Targets can have. But I didn't really praise his poetry enough (I must like it; I published a few chapbooks of it, and according to the piece, they may be worth something more than chump change now). That's why I was glad Campbell chose such a good example to accompany the article, a segment from 'Before Dawn On Bluff Road' which shows August's amazing ability to weave rhythms out of the most uncommon poetical words, his confident appropriation of language, and most of all, the unexpected emotion that gives the poem its impact.

August has always been the antithesis of the poetasters, the creative writing professors who write poems about chopping wood and walking through the fields, the Oxford-educated grant-seekers, and the rest. He's been critical of them, and it irritated some critics that he would do so when he proved himself somewhat adept at working the business of poetry while refining its craft. Poetic politics are so vicious, to adapt an old saying about academics, because the stakes are so low. But the real stakes is the writing itself, something few poetasters remember.

Since August has turned 60, and has won the Griffin prize as well as the Lannan, I suppose I'll have to stop referring to him as the best young poet in America. But I'm happy to refer to him as the best poet in America, and celebrate him out of the mainstream as well as in it.

HOMAGE TO THE WIRE, SERIES FOUR

I've just finished watching the fourth series of The Wire on DVD, and while it might seem a bit belated, remember that the UK has been far behind on the show, and even then it had aired only on a small satellite channel before the BBC began a run of daily late-night showings of the first series a couple of weeks ago (and interestingly, on Wednesdays, let that re-run show bump Mad Men to an after-midnight time slot). But it occurs to me that, although we take it as a commonplace by now that The Wire is the best TV show any of us have seen, this fourth series marks a particular high point. It also occurs to me that this may well be the programme that makes watching on TV redundant. Although a daily run is a good idea, the ideal way to watch The Wire is via box set, in which you can move at your own pace, go back and rewatch bits to exercise your curiosity, in fact, watch it almost exactly the way you would read a novel.

Although the ensemble cast and multiple plot lines are nothing new to serial TV (in fact, one of the best things about Homicide was the underlying plot thread of corruption which ran throughout the series), I'm not going to stop and praise individual writers or actors--the standard has been incredibly high throughout. The Wire has been able to eschew completely the need for resolution in any one episode; it's been able to build its storylines on its own terms, and it's been able to do away with most of the distinctions between heroes and villains, especially in terms of its police story. The beauty of the fourth series is that all these factors have been allowed to move front and centre for two reasons. First was the withdrawal of Jimmy McNulty out of the main plot lines. If anyone had been the center of the show, it was him, and his personal demons could sometimes overshadow other stories; not that this was bad, but without him, the rest of the stories take on more meaning. In fact, as the series builds toward the re-construction of the original Wire 'team' of cops, we find their own positions more interesting, and more relevant, to the general story lines.

The other factor is the over-lying theme. Each series has tended to have one moral arch; the most effective previously had been the question of work in series two, the way the lack of opportunity to do real work affects a city, and that theme permeated all the story lines. Series four is about education, and by using four school kids as its focus, four kids who hadn't been part of the story before, it delivered a damning and depressing indictment of the state of our society—as well as powerful drama. The plot lines inter-twine: there is a mayoral election, the dirty politics will have its impact on the schools; the police are being asked to massage statistics, exactly the way the school system does to 'leave no child behind'. Bunny, forced to leave the police after his experiment to 'Hamsterdam' the drug trade in Baltimore ran afoul of the 'anti-drug' message, winds up working on a similar programme, to isolate problem children from classrooms, try to 'socialise' them, while allowing others to learn. Meanwhile, of course, Marlo is leaving more and more hidden corpses as he rises to the top of the drug business.

I said, the brilliant thing is that there are no heroes or villains, or perhaps it is that they are not the people you expect them to be. The heroic figures are those plugging away against a relentlessly uncaring system. We are drawn to think of Omar, who rips off drug dealers, as a hero of sorts; he and Bodie, who's grown since the first series, are true their codes. Bunny is, of course, a hero.

But many of the villains are simply playing their games as they know how. Crooked politicians and politicially inclined police chiefs have their roles, they are part of the system, not really creating the problems as profiting from them. Proposition Joe is their equivalent in the drug trade, corrupt, but in effect playing by the bent rules. But young uns like the brilliantly cold Marlo and his killers Chris and Snoop, don't have a code, which makes him a real villain, and his corruption of Michael is the closest the series comes to having a devil. But there is an equivalent kind of cold in the bureaucrats who insist the schools teach for the test, who spout sociological cant in the face of reality, and who use test scores to lie about progress. The saddest moment in the series may be when homeless Duquan receives a 'social promotion' to high school; leaving Prezbo and his class behind will guarantee his education comes to an end. But, in one sense, the real villain of series four is Herc, the otherwise likeable cop, simply because he doesn't do his job well enough, doesn't understand its responsibilities enough, and his lackadaisical self-interest winds up hurting the wonderfully sympathetic Bubbles and young Randy, one of the four kids.

Their fates are never going to be positive, and to some extent the transformation of Michael's character is the hardest to accept, in fact, it's delineated well only if you remember that he is the smartest of the four, the one who's best able to make the practical decision about what it will take to survive. That he takes DuQuan with him simply shows that there is nothing the system, even someone as caring as ex-cop Prezbylewski, can do. And interesting, rather than pull the melodramatic strings with any of the four, the show instead surprises you, by sacrificing Bodie, the most likeable of all the slingers, but not before referring us back to the first season, and the brilliant translation of the chess board into street analogy. Those little elements make watching in sequence particularly rewarding. Deputy Ops Chief Rawls was shown briefly in a gay bar in an earlier series, in this one there is a single piece of graffiti, in the womens room at the police station, that keeps that plot element alive. Will it be used in series five? It's the long game the writers are playing, what creator David Simon has referred to in interviews as a 'visual novel'.

The final episode is double the usual length, and even so is forced to use a coda to draw the elements together. Much remains unresolved, not least the ultimate fates of the four boys. But Marlo now has Prop Joe in his sights; the major crimes unit will be chasing Marlo and his killers; Omar is a marked man, and Michael now has a corner. I realised how attached I had become to The Wire as I watched the final episode, and realised I did not want it to end, the way you sometimes slow down when you're reading a particularly good book. Now the fifth season looms out there, and I feel the way I did when I started reading The Dain Curse, knowing once I'd finished, I'd never have another Dashiell Hammett novel to read.

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD: UPDATE II

With the second autopsy on Ian Tomlinson, the one demanded by his family, but according to the IPCC press release 'instructed' by the IPCC, revealing the cause of death to be 'abdominal hemmorhage', that is, internal bleeding, and the PC who struck Tomlinson and shoved him to the ground scheduled to be questioned regarding his manslaughter, I wonder if Dr. Freddy Patel, who carried out the first autopsy, blaming Tomlinson's death on a 'heart attack', as part of the 'innocent bystander police tried to aid before anarchists attacked them with bottles' cover up story, should now also be investigated as an accessory after the fact. If he ignored the true cause of death, in order to protect either an individual policeman or the police service itself, such charges should be automatic, only who would make them? But bringing such charges might encourage him to say who it was from the coroner's office who decided the autoposy would be held in secret, without the IPCC present, because there were no suspicous circumstances.