I've written about Hitomi Takano's manga MY BOY before, but I've recently re-read the previously-published volumes as well as the newest one, so it's on my mind. It's also a manga I like very much, so...

When I first saw this manga, I almost didn't buy it. Despite being published in Futabasha's seinen (men's manga) magazine Weekly Action Manga, it's very much a josei (women's) manga series. I don't read a lot of josei , though some of the series I have read, I've really, really loved (including THE HOUSE OF FIVE LEAVES; DESCENDING STORIES). MY BOY attracted my attention because of the art--which is gorgeous--while the story itself, and the cover art, left me with the impression this might not be a story for me. 

I was wrong, though, and I'm glad I've given it a chance. It's fantastic and I've actually read it three times since it first published in English just over a year ago.

MY BOY is the story of Satoko, a 30-year-old office lady, single and without friends (or, apparently, family) living a very quiet, soul-crushingly mundane and lonely existence. At 30 years old, she's only had one romantic relationship in her life, a very brief one at that, during her last year of college, eight years earlier. At the time, it didn't bother her when her boyfriend (whom she confesses she never really much cared for, anyway) broke up with her, but now she suspects it's the moment her life went off the rails, though she couldn't say why.

MY BOY is also the story of Mashuu, an ostracized, bullied 12-year-old boy who suffers from family neglect (including lack of new clothing--he's been wearing the same shirts and shorts since he was in early elementary school and the shorts now barely come down to his thighs--and haircuts--his hair is down past his shoulders, leading people to think he's a girl--and even lack of baths), who spends most of his time outside of school alone, practicing soccer, which he isn't very good at.

The two characters' lives intersect when Satoko, reeling from a particularly unpleasant interaction with her boss (who, through an unlikely stroke of fate, is the same man who briefly dated, then dumped, her in college), sees Mashuu practicing soccer alone in the park and, on a whim, decides to give him some pointers, having played futsal in college. Mashuu is thrilled to have anyone, especially an adult, pay attention to him and share in his passion. From there, a very unlikely relationship builds between the two.

The author, Hitomi Takano, says in her afterward that this manga is intentionally a gender-reversal of the typical onee-san/shota (young miss/boy) manga trope, in which a young girl finds an companion in an older boy or man. In fact, the story started out that way, but, she says, she lost interest in it right way until she decided to flip the switch. I'm glad she did because I've enjoyed it a lot so far.

Not only is the manga beautiful, but the interactions between the characters are very realistic, which you often don't find in this types of comics. Both Satoko and Mashuu are hesitant, unsure of themselves and how they can/should interact with one another. Satoko, because she has no experience with children and isn't sure what's appropriate; Mashuu because he has no friends to speak of and no real parental figure. Both are extremely lonely, extremely vulnerable people and watching them find each other is powerful and moving as Satoko's motherly instinct and desire to matter to someone brings out aspects of herself she didn't realize existed while Mashuu finds that he can be himself and have value, rather than simply trying to keep his head down and stay out of everyone's way. Together, they compliment each other's weaknesses and build each other's strengths. It's really, truly both heartbreaking and beautiful to watch each of them as their relationship develops.

The TL:DR version: this series is a tremendous read. As I said, I almost didn't buy this (and in fact almost cancelled my pre-order once I had after having second thoughts), but I'm very, very glad I did. I truly enjoyed reading something outside of my normal reading wheelhouse and I look forward very much to reading more about these characters.

I ran across this while reading about Joseph Cotten (of CITIZEN KANE and SHADOW OF DOUBT, the Hitchcock film, fame) and discovered it was available online, and thought why not?

Bank employee Jim Osborne (Cotten) has a good life and realizes this fully, but stilldecides something is missing. After getting a promotion, he learns his bank currently has an unusually high amount of cash (a million bucks) and decides what he's been missing is money. Of course. Long story short, he hatches a plan to steal the money and escape, with his family, to Brazil after learning they have no extradition treaty with the US. His plan involves stealing the money on a Friday night and being in Rio de Janeiro by Sunday night before anyone even notices the money is gone. However, the bank will begin opening Saturdays the following week, so Osborne literally only has days to pull this off.

The plan to steal the money goes off without a hitch, but due to the short notice everything from his family's passports to flight plans get screwed up. While they're stranded in New Orleans, a suspicious airline employee checks Osborne's baggage and finds the money. When the film was made, it wasn't illegal to make large, undeclared cash transactions (today, you can't leave or enter the country with more than $10,000 in cash without declaring it) but he's, of course, even more suspicious. Osborne claims to be traveling on bank business, but no bank would send a man and his family traveling with so much cash and no guards.

Osborne essentially bullies his way through the situation, but as a result of this, they miss their plane and while Osborne is trying to figure some other solution out, his wife discovers what's going on. She is horrified and leaves him, taking their daughter back with her to Los Angeles.

Osborne, in a rare good decision by a protagonist in a crime film, decides his family means more to him than the money and devises a plan to return the cash without anyone the wiser. He does so and goes into work as usual Monday morning, but is so exhausted and stressed out, his coworkers send him home, thinking he has the flu or something.

It's not a bad film, but it's an unusual one. Normally with a crime film, you're half-way rooting for the criminal to fail and get what he deserves while another part of you wants him to succeed and to see how he does it. In this case, Osborne fails in one way, but it's--let's say--the best possible way. His plan didn't work, but he isn't caught and everything resets with Osborne having learned a valuable lesson without having to pay the price for doing so. It's a happy ending, but a happy ending to a crime film seems wrong somehow.

For all that, it's not a bad film. It's well-written, acted and shot and has a certain style I usually associate with a different type of film, while retaining the sweaty, fearful tension of a crime film.

Give it a chance yourself, if you run across it. 

The second film adaptation of Graham Greene's classic novel "A Gun For Sale" this one attracted my attention because of something I'd never have expected... but we'll save that for later.

Anyway, let's talk a moment about SHORTCUT TO HELL.

It's been a long time since I've read Greene's original novel, but from what I remember, this more or less follows the bare-bones outline of the book. Professional hitman is hired to kill two people, and afterwards is betrayed to the police by his employer, who has paid him with stolen money he knows is already being traced. The hitman, of course, wants revenge, but in order to give himself time and the opportunity to get it, he kidnaps the girlfriend of the police detective who's on his trail, using her as a hostage to buy time. Along the way, the woman does her best to bring out the hitman's sense of decency and humanity. 

To call this movie "modest" or a "B movie" would be kind. It's more like "minor" and "C+." That said, there's nothing actually bad about it, it just isn't very good either. Each scene is just barely competent enough to keep you from turning it off, but the end result is one of feeling as if time was wasted.

So, why did this catch my eye to begin with?

​Well...

Oh. That's unfortunate. This appears to be Cagney's only directorial effort, though, so at least he knew when to quit.

Not recommended. Watch the original adaptation, "This Gun for Hire" starring Alan Ladd, or just read the novel. 

"Noose-Hungry," my third publication of the year and the second in a series about Ernie Farrar, marshal of the town of Aldensville, (following last year's "A Hanging Matter"), is up at Crimson Streets! 

Marshal Farrar, and his new deputy Ben Thomas (also returning from "A Hanging Matter") seek out the culprit in a stagecoach robbery/murder who seems, for all the world, to have disappeared!
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Click here or the image below to be whisked away to some fresh fiction! It's a story I'm proud of and I hope you'll enjoy it!

With the anime adaptation in full swing, I thought it might be time to talk a little about one of my favorite manga - GOLDEN KAMUY!

Well, that was fast. My second publication of 2019 is now out: the unfortunately long-delayed fifth issue of Occult Detective Quarterly, featuring the first appearance of my hitman-turned-exorcist character, Azuma Kuromori!

The fifth installment of OCCULT DETECTIVE QUARTERLY brings new tales by Tim Waggoner, Brandon Barrows, Cliff Biggers, Cody Shroeder, Megan Taylor, Loren Rhodes and many more including new reviews!

Get yours in print or on Kindle and check back for more news regarding Azuma Kuromori. I've got big plans for him!

My first publication of 2019: my crime short story, "Nobody But You," was published in the new issue of Dark City Crime & Mystery Magazine (volume 4, issue 2).

Now available on Amazon here ​or click the cover image below.

You can also read an excerpt of the magazine here, including the full text of my story in which a man desperately clings to the one thing he cannot live without and is willing to do anything to keep!

As a hardcore noir read, and a collector of paperback originals--especially Gold Medal---I had heard of Peter Rabe, who wrote eighteen novels for GM in about five years, but had never read him until I stumbled across this book. And I read it because of an essay Donald Westlake, one of my all-time top favorite writers, wrote about Rabe and his career. 

​Well, let's talk a little about this book.

First, it's a very interesting concept: two businesses, one legitimate and one likely-mob-backed, fighting over dominance of the jukebox concession in a small city. Of course, it turns violent.

Right from the start, there was something else different about this novel, though. For one, the prose is a little more literary than I expect from a GM book, which gave it a slightly odd feeling.

More than odd, though, the book is downright uneven. 

The tone of the novel begins in a hard-boiled literary form, then switches to a humorous tone it keeps up for a while before switching to a more standard hard-boiled crime feel (albeit briefly).

The plot starts out focused, particularly on the problem of the jukebox war, but also on a love triangle but, then meanders into the workings of the record-distribution industry circa 1960 and spends far, far too much time there. Then, in literally the last four or five thousand words or so, the novel remembers it's supposed to be a crime novel and tosses in a pointless kidnapping which results in a murder. Finally, on the very last page, the protagonist finds out that in the six or so hours during which he was kidnapped, all the plot-points have been wrapped up off-camera without his involvement.

As I said, I read this because an essay Westlake wrote on Rabe intrigued me and this was the first Rabe I stumbled across after reading it. Westlake's essay basically says Rabe was a genius storyteller constitutionally unsuited to the publishing industry. He described Rabe's career as writing books that were "pate, but were treated like liverwurst by his agent, the industry and readers alike" and that after five or six years, Rabe started to believe liverwurst was what everyone wanted, so he began to write "some very bad books, often in ten days or less" interspersed with a few books that were weak but had some good parts, before moving away from original fiction into novelizations and media tie-in novels, then leaving writing entirely. Rabe's first novel was published in 1955. MURDER ME FOR NICKELS was published in 1960, which put it right at the tail-end of his so-called "pate phase." 

This isn't isn't pate, but it's only a step above liverwurst, to continue the metaphor. It's very much a mixed bag. There are a number of clever turns of phrase in the prose and a few legitimately amusing, even funny, verbal exchanges, but the plot is stupid, meandering and pointless and the characters so paper-thin I honestly had a hard time remembering who was who in several instances, especially in crowd scenes.

I'm still curious to read some good Rabe and if I run across something in the future, I'll check the copyright date to see what era it fits into before making a buying decision. Will I seek more Rabe out, though? I really doubt it.

Time for a revisit of one of my all-time favorite anime series, TERROR IN RESONANCE.

Last week, I read Kenneth Fearing's novel, THE BIG CLOCK, and honestly did not care for it much. It was highly praised by the likes of Raymond Chandler himself as a "noir tour de force," but to me, it lacked substance and ended on a very weak note.

I'd heard better things about the film adaptation, however, so I gave that a shot. Let's take a look.

The basic plot of both the novel and the film is the protagonist (named George Stroud in the novel; Ray Milland in the film) is an editor in a huge magazine empire who has a taste for drink and a wandering eye. He cheats on his wife with his boss's mistress and when his boss snaps one night and kills her, the boss's business partner tries to pin the killing on George/Ray - the twist is that they don't know it is George/Ray, only that another man was at the scene and saw Earl Janoth (though they don't know if he knows who Janoth was and/or can recognize him). 

Using the resources of the magazine George/Ray edits, a crime-news magazine with a reputation for solving crimes the cops can't (or at least before the cops do), they put George/Ray in charge of finding this mystery man so they can take care of him.

George/Ray, a very intelligent man who fully realizes what's going on, does his best to obfuscate the situation while trying to find a way to definitively prove Janoth was the murderer without admitting he himself was there (because his wife will find out about his infidelity; in fact, in the novel, he describes it as a choice between doing the right thing and losing his family or saving his skin and losing everything else). 

The situation gets tighter and tighter as George/Ray had no reason to cover his own tracks, so it's quite easy for his reporters to him track down (though none ever realize it's him), until he's literally trapped in the magazine's offices and then...

That's where the big difference lies.

In the novel, Earl Janoth initially wants to turn himself in for the killing, but his business partner, Steve Hagen, convinces him that Janoth Publications can't survive without him and he'd be putting thousands of people out of work by turning himself in. At the same time, Janoth has been fighting off a hostile takeover attempt by a rival company. In the end of the novel, just before George is about to be caught and have to make his own hard choice, it's revealed that earlier that day, the rival company's takeover succeeds and Janoth then calls off the investigation, as there is no more purpose to trying to save his own skin, then kills himself. It's a weak ending that actually made me angry as it let George completely off the hook without him ever having to make the really difficult choice that he has struggled with most of the novel.

In the film, Ray finds evidence linking Hagen rather than Janoth to the crime and confronts the two men. Hagen, panicking, points the finger at Janoth, who calmly says he'll stick by his friend and get him the best legal defense available. Hagen, furious, reveals that Janoth killed the girl, whereupon Janoth kills Hagen and tries to flee, only to fall down an elevator shaft to his death. It's a much more exciting ending, though it, too, feels contrived, albeit in a different way.

All told, I do think the film is superior to the novel. There are a number of great shots, and a surprise find that I enjoyed: