Books: God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake (1968)

“A mark is a noun and defined  in Dictionary of American Slang, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1960 as an easy victim; a ready subject for the practices of a confidence man, thief, beggar, etc.; a sucker. That's the long definition of a mark. But there's a shorter one.

It goes: * mark n. Fred Fitch

What, you ask, is a Fred Fitch? Well, for one thing, Fred Fitch is the man with the most extensive collection of fake receipts, phony bills of sale, and counterfeit sweepstakes tickets in the Western Hemisphere, and possibly in the entire world. For another thing, Fred Fitch may be the only New York City resident in the twentieth century to buy a money machine. When Barnum said, "There's one born every minute, and two to take him," he didn't know about Fred Fitch; when Fred Fitch was born, there were two million to take him. Every itinerant grifter, hypester, bunk artist, short-conner, amuser, shearer, short-changer, green-goods worker, pennyweighter, ring dropper, and yentzer to hit New York City considers his trip incomplete until he's also hit Fred Fitch. He's sort of the con-man's version of Go: Pass Fred Fitch, collect two hundred dollars, and move on. What happens to Fred Fitch when his long-lost Uncle Matt dies and leaves Fred three hundred thousand dollars shouldn't happen to the ball in a pinball machine. Fred Fitch with three hundred thousand dollars is like a mouse with a sack of catnip: He's likely to attract the wrong kind of attention. Add to this the fact that Uncle Matt was murdered, by person or persons unknown, and that someone now seems determined to murder Fred as well, mix in two daffily charming beauties of totally different types, and you have a perfect setup for the busiest fictional hero since the well-known one-armed paperhanger. As Fred Fitch careers across the New York City landscape-and sometimes skyline-in his meetings with cops, con men, beautiful girls, and (maybe) murderers, he takes on some of the loonier aspects of a Dante without a Virgil.”

God Save the Mark enjoys the distinction of being the only novel Donald E. Westlake ever wrote that won an Edgar Award –it beat out in Rosemary’s Baby in 1968. It is also another funny novel by the master of capers and things that go wrong with the capers. I’m unsure if there are people like Fred Fitch in real life, because he seems rather clueless for a thirty-one year-old man (though as I read the book, I sort of felt Fred was way older). It makes you wonder how he’s functioned so far. Still, he is an interesting character and the book is just another delightful romp from the prolific Westlake.

I do enjoy the style, the setting (New York in the 60’s and 70’s) and the observational humor, the drollness of supporting characters. While Westlake wrote under numerous pseudonyms, I need to start reading his Parker novels he wrote under the Richard Stark moniker –as I’ve been told multiple times that voice, that Stark voice is much different than the books written using his real name (and Westlake had maybe close to a dozen different names he wrote under (just like his friend Lawrence Block).

I’ve got plenty to read in 2020, so we’ll see how it goes. I would really like to achieve reading two books a month, but the internet and TV provide numerous distractions. But it’s a plan, a goal, or maybe hopeful thinking.

Anyways…Happy New Year and let’s start new decade off.  

Books: Burglars Can’t Be Choosers By Lawrence Block (1977)

Bernie Rhodenbarr is a personable chap, a good neighbor, a passable poker player. His chosen profession, however, might not sit well with some. Bernie is a burglar, a good one, effortlessly lifting valuables from the not-so-well-protected abodes of well-to-do New Yorkers like a modern-day Robin Hood. (The poor, as Bernie would be the first to tell you, alas, have nothing worth stealing.) He's not perfect, however; he occasionally makes mistakes. Like accepting a paid assignment from a total stranger to retrieve a particular item from a rich man's apartment. Like still being there when the cops arrive. Like having a freshly slain corpse lying in the next room, and no proof that Bernie isn't the killer. Now he's really got his hands full, having to locate the true perpetrator while somehow eluding the police -- a dirty job indeed, but if Bernie doesn't do it, who will?

Lawrence Block, much like fellow crime writer Donald E. Westlake, has spent his prolific writing career two series, one featuring the dark, often violent world of PI Matthew Scudder and often comic, bumbling world of “the gentleman burglar” Bernie Rhodenbarr. Westlake was known as Richard Stark when he wrote the nihilistic world of Parker, but used his real name for the John Dortmunder tales. Both of Block’s series are set in New York (same as Westlake/Stark), but where the Scudder world has little humor, the world of Rhodenbarr is often hilarious.

Burglars Can’t Be Choosers is Rhodenbarr’s first adventure, and we are quickly introduced to this mild manner 34 year-old Robin Hood of a sort (he generally chooses well-off targets who can afford the losses). He knows his stuff, especially locks, and he is also not a violent man and abhors the idea of any violent confrontation. While he steals only when he needs something, works alone, and always chooses his own targets, here he is hired for $5,000 (in 1977 money) to steal a “blue box”. But things go quickly sideways when the cops show up because someone heard noises, and then the cops discover a dead body.

At its core, it’s a whodunit, even a “locked room” mystery one at that. Its fun read, often humorous but not laughs out loud funny the way Westlake’s Dortmunder books can be. There is eleven books in the Rhodenbarr series, so I’ll see if I can get through some.

The Legal Battles of James Bond

Long before Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli began working together to produce films based off Ian Fleming’s James Bond character, two of those –Casino Royale and Thunderball- would cause no ends of legal problems due to various copywriter issues.

Both would take decades to solve.

Casino Royale was the first novel Fleming wrote that starred James Bond, and it was released in 1953. CBS television network became interested in the property and acquired the rights in 1954 and produced it for their Climax! an anthology mystery series. It starred Barry Nelson as an American Bond; a year later, Fleming sold the film rights to producer Gregory Ratoff.

Meanwhile, sometime in 1958, Fleming and longtime friend Ivar Bryce began talking about a possible Bond film. Bryce introduced Fleming to writer/director Kevin McClory and screenwriter Jack Whittingham. While McClory seemed not impressed with Fleming’s books, he felt the character of James Bond was interesting, so they started hammering out ideas, starting in early 1959. Over the next few months they produced nearly ten different outlines, with proposed titles being SPECTRE and Longitude 78 West. Most of Fleming’s attraction to McClory was based on his 1959 Venice Film Festival entry, The Boy and the Bridge. But when that film failed at the box office, Fleming became disenchanted and the script –and all its concepts- were shelved.

Meanwhile, Casino Royale rights holder Gregory Ratoff died in 1960 and producer Charles K. Feldman was able to obtain those rights from his widow. But as Dr. No, and subsequent films became hits, he continued to hold on to them. He tried and get the book made into a film from Eon Productions, but failed to come to financial terms with the Bond producers. Realizing it would be difficult to compete with the Eon series, he decided to produce the film as a satire and brought the property to Columbia Pictures; their version was released in 1967. Unfortunately for Eon, the rights to Casino Royale remained with Columbia for the next thirty years, officially becoming part of Sony Pictures Entertainment when they acquired the studio in 1989. 

In 1961, producer Harry Saltzman read Goldfinger, the 8^th Bond book. He liked it so much, he put bid in and won the film rights to the character. Towards the end of ’61, Saltzman met Albert R. Broccoli, who was also interested in bringing Bond to the screen. At first, Broccoli tried to buy the rights, but Saltzman would not sell. So together, they co-founded Danjaq, S.A., which became the holding company responsible for the copyright and trademarks of James Bond on screen, and the parent company of Eon Productions, which they also set up as a film production company for the Bond films. They would release the films through their producing partner, MGM/UA.

With Casino Royale still being held Feldman, Saltzman and Broccoli decided to bring 1958’s Dr. No –the sixth book- to the screen first. It was produced on a low budget ($1.1 million) but grossed nearly $60 million. Interestingly and highly unusual for the time period (because there was no guarantee of continuing on), while writing the screenplay, Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather kept a few references from earlier books as well adding some from the three novels that came after. Most notably present was the criminal organization known as SPECTRE, which was not introduced until the 1961 novel Thunderball and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who is named dropped in Dr. No and appears in From Russia with Love -though his name is never uttered and he’s never fully seen until 1965’s Thunderball.

And that’s when things got legal.

Like most writers, a good idea never goes to waste, so while the work Fleming did with McClory and Whittingham two years earlier was abandoned, Fleming decided to rework a lot of what they produced and turned it into 1961’s Thunderball. The only problem was Fleming forgot to credit both McClory or Whittingham. A legal battle ensued, even as the Bond films continued to use SPECTRE and hint at other elements, most notably, the character of Blofeld.

The legal battle to give credit to McClory and Whittingham was eventually settled out of court by the time the film version of Thunderball was released in 1965. Whittingham’s on screen credit was “based on an original screenplay” while McClory received sole producer credit, with Saltzman and Broccoli serving as executive producers. McClory also retained certain screen rights to the novel’s story, characters, and plot, but was held to a ten year moratorium on doing anything with them.

Even as the film versions continued to use Blofeld and SPECTRE, after 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, all references were dropped due to both legal issues McClory continued with and the arrival of Roger Moore as James Bond –the film series wanted a fresh start. While Moore’s first two outings as Bond were a success, they were critically panned. So when work began on The Spy Who Loved Me, early ideas Eon Productions wanted to use was a return of both SPECTRE and Blofeld. But by 1975, McClory was also attempting to make a rival Bond film with Warhead -basically a remake of Thunderball- and he filed a lawsuit against Eon Productions and forced them from using either of these elements for the foreseeable future. Also during this time, Harry Saltzman sold his portion of the Bond rights to Eon due to financial problems not associated with the spy series. This and McClory’s injunction would delay The Spy Who Loved Me, pushing its release from 1975 to 1977. Warhead would not go forward, but eventually McClory was able to remake Thunderball in 1983 under the new title Never Say Never Again, which saw Sean Connery return as James Bond twelve years after giving up the role to Roger Moore. Even after the success of Never Say Never Again, McClory continued to try and get his Warhead idea off the ground, attempting again in 1989, and the early 1990s. He made one last attempt in the early 2000’s, but nothing would be made.

Meanwhile, further legal battles, issues with MGM/UA, Roger Moore leaving and Timothy Dalton coming on, and the passing of several long-time production people within the Bond family would delay another film for six years after 1989’s Licence to Kill (the longest gap between films). By the time of 1995’s Pierce Brosnan led –and hugely successful- GoldenEye, Sony Pictures began some preliminary work on making rival production of Casino Royale, which forced MGM/UA and Eon Productions into a legal action with Sony. After three years of litigation, Sony eventually traded their rights to the novel for MGM/UA’s partial-rights to the Spider-Man franchise. 

It would be another four years before Eon Productions brought a faithful version of Casino Royale to the screen, which Columbia/Sony Entertainment releasing it domestically. After twenty films, the twenty-first would be a reboot, focusing on Bond at the beginning of his career as a 00-agent as Saltzman (who died in 1994) and Broccoli (who died in 1996) had hoped to do fifty years before. Much like the early Bond films, 2006’s Casino Royale would be a return to a bit of continuity with seeds being planted about some secret criminal organization that was infiltrating across the globe. It would offer somewhat of a character arc for Bond, as well, as most films since Roger Moore was standalone and had almost no connection to the earlier films or the books. However, while Kevin McClory had died in 2006, his estate was continuing the legal battle with Eon on certain IP parts of Thunderball –in particular SPECTRE and Blofeld- which was the original intention of current producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson when they rebooted the franchise with Casino Royale and a new actor, Daniel Craig, playing Bond. However, these continued legal woes would put those plans on hold. A writers strike would further cause problems for the follow film –and first direct sequel- 2008’s Quantum of Solace.

The twenty-second Bond film had a troubled history beyond the writers’ strike, as the continued legal issues forced the production to make the secret organization mentioned in Casino Royale not be SPECTRE –Quantum eventually became the name of the organization introduced Craig's first outing, though the title reference comes from Ian Fleming’s short story they borrowed the title from: "when the 'Quantum of Solace' drops to zero, humanity and consideration of one human for another is gone."

There would be a delay for Bond 23, as MGM’s financial problems meant no film could be released in 2010. When the studio came out of bankruptcy in December of 2010, pre-production began almost immediately, and in January of 2011, MGM, Sony, and Eon Productions gave what became Skyfall a late 2012 release date. Again, running into legal issues with the McClory estate, if there was any references to certain IP elements, they were dropped in favor of connecting the main villain to the Quantum organization.

In November of 2013, fifty-two years after the release of the Thunderball novel and fifty-five years after Fleming, McClory, and Whittingham began talking about adapting Bond to the screen, MGM and McClory’s estate formally settled their issues with Danjaq, LLC and Eon Productions. MGM acquired the full copyright film rights to the concept of SPECTRE and all characters associated with it. And for the next film in the long-running film series, 2015’s Spectre, would fully re-introduce the organization back into the series continuity (it also seems what the acronym of SPECTRE stood for had been dropped and just reimaged as Spectre). It was also noted in the film, with the re-introduction of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, that everything Bond has experienced since Casino Royale was due to Blofeld (thus Quantum was also retconned in as a subsidiary of the mother  organization)- something that was part of the original Sean Connery run.

In April of 2020 we’ll see No Time To Die, the twenty-fifth James Bond film, which will most likely bring an end to the current story arc, along with Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as James Bond. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but against all odds, changing times, changing actors, and numerous long-running legal issues, the James Bond franchise continues to roll on towards 2022 and its sixtieth anniversary.

Books: The Forbidden Stars By Tim Pratt (2019)

"Aliens known as the Liars gave humanity access to the stars through twenty-nine wormholes. They didn’t mention that other aliens, the ancient, tyrannical – but thankfully sleeping – Axiom occupied all the other systems. When the twenty-ninth fell silent, humanity chalked it up to radical separatists and moved on. But now, on board the White Raven, Captain Callie and her crew of Axiom-hunters receive word that the twenty-ninth colony may have met a very different fate. With their bridge generator they skip past the wormhole, and discover another Axiom project, fully awake, and poised to pour through the wormhole gate into all the worlds of humanity."

The Forbidden Stars is the enjoyable final installment to the Axiom trilogy. Unlike book two, this one jumps right into the action, not spending a lot of time recapping what came before. I would also like to praise that this trilogy also has a satisfying ending, even if it depends on some aspect of deus ex machina going for it (and I can somewhat forgive it for the ease with in which the crew of White Raven achieves everything they set out to do).

As I’ve said before, this series is clearly a cousin to The Expanse books, but instead of being a cheap knock-off, author Tim Pratt has some fun with the space opera format, most notably by adding more humor and less politics. And like the James S.A. Corey’s series, it is set in a very diverse universe, so those who’ve been critical of The Expanse for both its politics and diverseness, will be somewhat disappointed. But for those who like that series, I believe you can find something to like in this series.

This trilogy also reminded me of the trilogies I read in the 1980s, with tales that took three books to tell and where generally less than 450 pages long. I miss this in publishing, in many ways, especially for this genre. I’ve grown weary of series that span five, six, seven or more books, each at 800 to 1,000 pages; its overkill and unnecessary.