The Brotherhood of the Rose by David Morrell

 

(pb; 1984: first book in the Abelard Sanction quadrilogy)

From the back cover

“They were orphans, Chris and Saul—raised in a Philadelphia school for boys, bonded by friendship, and devoted to a mysterious man called Eliot.

“He visited them and brought them candy.

“He treated them like sons.

“He trained them to be assassins.

“Now he is trying desperately to have them killed.”

 

Review

Brotherhood is an excellent, hard-to-set-down thriller with characters worth rooting for (from the get-go), character-based action (with explanations of how characters set traps and why they fight the way they fight), and an all-around tautly penned storyline—what makes Brotherhood stand out from its typical-genre set-up is Morrell’s detailed-but-not-yawnable explanations of fighting styles, strategies and mindsets as well as how characters set traps. This is a great read, one of the best conspiracy/violence novels I’ve read in a long while, a promising start to a quadrilogy (two novels and a short story). Followed by The Fraternity of the Stone.

Fun fact: according to the Internet, David Morrell said Eliot is “based a real CIA counter-espionage master, James Jesus Angleton”.

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The resulting two-part television/NBC miniseries, Brotherhood of the Rose, aired on January 22-23, 1989. Gy Waldron wrote its screenplay; Marvin J. Chomsky directed it.

Peter Strauss played Saul Grisman, aka Romulus. David Morse played Chris Killmoonie, aka Remus. Robert Mitchum played John Eliot. Connie Selleca played Erika Bernstein, Saul’s ex-lover and Mossad agent. M. Emmet Walsh played the alcoholic former agent Hardy.

Just Tell Me When to Cry by Richard Fleischer

(hb; 1993: memoir)

From the back cover

“Richard Fleischer has directed almost fifty films. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Vikings, Compulsion, Doctor Dolittle, The Boston Strangler, Tora!Tora! Tora!, and The New Centurions are only a few of his hits. He first went to Hollywood in 1945 and over the years worked with and for John Wayne, Walt Disney, Howard Hughes, Robert Mitchum, Rex Harrison, James Mason, Kirk Douglas, Darryl Zanuck, Sidney Poitier, Charlton Heston, Jane Russell, Tony Curtis, Laurence Olivier, Akira Kurosawa, and Orson Welles, among others. Richard Fleischer tells of his forty-five plus years in the ego capital of the world by relating a series of the best stories you'll ever hear (and have never heard before) about legendary personalities and how they behaved (and misbehaved) during the course of making a movie.”

Review

Fleischer’s informative account of his filmic dealings in Hollywood and Europe is entertaining, briskly told, hilarious, troubling (e.g., when he dealt with HUAC) and consistently excellent. His writing is reader-friendly with its succinct (line or two) filmmaking explanations, which do not disrupt Cry’s storytelling. This is a great read with a lot of laughs, especially if you are a fan of old-time Hollywood. It is also one of my favorite reads of 2018, one worth owning.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

(hb; 1970, 1971)


From the inside flap:

"Eddie Coyle and the 'friends' of Eddie Coyle - the people he can trade in for his own safety and who can kill him for theirs - are hoods.  If the 'wise guys' - the syndicate wheels who occasionally surface in Eddie's world to give an order or punish a mistake - are the underworld equivalents of tycoons and executives, then stocky, henpecked, worried Eddie Coyle is the working stiff of crime.  He is fearful of being sent up for a second time (for hijacking a truck); he is trying to better himself by providing guns for a Boston-area gang whose bank robbery technique is proof against almost every contingency - if nobody talks.

"This is how an old hand, Eddie, goes about his business; how a young punk, Jackie Brown, gets his education in being a stand-up guy; how Dillon, bartender and occasional contract killer who knows everything, keeps the boys in line.  This is how the hoods - the gunmen, armorers, drivers, heisters and executioners - see themselves.  This is how they deal with each other and talk to each other in the authentic, elaborately oblique language born of the paradox of the underworld. . ."


Review:

Full of snappy, tough-guy dialogue and blunt, sudden action, Friends is a good, entertaining crime read, with its colorful characters and few-frills writing.

Worth checking out, this.

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The resulting film was released stateside on June 27, 1973.

Robert Mitchum played Eddie Coyle.  Peter Boyle played Dillon.  Richard Jordan played Dave Foley.  Steven Keats played Jackie Brown.  Joe Santos played Artie Van.   Alex Rocco played Jimmy Scalise.  Mitch Ryan, billed as Mitchell Ryan, played Waters.  James Tolkan played "The Man's contact man".

Peter Yates directed the film, from a screenplay by Paul Monash.

The Executioners by John D. MacDonald

(pb; 1957, 1958: also published under the title Cape Fear)


From the back cover:

"For fourteen years convicted rapist Max Cady nursed his hatred for Sam Bowden into an insane passion for revenge. He lived only for the day he would be free -- free to track down and destroy the man who put him behind bars.

"Murder was merciful compared to what Cady had in mind -- and what Cady had in mind was Bowden's innocent and lovely teenaged daughter. . ."


Review:

Taut, realistic, and terrifying work, this. Its terrors strike at the heart of what most of us subconsciously fear: losing those we love to primordial forces beyond our control.

MacDonald leavens Cady's intended brutalities -- which are largely left to the reader's imagination, but more effective for being so -- by intercutting them with scenes of Sam Bowden with his affectionate family (his wife, Carol; their three kids), making The Executioners more palatable for squeamish readers.

The actualized violence in the novel is potent enough to send shivers up even the most hardened reader's spine. It's not as explicit or brutal as much of Jack Ketchum's ouevre, but a jungle-law mentality runs darkly through The Executioners, making it read like read like a logical, if restrained, influence on Ketchum's works.

Max Cady is pure malevolence, a canny, "animalistic" predator in our supposedly-civilized world -- one hundred percent nightmare, and all too believable (I've met people like Cady). I'll probably have a bad dream or two about him in the near future, but it's worth it, given how mean and lean this novel is.

Perfect suspense work from a prolific, consistent writer. Own this, already!

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The Executioners has been filmed twice, under the title Cape Fear.

The original Cape Fear was released stateside on April 12, 1962. Gregory Peck played Sam Bowden. Robert Mitchum played Max Cady. Polly Bergen played Peggy Bowden (cinematic stand-in for Carol Bowden). Lori Martin played Nancy Bowden, the Bowdens' teenage daughter. Martin Balsam played Police Chief Mark Dutton. Telly Savalas played Private Detective Charles Sievers. Page Slattery played Deputy Kersek. J. Lee Thompson directed, from a script by James R. Webb.

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The remake, bearing the same title, was released stateside on November 13, 1991. It was directed by Martin Scorsese, and scripted by Wesley Strick (from an earlier script by James R. Webb).

Nick Nolte played Sam Bowden. Robert DeNiro played Max Cady. Jessica Lange played Leigh Bowden (cinematic stand-in for Carol Bowden). Juliette Lewis played Danielle Bowden (cinematic stand-in for Nancy Bowden). Joe Don Baker played Claude Kersek. Robert Mitchum, who played Max Cady in the original film, played Lieutenant Elgart, an honest cop, in the remake. Gregory Peck, who played Sam Bowden in the original film, played a sleazy lawyer named Lee Heller in the remake. Martin Balsam, who played Police Chief Mark Dutton in the original film, played a "Judge" in the remake.

Illeana Douglas played Lori Davis. Charles Scorsese, Martin Scorsese's father, played a "Fruitstand Customer". Catherine Scorsese, Martin Scorsese's mother, played a "Fruitstand Customer". Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, Martin Scorsese daughter, played "Danny's Girlfriend".

Build My Gallows High, by Geoffrey Homes

(pb; 1946)

From the back cover:

"Retired private eye, Red Bailey, is finally happy in Nevada, spending most of this time fishing and tending his out-of-the-way gas station. Then his past returns to haunt him. Blackmailed into doing just one more job, he is forced to revisit the life from which he had flown. And in particular a woman from his past: the seductive Mumsie McGonigle. Red Bailey soon discovers that the whole affair is a set-up -- a trap laid just for him with little or no way out."

Review:

This is one of the leanest, sharpest pulp novels I have read. The characters are deftly (but thoroughly) sketched, the twists are effective and fast, and the sense of doom -- not only Red's -- is constantly remarked upon by the characters, and confirmed by the mounting number of corpses, as well as the clearly-defined divisions of light and dark (in the novel's oh-so-cinematic scenes). It's a fast read, a 153-page black-humored gem, well worth your time.

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Build My Gallows High has been filmed twice, under different titles.

The first film, Out of the Past, lensed in 1946 and released on November 13, 1947, was scripted by Daniel Mainwaring, who wrote the novel under another name, Geoffrey Homes.

 Robert Mitchum played Jeff Markham (the cinematic counterpart to Peter "Red" Markham). Jane Greer played Kathie (the cinematic counterpart to femme fatale Mumsie McGonigle). Kirk Douglas played Whit Sterling. Rhonda Fleming played Meta Carson. Richard Webb played Jim. Virginia Huston played Ann.

 Directed by the consistently-great Jacques Tourneur, it's considered one of the best noir films made.

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The second film, a remake called Against All Odds, hit the silver screen on March 2, 1984. Loosely based on Daniel Mainwaring's 1946 script, it was co-scripted by Eric Hughes. Taylor Hackford directed.

Jeff Bridges played Terry Brogan (the cinematic counterpart to Peter "Red" Markham). Rachel Ward played Jessie Wyler (the cinematic counterpart to Mumsie McGonigle). James Woods played Jake Wise (the cinematic counterpart to Whit Sterling).

Robert Mitchum: “Baby, I Don’t Care” by Lee Server

(hb; 2001: biography)

Review:

Server provides a balanced lifelong view of one of the silver screen's most iconic actors, a regular guy who viewed acting as a job (nothing more), something to keep his family housed and fed. Mitch, or Bob, as he was known to his friends and associates, was privately sensitive and read many books (he was a longtime fan of John Steinbeck), yet his image -- also an integral part of the man -- as a philandering hard-drinking perenially-cool pothead dominated much of his life, resulting in many of the "gorilla pictures" he starred in.

(A "gorilla picture," Mitchum is quoted as saying in the book, is "[a film where] you get $250,000 to do all the wrong things in ten reels and in the last shot you get the girl and fade into the sunset.")

But Mitchum didn't only do "gorilla pictures." He starred in Where Danger Lives, Night of the Hunter, The Sundowners, both versions of Cape Fear ('62 and '91), The List of Adrian Messenger, Farewell, My Lovely, the hilariously deadpan Dead Man, and, of course, one of my all-time favorites, Out of the Past (which later was remade as Against All Odds, sans Mitchum).

Server also shows how Mitchum's disdain for pretense hurt him and those around him, as well. Mitchum's no-bulls**t attitude was often verbalized, and he didn't care who heard him -- and, particularly when he got older, his views were often misconstrued as racist, homophobic and insensitive by certain quarters of the public. But, again, there was more to the man than that. When he wasn't bored by a film he was shooting (and therefore, not drinking excessively), he was an admirable professional actor; however, if he felt like the film was a dogs**t endeavor, debacles occurred.

There's so much to the man's life that is fascinating -- his early, disaffected years; his friendships with era-definitive, sometimes creepy celebrities (Howard Hughes comes to mind); his marriage to wife Dorothy, which survived countless affairs, including the one that almost wrecked their marriage, Mitchum's three-year sexual liaison with Two For the Seesaw co-star, Shirley MacLaine; how Mitchum's proclivities for alcohol and pot later debilitated him, and contributed to his death at age 79 (on June 30, 1997, one month away from his eightieth birthday, and one day before his friend Jimmy Stewart died).

This is one of the best biographies I've read in the past year. Highly recommended, this, for anyone who's into noir, Hollywood's golden age (and its celebrities), and captivating characters who just happened to be real people.

By all means, check it out.