SRO: Craig McDonald

It was standing-room only last night at Foul Play Mystery Books for native son Craig McDonald. Okay, so maybe that's a bit misleading as the store's square footage doesn't exactly rival that of a chain store. But it's a rarity nonetheless to have the little store quite so crowded for any author. And it was the first time in my memory that the store ran out of copies of an author's newest book, in this case PRINT THE LEGEND, before demand was satisfied. May all his future book signings be plagued with such good fortune.

A huge thanks to Craig, whose busy workday would leave most of us staggering under the pressure, for making time not only to appear and sign, but to truly give of himself during his talk. I know that I was not the only one delighted and intrigued by the bizarre bits of history Craig wove throughout his presentation.. A good blend of humor, history, mystery, and crime -- just like his books. When an author can make his audience feel like they've been clued in to government secrets, behind-the-scenes details surrounding Hemingway's death, and the bizarre events involving a nationally prominent family -- hell, yes, we were lining up for the Kool-Aid.

Book buyers also came away with a special prize from Craig: a chapbook containing Colt, a short story that details how Hector Lassiter came by the 1873 Colt Peacemaker that is his truest companion throughout his life. Don't think for a moment that this is just some fluff story to make the book buyer feel like he got a bargain. This story is a matched bookend to The Last Interview, the first published story to feature the Lassiter character. And of course, he wouldn't be The McDonald if he didn't use the story to blend fact with fiction, and fiction with fiction, and generally mess with your head just a little into the bargain.

Adding to the special nature of the event, it was a pleasure to meet Pete Guzzo, a fan of Corey's blogging for some while. I know Corey has friends, but who knew he has fans? Thanks for making yourself known, Pete.

And thanks to everyone else present, particularly the gracious author, who all tolerated my fangirl behavior and helped me with all the books I needed signed. (No, Jen, I wasn't quite as bad as that guy in Dayton but it was a near run thing, if I may quote the Duke of Wellington.)

In case you missed last night's event, Craig is also scheduled to appear:

Saturday, March 13 at 1 p.m.
Books & Company at the Greene
4453 Walnut Street
Dayton, OH
(937) 429-2169

Saturday, March 20 at 1:30 p.m.
Aunt Agatha's
213 South 4th Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI
(734) 769-1114

Tuesday, May 18 at 7 p.m.
Marysville Friends Author Series
Veteran's Memorial Auditorium
233 W. 6th St.
Marysville, OH
(937) 642-1876

Wednesday, July 28
Thurber House
77 Jefferson Avenue
Columbus, OH
(614) 464-1032 


These books by Craig McDonald are available at a fine indie store near you or online by clicking the links:

The Hector Lassiter series:

HEAD GAMES
TOROS & TORSOS
PRINT THE LEGEND

Non-fiction:
ART IN THE BLOOD: Crime Novelists Discuss Their Craft
ROGUE MALES: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life

MEMORY by Donald E. Westlake

Forty years before Memento made moviegoers aware of the problematic condition of short-term memory loss, Donald E. Westlake wrote an amazing novel called Memory in which he explored the links between memory and identity, and what happens when those links are broken.

Written in 1960 and being published for the first time this April by Hard Case Crime, Memory is almost certain to have literary stylists bemoaning what further profundities Westlake might have written had he not spent so much of his time on more commercial fare. This book may even leave a few of his Parker and Dortmunder fans wishing the author had forever stuck to the kind of books they most enjoy. Me, I fall in the middle. I would love to have seen what Westlake could do if freed from the pressures of sales and marketing and the need to make a living, because there is no doubt about the brilliant talent on display in this book. On the other hand, I would never surrender one minute of the immense pleasure I continue to derive from his more commercial endeavors in exchange for anything he might have written.

Memory is the story of Paul Cole, an actor, whose memory is damaged when he is badly beaten by a man whose wife Paul has been sharing. Hospitalized and unable to continue with the touring company who employed him, Paul finds himself in a strange town without funds or friends or a memory capable of helping him locate either. His few clues to his home and work are the contents of his wallet. When he takes a job as an unskilled laborer in order to earn money for a bus ticket to New York City -- and the address on his driver's license -- Paul encounters indifference, cruelty, suspicion, fraud, and above all, a lonely isolation. There is a kind of Pac-Man inside Paul's brain, eating up the dots of his memory faster than he can produce them. Every time he discovers a dot has been eaten, the fear and panic nearly consume him as he fights to find his reality again, a reality that is ever changing, ever disposable, ever obsolete. He is man who cannot counter accusations because he cannot remember his actions, does not know his own character.

Equally sad and horrified, the reader watches helplessly as Paul fumbles at living, sometimes remembering a  face or name only to have that remembrance disappear into the ether within hours, his world spiraling down and down into a self-contained singularity that can never be more than the here and now, for whatever here and now are worth without any theres and thens to lend structure and context to his life.

Westlake nails the harsh indifference of social systems -- including or even especially those social service systems that have little or no use for people who cannot help themselves but depend almost entirely on those services. With no money, no place to stay, no job skills that he is aware of, Paul is one of the walking wounded, looking as healthy and normal as everyone else but damaged in ways no one, not even he, can fathom. It all begs a re-working of the old 'if a tree fell in a forest' question: If a man can no longer remember his life or identity, is he dead? And if he is, what is he supposed to do with the body that's still walking around? What is a man in our culture, when his identity, his entire being can be reduced to a driver's license, a couple of union cards, and a Social Security Number? Without those identifiers, can he even be human? Can his existence be tolerated?

A story without graphic violence, sex, or profanity, Memory yet isn't light reading and is never less than compelling.  There is a tinge of irony in the fact that this unforgettable story is being published posthumously, right when those Siamese twins, the memory and identity of Donald E. Westlake, are beginning a slow fade into history.

Here is an excerpt from Memory, in which Paul Cole, alone in a cheap hotel room in a town whose name he can't remember, has just written down as many memories as he can, in the belief that they will eventually trigger other memories.

He spent a long while sitting on the bed, occasionally writing something else down on the paper, and when he was finished he had a list seven lines long, and on all of the lines at least two names with an arrow between.

When he looked at his wrist, after putting the pen and pad away, he had a sudden feeling of dread, because his watch was gone. It was a dread for more than the loss of the watch; he could lose everything, be reduced to nothingness, and he was helpless.

But then the memory of Artie Bellman came back, and he remembered that Bellman had the watch, and he felt so relieved he had to sit down on the bed again for a while. He sat there with his head bowed and his hands dangling between his knees, and after a while he shook his head. Speaking aloud, he said, "What a sad war. What a slow sad war."

MEMORY
Donald E. Westlake
April 2010
Hard Case Crime
ISBN: 0-8439-6375-1
Cover art by Glen Orbik

Other reviews:
Ed Gorman 
Publishers Weekly