Should Someone Finish and Publish Stieg Larsson's Fourth Book?

Millions of people world-wide have now read Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy consisting of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Tragically, of course, Larsson died shortly after delivering the manuscripts of the three books without being able to savor and almost certainly never anticipating the huge success the books would enjoy.

Unhappily Larsson also died without leaving a will, which has generated a nasty dispute pitting Eva Gabrielsson, the woman with whom he lived for over thirty years, against his brother and father. At issue is the division of the royalties from the books and from the recent film based on the books. Gabrielsson's principal bargaining chip in this battle lies in the fact that she is in possession of Larsson's computer, which apparently contains three-quarters of a fourth novel and outlines for several more.

Leaving aside the argument over royalties, the question arises as to whether some other writer should now step in and finish the fourth book and perhaps write others from the outlines that Larsson left behind. Given the potential profits involved, I am not naive enough to think that this might not happen, but I'd really prefer that it didn't.

Like millions of others who have devoured these books, I am hugely disappointed by the fact that Larsson did not live long enough to write others. But I've always felt very uneasy about the idea of one writer appropriating the characters and continuing the series of another who has died, whether prematurely or not. And I'm doubly disturbed when this involves a writer completing and publishing another writer's unfinished work.

For a writer to do so seems astonishingly selfish, arrogant, and inappropriate to me. No matter how detailed an outline the deceased writer might have left behind, there is simply no way of knowing what the original writer might have decided to do with the work.

Perhaps he (or she) would have thought that the work he had done thus far on the book was not remotely ready to be published. Perhaps, in spite of any outline, the writer still might have changed his mind about the shape the book would ultimately take. Perhaps in the end, the writer might have finished the book and then concluded that it wasn't up to his usual standards and that he didn't want it to ever see the light of day. And absent specific instructions about these matters (which would seem to be the case in Larsson's situation), it seems to me that for one writer to appropriate and presume to "finish" the work of another, is an inexcusable violation of the first author's rights and of his memory.

I understand, of course, that all too often in such cases, the heirs are only too anxious to exploit the situation and wring every last dime out of the deceased writer's memory that they possibly can, no matter the effect that this might have on the writer's enduring reputation. And while I wouldn't read the resulting book or books myself, I have no problem with a case in which the deceased writer has left specific instructions authorizing his heirs to loot the remains of his literary estate for whatever they can get. But in a case where the writer has left no instructions at all, I believe that a decent respect to his memory requires that his unfinished works remain unfinished.

As I suggested above, I am under no illusion that this will happen in the case of Stieg Larsson. But as much as I would love to read additional books featuring Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, I won't be doing so, given that Larsson is no longer around to write them himself. I'd be interested to know what you think...

"Hard Rain Falling": An Appreciation

"Hard Rain Falling" first appeared in 1966, but was resurrected by George Pelecanos and republished in 2009 by New York Review Books as part of its Classics series. In his introduction, Pelecanos suggests that it "might be the most unheralded important American novel of the 1960s."

I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but it is a very good book with brilliantly drawn characters. The main protagonist is Jack Levitt, an orphan whom we first meet on the streets of Portland, Oregon, in 1947. Jack is 17 at the time and has fallen in with a gang of rough boys who live by their wits on the margins of society.

The book follows Jack's life until 1960, and it's not a pretty picture. Jack is in and out of trouble and, as a consequence, is also in and out of jail through most of this time. Some of the prison scenes are harrowing but, for that matter, so are many of the scenes when Jack is out on the streets, technically a "free" man.

Early on, Jack meets Billy Lancing, a young black pool hustler from Seattle. Jack, who has no special skills or talents, envies Billy who has a great natural gift as a pool player. Initially, Jack targets Billy as a mark, but the two form a bond that will sustain them both as they continue to cross paths through the years.

Jack and Billy both spend a great deal of time contemplating their own lives and the nature of life in general, and even though they raise important questions, there are times when Carpenter extends these ruminations for a bit longer than he should. But that is really the only flaw in this book, whose principal strength lies in the characters. Even the most minor of whom are fully realized and totally unforgettable.

There is not a single phony or contrived moment in this book, and from start to finish, the reader is immersed into a story that seems completely real and that is totally compelling. This is not a pretty world, but once Carpenter has grabbed hold of you, you can't turn away from watching it.

This is very much a book of the early 1960s, and the universe that Carpenter has recreated here is long since gone. He serves up a slice of American life that few of us would want to experience first hand. But readers will be grateful to George Pelecanos and to New York Review Books for giving them the opportunity to visit it from a safe distance.

Trouble in Paradise: A Review of Ken Mercer's "Slow Fire"

Will Magowan is an ex-cop who left the L.A.P.D. under a cloud and in the wake of an enormous personal tragedy. He’s unemployed, estranged from his wife, and reduced to living in a broken-down Airstream trailer when he receives a letter, offering him a job as the Chief of Police in Haydenville, California. Will is perplexed by the offer, especially since he hadn’t even applied for the job. But he has no other prospects and so accepts the call.

Haydenville is situated in a majestic national forest in the northern part of the state. But on arriving there, Will finds that the once-idyllic town is in the grip of a virtual plague that has plunged the community into nothing short of a death spiral. He also quickly discovers that he has very few allies, other than Thomas, his rookie deputy, who has no formal training whatsoever. Nonetheless, Will decides to stick it out, hoping that by attempting to resolve the town’s problems, he might also find some measure of personal redemption.

Will is only briefly on the job when he’s called to the scene of an apparent accident. A young woman has been found dead near a river, lying next to her overturned kayak. Will is troubled by what he finds, and refuses to agree with the conclusion that the victim died by accident.

Will fairly quickly discovers the source of the town’s difficulties and identifies his prime suspect. But in attempting to address the issue, he’s stymied at every turn. Even the mayor who hired him stubbornly refuses to cooperate and will not give any credence to Will’s well-founded suspicions.

The death of the young kayaker inaugurates a wave of horrific violence, and Magowan finds himself up against some genuinely creepy, malevolent and amoral villains. A lesser man would say the hell with it and leave Haydenville to the fate it probably deserves. But Will Magowan is not a lesser man. Against nearly insurmountable odds and in the face of grave danger to himself and the handful of people who support him, Will soldiers on, determined to redeem both himself and his newly adopted home town.

By naming his fictional town Haydenville, Mercer would appear to be paying an obvious homage to the film, High Noon, which was set in the town of Hadleyville, New Mexico. And Will Magowan’s struggle to save a small town that is threatened by grave danger and inhabited by an ungrateful and unsupportive population is, of course, strongly reminiscent of Marshall Will Kane’s efforts on behalf of his own small town.

The story of the flawed but ultimately virtuous outsider who rides into town and saves the day against overwhelming odds has long been a staple both of westerns and of crime fiction. But Ken Mercer provides a fresh take on the idea and creates strong, believable characters in a beautifully rendered setting. The plot moves swiftly. And even though the villain is identified fairly early on, the suspense builds to a great climax.

Slow Fire was another excellent First Mystery pick by the staff of The Poisoned Pen bookstore (http://www.poisonedpen.com/ ), and happily it is the first of a new series. With this book, Ken Mercer is off to a great start.

Lawrence Block/Matthew Scudder: An Appreciation

I first met Matthew Scudder sometime in the latter 1980s when I stumbled across a paperback copy of When the Sacred Ginmill Closes. I was hooked from the opening paragraph and when I finished the book, I set quickly about the task of finding every other Lawrence Block novel I could lay my hands on.

Thankfully, there were a lot of them. Beginning in the middle 1950s, Block has had a very prolific career, producing something in the neighborhood of fifty novels and a hefty collection of short stories. Through the middle 1960s, he wrote a number of stand alone pulp novels with titles like A Diet of Treacle and Grifter’s Game. Happily, some of these earlier books have now been revived and reprinted as part of the Hard Case Crime series and are thus available again for the first time in years.

In 1967, Block created his first series character, Evan Tanner, in The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep. Three years later, he produced the first of four books featuring Chip Harrison in a series that was obviously a tribute to the work of Rex Stout. And then, in 1976, Block introduced Matthew Scudder in The Sins of the Fathers.

Scudder, a divorced alcoholic ex-cop who had left the force after a tragic accident, is an unlicensed private detective who does “favors for friends” who pay him for his time and efforts. He lives in a tiny hotel room, “the size of a walk-in closet,” in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, and through the early books in the series, he wrestles with his demons, particularly his alcoholism.

By far the darkest of Block’s series characters, Scudder spends the bulk of his time in saloons, denying—mostly to himself—that he has a drinking problem. When he does take a case, he tithes ten percent of the fee, most of which goes into the poor boxes of Catholic churches where he will often light a candle in memory of someone he’s lost. Matt is not a religious man, and he’s not entirely certain why he feels compelled to do this, but it allows him time to reflect in the quiet solitude of the churches he visits. The Catholics get most of his business simply because their churches are open more often than anyone else’s.

The cases he takes are always interesting and Scudder almost always resolves them, not by making great intuitive leaps, but rather by doing the hard, plodding work of the determined detective. You enjoy watching him do it, but mostly you read these books because of the great cast of characters that Block has assembled in this series, beginning with Scudder himself. As the series progresses, Block introduces a small supporting cast and then makes you care a great deal about each of their lives and their respective fates.

Block allows these people to age in real time so that by the time we see them in the sixteenth book, All The Flowers Are Dying, the survivors have all grown and changed, in some cases dramatically, from the characters that we first met as long as thirty years earlier. Most important, Scudder himself comes to a major transformational moment at the conclusion of the fourth book, Eight Million Ways To Die, and in the wake of that moment becomes a richer, fuller, and even more interesting protagonist.

I’ve read this series from first book to last any number of times now, and my own personal favorite is the eleventh, The Devil Knows You’re Dead. Matt is asked to investigate the murder of a young attorney, Glenn Holtzmann. The case appears to be open and shut: Holtzmann was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot and killed by a mentally unbalanced street person. But the brother of the man the police have arrested asks Scudder to look into the case, and Matt discovers that, while the police have apparently arrested the right man, the victim was a man of many unexplained secrets. Once captured by the case, Scudder will not give it up until he has unraveled all of those secrets.

The mystery itself is fine, but what I love about this book is that it comes at a very important point in Matthew Scudder’s life, probably the most significant since the closing pages of Eight Million Ways To Die. The times are changing, and so are the people that surround Matt. Scudder is personally conflicted in a variety of ways that will resonate deeply with a lot of readers. And the way he reacts to those changes and conflicts is what makes him one of the most intriguing characters ever to inhabit the pages of crime fiction.

The sixteenth book in this series appeared in 2005, and Block has suggested that he may not write another. I hate to think that might be true. I’ve spent scores of hours in the company of these characters and the thought that they might not appear again is enormously sad. I understand that, ultimately, there will have to be a final Matthew Scudder novel; I just don’t want to have to face the prospect for a good long time.

Block would go on to create two additional series characters, Bernie Rhodenbarr who is a bookseller by day and a burglar by night, and Keller, a stamp-collecting hit man who would appear in a series of short stories and in one full-length novel. Bernie and Keller are much lighter and funnier characters, and they are both enjoyable reads. But Matthew Scudder remains Block’s greatest achievement.

Standing firmly in the company of the all-time greats, Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder will endure for as long as people read detective fiction. Every reader has his or her own favorite author and protagonist; these guys will always be mine.

D.C. Noir

George Pelecanos owns Washington, D .C. in the same way that Raymond Chandler once owned Los Angeles. In a series of books, many of them featuring his protagonist, Derek Strange, Pelecanos has mined the city's dark side for riveting stories that often also highlight the pathologies that afflict it.

Shoedog is an early (1994) stand-alone that features a young drifter named Constantine, who's traveled the world and now finds himself hitchhiking outside of his native Washington, D.C. He accepts a ride from an older man named Polk, who is heading to Florida and encourages Constantine to go along. Polk just has to make one quick stop and then they'll be on their way.

Any reader of noir fiction will immediately understand, that "the one quick stop" will inevitably lead to trouble, and as a consequence, the young drifter finds himself recruited into a gang of minor thugs who are planning a couple of armed robberies. Constantine goes along for the ride, in part because he feels some sympathy for Polk, in part because he has nothing better to do, and in part because he has fallen for the attractive young woman who belongs to the gang's boss.

The situation immediately becomes combustible and explodes into violence, leading to a shattering conclusion. As in all of Pelecanos's work, the writing is crisp; the characters and the D.C. settings are perfectly drawn, and the music is evocative. For those who have enjoyed his later work, the reissue of Shoedog offers a glimpse of a younger Pelecanos just hitting his stride.

Worth Looking For: California Fire and Life

Browsing the shelves of the Poisoned Pen, my favorite mystery bookstore, I recently found a reprint of Don Winslow's 1999 novel, California Fire and Life. Winslow's The Power of the Dog is one of my favorite books of all time, and I've thoroughly enjoyed everything else of his that I've read. This is an earlier book, but it's an excellent read that will also teach you everything you ever wanted to know about arson investigation.

In an effort to protect a witness from certain death, Orange County Sheriff's Department arson investigator Jack Wade fabricated evidence and then lied under oath. Betrayed by a fellow deputy, "Accidently" Bently, Jack is convicted of perjury and bounced from the department.


Twelve years later, Jack is a claims investigator for California Fire and Life. A multi-million dollar home and furniture collection belonging to a Russian immigrant, Nicky Vale, goes up in smoke. Sadly, Nicky's beautiful young wife goes up along with it. Jack's old nemisis, "Accidently" spends about fifteen minutes investigating and rules the fire accidental.

Jack's investigation quickly points to a lot of problelms with Bently's verdict, including the fact that the victim had no smoke in her lungs. Beyond that, Jack finds the family dog locked outside of the house, and Jack knows full well that, while an arsonist might burn up his wife, he will never burn his dog along with her.


It's clear to Jack that the fire was deliberately set. Nicky Vale claims to have a solid alibi--he was home with Mama all night. But Jack quickly breaks the alibi and discovers that Nicky had the means, motive and opportunity to set the blaze. Jack denies the claim, only to discover that this sets him in conflict not only with Nicky Vale but with his own employer as well.


From that point on, the book is a wild ride with Jack battling Russian mobsters, Vietnamese hoods, insurance scammers, and the executives of California Fire and Life. Don't expect to get any sleep until you've finished the book.

Dick Francis, R.I.P.

Not even a month after the death of Robert B. Parker, the world of crime fiction loses another giant with the death Sunday of Dick Francis. The retired jockey, who turned to writing thrillers in his middle thirties, produced a steady stream of books over the next forty-plus years that never failed to entertain.

Most of the books were set in the world of British horse racing that Francis knew and obviously loved so well. Though he only rarely featured the same protagonist from one book to another, virtually all of his heroes shared the same characteristics. Typically they were in their mid-to-late thirties, as Francis was when injuries forced his retirement from racing. Often, like their creator, they were in the midst of some career change that had been forced upon them. They were quiet, modest, but extremely clever and capable men; almost always they were single, and inevitably the right women found them attractive and compelling.

Lurking in the background, and usually exposed only near the end of the book, was a deliciously malevolent villain, pulling strings from behind the curtain in pursuit of some grand scheme that often threatened to inflict gruesome damage on any number of victims and upon the world of horse racing as a whole.

In the end, of course, Francis's hero always exposed and thwarted the evildoer, albeit usually at great personal cost. While Francis's sex scenes were always fairly tame, he wrote great scenes of gut-wrenching violence that could give a reader nightmares for weeks after.

Best of all, Francis's work has stood the test of time, unlike the work of some other writers of his generation that already seems dated and uninteresting. Even now, nearly fifty years after its initial publication, one can pick up his first novel,DEAD CERT, or any of the many that followed and it will seem as fresh and new as it did on the weekend that you first read it.

Dick Francis leaves behind a body of work that will entertain readers for years to come. He will be sorely missed.