Go ahead, make my day. Pardner.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Are you shopping today? Wow, you are brave. Or--are you going to a movie? Or reading? As the most amazing Jon Land points out, there’s a fascinating connection between the two. Especially when it comes to thrillers—and westerns.

Jon is one of the most generous, most talented, and hardest working author in the biz---as well as a brilliant teacher! He’s a USA Today bestselling author of 38 novels, including his Caitlin Strong series—which enthusiastic reviewers have called “modern day westerns.”

You don’t read or watch westerns, you say? Yes, you do.  Here’s what Jon has discovered. Check it out…and afterward, tell us your faves, (Or—what you scored on Black Friday!)

THE MODERN DAY WESTERN

        By Jon Land

My Caitlin Strong books have often been referred to as modern day westerns.  While I’d like to take credit for starting that trend, it goes back far longer than Caitlin and me. Strong (no pun intended!) men with a simple ethos and base nobility in which they stood as the lone hope against bad guys determined to make the world worse for ordinary people. So, in honor of the release of The Magnificent Seven remake, let’s explore some examples of the modern day western that has so influenced the form of the thriller novel in pop culture.

DIRTY HARRY:  Clint Eastwood’s seminal, star-making turn as a loner cop breaking all the rules to track down a serial killer.  The setting of 1970s San Francisco could just as easily have been the plains roamed by the Man with No Name in the spaghetti westerns in which Clint cut his teeth.  Harry Callahan is a character literally defined by his gun, making the .44 Magnum famous as well.  A great uncredited rewrite by John Millius turned a simple cop film into a portrait of a modern day gunfighter’s obsession with seeing justice done, ending in identical fashion to the Gary Cooper classic High Noon.

STAR WARS:  A “space western” that contains all the staples of the form right down to the villainous gunfighter in black, as personified by Darth Vader, only with a light saber instead of a Colt .45.  Add to that Luke Skywalker’s ingénue evolving into a heroic force of good, the blaster-wielding gunslinger in Han Solo, a rescue sequence (a la The Professionals), and a climactic gun battle transposed into outer space.  The result draws upon Akira Kurosawa’s western-inspired samurai movies in crafting an industry-changing masterpiece.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN:  The purest “postmodern” western on our list, since (in both the book and the exceptionally faithful film adaptation) Tommy Lee Jones’s saintly old-school sheriff never actually confronts Javier Bardem’s twistedly terrifying Anton Chigurh.  But the drug deal gone wrong harks back to any number of stagecoach and bank robberies that define so many westerns.  And Chigurh’s malevolent menace is reminiscent of every black-clad baddie ever to rampage through the Old West.  A creature not so much of the land, as fate itself and thus defined purely in the moment, giving us no idea from where he came or where he’s going next.

 

JACK REACHER: Okay, Tom Cruise isn’t as big or as bruising as Lee Child’s iconic, nomadic hero who carries only a toothbrush while taming one town, and one book, after another.  But Cruise otherwise nails the character’s sensibility to a T.  Reacher is a classic western gunfighter, unable to settle down and on a quasi-Quixotic journey to right the wrongs of the world perpetrated on ordinary people like you and I.  He vanquishes the bad guys, then mounts a bus instead of a horse to ride on to his next adventure.  Not a whole lot different than Paladin from the classic TV western, Have Gun, Will Travel.

Okay, those are my picks.  Now, how about yours?  Any you’d like to add?

HANK:  SO interesting!  How about To Kill a Mockingbird?  I guess that's not a thriller.... 

And so delighted, Jon, that you've made your hero a woman!

How abut you, Reds? Are you more western fans or thriller fans? (Or--are  you more about shopping today?) 

*****************

Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling author of 38 novels, including eight titles in the critically acclaimed Caitlin Strong series: Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, Strong at the Break, Strong Vengeance, Strong Rain Falling (winner of the 2014 International Book Award and 2013 USA Best Book Award for Mystery-Suspense), Strong Darkness (winner of the 2014 USA Books Best Book Award and the 2015 International Book Award for Thriller and Strong Light of Day which won the 2016 International Book Award for Best Thriller-Adventure, the 2015 Books and Author Award for Best Mystery Thriller, and the 2016 Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Mystery.  The latest title in the series is Strong Cold Dead, was published on October 4 and about which Booklist said, “Thrillers don’t get any better than this,” in a starred review. Land has also teamed with multiple New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham on a new sci-fi series, the first of which, The Rising, will be published by Forge in January of 2017. He is a 1979 graduate of Brown University and lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Shameless Use of Child Labor: Kiddo on being a Novelist's Son

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Today I'm taking a page from Julia, whose kids pop in and out of the Jungle Reds blog with some regularity. It's a stressful (and wonderful) time — prepping for Bouchercon, finishing one book (THE PARIS SPY) to turn into my editor on 10/15, while getting ready for another to be published (THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE on 10/4), and the subsequent book tour. And so I've enlisted eleven-year-old Kiddo's help — thank you, thank you, thank you!

KIDDO: Being the son of an author has its perks and disadvantages.

One perk is I get to meet a lot of cool people including but not limited to fellow authors such as R.L. Stein, Holly Goldberg Sloan (the author of the novel Counting By 7s that I’m reading for school), editors such as Kate Miciak, who is one of my mom's editors for her book, and her agent, Victoria Skurnick (but we call her “Agent V” after the character "Agent P" for Perry the Platypus on the TV show Phineas and Ferb). Agent V hung out with me once when mom was signing books and got me candy while we waited and lots of really cool books.

Mom also signed a deal with Daisy Ridley, who is Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Rey is so great. Daisy wants to play Maggie Hope. Everyone at school thought that was totally cool! And then Agent V got me an autographed picture from Daisy Ridley. She wrote "May the Force be With You." Which is AMAZING.

But also one of the downsides is that my mom (like all parents) works a lot because it’s really hard. She has to write a whole novel and create characters and it’s a mystery and the mysteries need clues and her character Maggie Hope has to sometimes has to figure out codes and my mom has to create the code and then come up with the solution.

When she’s sitting right there in front of me, sometimes I can’t speak or say anything to her because she has to work. I know when I can't talk because she gets a funny glazed look in her eyes.

Another plus is I get to read her books before anyone else, which is awesome! Because I get to find out what Maggie's latest adventure is. Also, Maggie has met a lot people including (but not limited to) Winston Churchill, Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth), and Eleanor Roosevelt. In the new book Maggie gets to meet a woman named Coco Chanel, who invented a perfume called Chanel No. 5 (which was my grandmother's [Miss Edna's] favorite perfume). 

But a downside is that sometimes she can change her story; a long lasting friendship could turn into a horrible disaster, or someone you thought was evil turns out to be on Maggie’s side.

And that is what I love (and sometimes hate) about being the son of an author. 

Do you have any questions for me? I can answer them when I get home from school. Thanks! Peace.

(Maybe someday I’ll write a book about it!)

SUSAN: Thanks so much. How can I ever thank you?

KIDDO: How about $20?

The Force is back: Viva Star Wars!

HALLIE EPHRON: I love Love LOVED the first Star Wars movie. Liked the second one. And the rest were a complete waste of time designed, as far as I can tell, primarily to sell lunchboxes and action figures. There were special effects galore but it felt s if they'd hired a wookie to write the dialogue. 

I'm thrilled to hear that STAR WARS: The Force Awakens is getting enthusiastic thumbs-up from reviewers. Can't wait to see it!

So for those of you who, like me, are ready for your Star Wars fix, here's a little quiz to take you back to that first Star Wars experience.



For each of these quotes from the movie.
Who is speaking, and about whom (or what)?
Your choices:A. Princess Leia
B. Luke Skywalker
C. Han Solo
D. Obi-Wan Kenobi
E. Darth Vader
F. C-3PO
G. R2D2
H. Chewbacca
I. The Millenium Falcon

1. Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
A, B

2. This is all your fault.
F, G

3. Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?
A, H

4. Look, Your Worshipfulness, let's get one thing straight. I take orders from just one person: me.
C, A

5. I would much rather have gone with Master Luke than stay here with you. I don't know what all this trouble is about, but I'm sure it must be your fault.
F, G

6. Escape is not his plan. I must face him alone.
E, D

7. I don't know who you are or where you came from, but from now on you'll do as I tell you, okay?
A, C

8. Get in there, you big furry oaf! I don't care what you smell!
C, H

9. This is some rescue! You came in here, but didn't you have a plan for getting out?
A, C

10. Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, fly boy.
A, C

11. I sense something; a presence I've not felt since...
E, D

12. Don't call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease.
F, G

13. Will you shut up and listen to me! Shut down all the garbage smashers on the detention level, will ya? Do you copy? Shut down all the garbage smashers on the detention level! Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!
B, F

14. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts.
C, I

15. Help! I think I'm melting! This is all your fault!
F, G

16. Where did you dig up that old fossil?
C, D

17. I knew there was more to you than money.
A, C

18. Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them.
D, B

My favorite scene in the movie is the one in the garbage compactor. 
"It could be worse." (Princess Leia)
"It is worse." (Han Solo)

Or maybe the one in the bar when Han Solo blows away one of the aliens.
"Pardon the mess."

Did you love it? Or miss it completely and wonder what the fuss is all about?

The Bechdel Test — Do Your Favorites Pass?

Yesterday's post by Hilary Davidson on HBO's crime drama True Detective reminded me of the Bechdel Test.

What's the Bechdel Test? 

Simple — does a story have two women, who are named, who talk to each other, about something other than a man? 

Think about it. 

Alison Bechdel came up with the test in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. In it, one woman explains her "rule" about watching movies to another:

The Bechdel Test may have given a name to a phenomenon, but it's hardly the first time women's marginal status in fiction has been noted. In A Room Of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s essay about the challenges women writers face, she notes that women characters  are “almost without exception [...] shown in their relation to men. [...] And how small a part of a woman’s life is that.” 

Most of the discussion of the Bechdel Test focuses on films and television shows. But we're readers here. How about novels?Off the top of my head, I can think of many big-name thriller/mystery authors whose books fail the Bechdel Test: Dan Brown, Stephen King, Scott Turow. (And yes, many of them have been made into movies.) But there are so many more. Any Ian Fleming novel. Any novel where a "beautiful woman" (nameless) apprears on the back cover description.

Why do so many works of art/entertainment fail the Bechdel Test?

Well, often, it's because there is only one woman. ONE. (My take on Star Wars: "Seriously? Is there only one woman in the entire UNIVERSE?")

 

And then, when there are more than one female character, the work fails because the female characters never talk to each other.       (I'm taking my son to see the Broadway musical Les Misérables this summer. Think about it — the men sing about human dignity and basic rights and war and revenge and forgiveness and fallen comerades. Oh, and the plot. And the women sing about — the men.)

Once you start looking at the world through the lens of the Bechdel Test, it's hard to stop. The kiddo loves a certain snowboarding video game. There is one woman. One. Even in the snow, she's scantily dressed. And her only line is about liking attention from boys. You'd better believe he and I had a long talk about that!)

The Bechdel Test helps us measure how marginal women characters still are. Applying this test to works of art isn't an end in itself  — but it is a way to see the entertainment we consume in a new way and start asking questions. Important ones. 

Because, although some disagree, I do think it's important. Stories are important. Fiction reflects our world and how we see it and how we're seen. Reading stories affects how we tell our own stories, about ourselves. I don't know about you, but I'm not happy with a walk-on part as "the girlfriend," "the wife," and "the mother."  If women don’t have a place of importance in our imaginations, then how can we have have a place of importance in the world?

And so, Reds and lovely readers, I ask you — when choosing books (or movies or television shows or plays), do you care if they pass the Bechdel test?

One Ringy Dingy

RHYS BOWEN: As you know, most of the Jungle Reds are at Bouchercon mystery convention this week. We had our Jungle Red game show today so I'll give you all the details in tomorrow's post. But for now I'm musing about cell phone ring tones.

 

Recently I became the last person in the civilized world to get an iPhone and one of my challenges in getting it set up was choosing the ring tone. I didn’t really like any of the ring tones that came with the phone so I went searching on iTunes for  music that would mean something special to me.

 

It turns out there are about three zillion ring tones. I am a lover of classical music so naturally I started there. Some were just too peaceful and quiet to be effective, so I opted for the opening of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.  The first time my phone rang I sat at my desk thinking “Oh, that’s nice music someone’s playing.”  By the time it finally dawned on me that it was my phone ringing, the caller had hung up.

 

So I started browsing in other categories. I’m a Monty Python fan. How about the theme? That was loud and jolly. But then I decided I’d feel a bit silly if my phone rang in the middle of a serious interview. So I likewise rejected a ring tone saying “We are the knights who say Ni! And we demand a phone call..”

 

I am also a Star Wars fan and I toyed with Darth Vader telling me my phone was ringing. Then I moved on to the Lord of the Rings. How about Gollum saying “Our phone is ringing, my Precious. We wants to answer it. We needs to answer it… now!”

 

No, I’d get funny looks if I was sitting in an airport with that voice coming out of my purse.

So I’m no nearer to finding the ring tone that is really ME. My daughter who is a former All-American and now owns a swim center and coaches a swim team has the Olympic Theme for her phone. My other daughter (the music composer) has special songs for her husband and each of her children. But me? I’ve gone back to the sound of an old phone ringing. At least I recognize it for what it is. Any suggestions for something better?

 

And what ring tones do you have? Have you searched out ones that are meaningful to you?

Allison Brennan on Storytelling

I love dark, epic storytelling with happy endings.

 

It probably started when I was thirteen and read THE STAND by Stephen King. After 99% of the world is killed by a deadly virus, our survivors are faced with an even deadlier battle, in the name of evil Randall Flagg. Most of the people we grew to love and hate in the 1200 page tome (yes, I read the unabridged version) also die. The ending is happy(ish.) Bittersweet, but Stu and Frannie (and Frannie’s baby) survive. They defeat evil and begin to rebuild. 

Hugely satisfying.

 
Epic storytelling generally involves high fantasy, but after reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy in high school, I haven’t been a fan of fantasy. I loved the story, but there was a lot of other stuff that made me skim lots and lots of pages. My 17 year old daughter read the first two books of the Game of Thrones series and she enjoyed them, but said she was finding herself skimming a lot as well, even though she was worried she’d miss something. So we are watching the Games of Throne series this summer to get caught up because from what my daughter has heard, it’s as good as the books without the boring parts.

I understand the need for storytellers who have to build a world to incorporate scenes, chapters and even hundreds of pages of histories and events, and there is a large groups of readers who love that level of detail.

I’m not one of them.

Epic storytelling works amazingly in film, especially when there’s a franchise and storytellers can world build over time, adding layers with each movie while still making each movie a solid story. 

STAR WARS came out when I was eight. I saw it in the theater and was completely in awe. This was 1977, and we hadn’t seen anything as vivid and epic and fast-paced as STAR WARS. It opened my mind to possibilities I hadn’t even known existed, let alone thought about. Not just the world of science fiction, fantasy, or alternative worlds, but the breadth of storytelling. When I was eight, I was reading Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. STAR WARS blew me away. 

Even though George Lucas always said he had seven stories planned for the Star Wars franchise, I was disappointed when he sold the rights to Disney. I was disappointed in the second trilogy because they didn’t hold true to some of the details in the original trilogy which, to me, is perfect storytelling. The second trilogy was less than perfect. I didn’t buy into some of the characters actions and decisions. The only thing I really loved about the second trilogy was Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi. (But who doesn’t love Yoda?)

 Yet … JJ Abrams is set to direct the seventh Star Wars movie, and I am cautiously optimistic. It’s like when I know Joss Whedon is involved in a project, I am already on board because he’s an amazing storyteller. And in the end, it’s always about the story.

One of the reasons I’m cautiously optimistic is because JJ Abrams directed the reboot of the STAR TREK franchise. (Okay, yes, I’m a nerd. Kind of obvious, isn’t it?) The first movie was good, but INTO THE DARKNESS was amazing. It was the exact kind of epic storytelling I love—action, suspense, battles (both internal and external), moral conflict, and a multi-dimensional villain. (And I didn’t love it just because Benedict Cumberbatch was the villain. Though I loved him, too!)

Much of great epic storytelling is dependent on the actors being IN character, and I think Abrams brought in an amazing cast (particularly Zachary Quinto who plays Spock—I love him in everything he does.) But because the story was there, and the actors became the characters, and I went along with the ride. J

Epic storytelling isn’t just on the big screen; quieter versions exist in television. The first season of HEROES, for example, was an epic storyline that, like King’s THE STAND, brought together disparate characters in a final battle where some became heroes, and some became villains.

I also consider the recently completed first season of THE FOLLOWING starring starring Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy to be an epic storyline. I think it was one of the best written shows on television this year—dark, suspenseful, and very well-written. There is a happy(ish) ending to the season, but then wham! The writers give us a twist. This isn’t a series you can watch just one episode—you have to go from beginning to end. It’s an over-arcing epic story told for the small screen. It gives you the depth of character that you rarely get in two hour movies – the same depth of character I see in novels like THE STAND.

 

What do you think? Is there a different formula for epic storytelling in books than in the movies? Do you like all the high-level detail in fantasy novels, or prefer the movies? Did you see Star Trek? Iron Man? The Avengers? Or are these high-speed adventures not your cup of tea?

New York Times and USA Today bestseller Allison Brennan is the author of twenty novels and several short stories. A former consultant in the California State Legislature, she lives in Northern California with her husband Dan and their five children. Allison's latest Lucy Kincaid thriller, STOLEN, will be out this coming Tuesday, June 4th. You can find out more about her books, and get a printable list of her series, at her website.