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On Nov. 4, 2012, the Buffalo News published a long article about the bank-robbing past of Al Nussbaum, a Buffalo native who features prominently in my biography Gunshots in Another Room: The Forgotten Life of Dan J. Marlowe. It’s an excellent article, though the headline isn’t entirely accurate. Nussbaum wrote many fine mystery short stories, but never a full-length commercial mystery novel. However, he made contributions of technical expertise, and sometimes of plot advice, to Marlowe in writing some of Marlowe’s Earl Drake novels. Here’s a link to the news article. The top photo is excellent. I published it again in the biography, but it shows up better here. http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121104/CITYANDREGION/121109672/1057
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On Oct. 28, 2012, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a long article on a couple of bank robberies Al Nussbaum pulled in the Pittsburgh area 50 years ago with his deadly partner, Bobby “One-Eye” Wilcoxson. The news story quotes often from Gunshots in Another Room: The Forgotten Life of Dan J. Marlowe. Here’s the link: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/gangster-style-nussbaum-and-wilcoxson-robberies-ended-in-pittsburgh-659519/
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On March 10, 2012, the Los Angeles Review of Books website published my 3,000-word article on Dan J. Marlowe, “The Wrong Marlowe.” The article deals with the end-game part of Marlowe’s life, after he had fallen victim to amnesia and moved to Los Angeles to live with his friend, the bank robber Al Nussbaum. Here’s the link:
Here’s the opening:
Hollywood is for the young and tough, a place where you must be beautiful simply to survive, let alone prosper. God help you if you’re homely, aging, and physically beaten. Double that if you’ve lost the creative skills you’ve counted on and forgotten much of your life and all the people you’ve known. Double that again if you’re a writer. Let’s say it’s 1978 and you are Dan J. Marlowe, once one of the hottest suspense novelists of your day, author of such hard-boiled Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks as The Name of the Game is Death, The Vengeance Man, Never Live Twice and the “Operation” books, featuring a bank robber turned international agent . It’s 1978, yes, and the market for that kind of book has evaporated. You’re 64 years old, suffering from amnesia, glaucoma, and the consequences of a stroke. It’s painful for you to even lift your hands high enough to type.
Though you’re chubby and unathletic and wear dark, horn-rimmed glasses, in the past you’ve been hell with the ladies. Now those ladies are ghosts to you…
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For recent developments, you can go to my page on crimespace.ning.com by clicking this link: http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/pulpnoir?viewAsOther=1
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Stark House Press has re-issued three hard-boiled novels as a trilogy called A TRIO OF GOLD MEDALS. I wrote introductions for two of the books, THE VENGEANCE MAN by Dan J. Marlowe and PARK AVENUE TRAMP by Fletcher Flora.
The introduction to the third novel, THE PRETTIEST GIRL I EVER KILLED by Charles Runyon, was written by Ed Gorman. Weird story. Gorman made a determined search for Runyon to interview him, but was told Runyon died in 1987. After review copies came out with Gorman’s intro saying Runyon was dead, the publisher pulled the book back, having gotten a better distribution deal, and Gorman got a line on Runyon, who was still alive. Gorman interviewed him for the book.
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I did an interview on crime reporting and writing fiction that’s up on Fusion View at http://www.fusionview.co.uk/ To find the interview, go to the site and search for “Charles Kelly.”