Gorman Vs. The 1960s

He'll probably be pissed at me for saying it, but Ed Gorman is the tooth fairy of the mystery world -- dispensing not only wisdom but actual paying jobs. We have never met, but one day I got an e-mail from Ed. He had read a piece about Fredric Brown's The Fabulous Clipjoint which I'd written for the Chicago Tribune, and asked if I'd like to write the introduction to a new edition of Brown's Madball for a series he was putting together. A nice fee was mentioned. Madball was one of the first mysteries I ever read, and I would have written the introduction for nothing -- but I didn't tell Gorman that.

Aside from his kindness, Gorman is one of the best writers of mysteries of recent memory. His Sam McCain series, about a lawyer in Black Water Falls, Iowa in the 1960s, earned these glowing comments from Booklist: "...Sam McCain is cut from the same cloth as Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder and Bill Pronzini's "Nameless"-- series heroes who change as time passes. The sweet, nonviolent, naive young man we met in the series debut (The Day the Music Died, 1999) is now comfortable pistol-whipping a witness..."

Gorman also edits, along with Martin H. Greenberg, the annual Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year -- the most recent titled Between the Dark and the Daylight.

Now for the best part: his latest Sam McCain outing, TICKET TO RIDE, just published by Pegasus, is one terrific read. It's set in 1965, and the basically conservative townsfolk plan on burning Beatle, Rolling Stone and Bob Dylan records in front of a local church on Labor Day. And the first young soldier from Black River Falls returns home from a strange place called Viet Nam, in a coffin.

Ticket to Ride is a fascinating look at the war from both sides of smalltown America. Sam is very active in the anti-war movement, and when a rich and powerful warmonger is killed in a fistfight with a young radical, Sam is the only lawyer in town to have the guts and heart to take his case.

If you've missed any of the McCain series, you can rectify that by going to Gorman's page at Amazon.com.