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The
International Writers Magazine:
Book Review
Review
Of Michael Malone's Red Clay, Blue Cadillac
Dan Schneider
Michael
Malone is most well known for being the lead writer on the American
soap opera One Life To Live. As someone who has watched soap
operas and other serial fictions for years. I do not hold this against
him. However, having read his collection of twelve stories centered
on Southern belles, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac, I can say that
he certainly doesn't hide the fact of his past employment.
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Overall, it's a
solid book- with some bad stories and a few good ones; although nothing
great. Malone, in a sense, is a very generic Southern writer. All the
standbys are in his work- murder, lust, drinking, red necks, etc. And,
good or bad, his tales are loaded with melodrama of the sort that soap
operas purvey.
The first tale, Stella: Red Clay, is perhaps the best in the
book, following the decades-long obsession of a boy and his father,
Buddy and Clayton Hayes, with a B film starlet, Stella Dora Doyle, who
marries well and then murders her husband, only to get off because of
some legal maneuvering. Years later, after the father, who was a high
school classmate of the starlet, dies, the son meets up with the actress-
Stella- and discovers the truth behind the murder. It is a well-structured
tale, and uses the soap opera machinations inherent in its telling to
great effect. Also, the fades in and out to different time periods works
well. It won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1997, from the Mystery Writers
Of America, and appears in Best Mystery Stories Of The Century.
Marie: Blue Cadillac, originally published in Playboy, does not
work nearly so well, as it follows Marie, its blond titular character,
and her obsession with Elvis Presley play out as she seduces swindles
a gullible would-be suitor: Braxton Cox, who is heading home to Memphis
in his Mustang for Thanksgiving. Precious: Winners And Losers
follows a divorcee who is troubled over his ex-wife's pending remarriage.
Charmain: White Trash Noir is another murder tale that starts off in
media res, but is not as good as the first one. It follows a woman who
offs her college basketball star husband, and gets sentenced to some
time, even though the shooting was really an accident. While the character
study of Charmain is strong, the rest of the tale is rather sparsely
detailed, and not particularly interesting, as well as too long. Malone
does a good job rendering the lead's character and lack of self-esteem.
The realistic question of whether Charmain will air her marriage's dirty
laundry to save herself from a conviction is what gives the tale a nice
tension that lesser tales lack.
Lucy: Maniac Loose follows the lead character after she confronts
her dead husband's lover, and attempting to psychically screw her. The
lover ends up dying, and Lucy strolls naked through town. Do not be
thrown by this description- it's a very good tale. The ending, where
Lucy is on trial the same day as a man who shot his wife, who is the
maniac of the title, is quite strong:
Testifying over his lawyer's protest that he'd tried to kill
his wife and her lover but had 'just messed it up', the maniac pleaded
guilty. So did Lucy. She admitted she was creating as much of a public
disturbance as she could. But unlike the maniac's, her sentence was
suspended, and afterwards the whole charge was erased from the record
.A
few months later, Lucy went to visit the maniac at the state penitentiary.
She brought him a huge box of presents from the going-out-of-business
sale at The Fun House. They talked for a while, but conversation wasn't
easy, despite the fact that Lucy not only felt they had a great deal
in common, but that she could have taught him a lot about getting away
with murder.
Flonnie: The Rise Of The South And Flonnie Rogers details the
life of a bitchy old black woman that might be best described as Miss
Jane Pittman with a 'tude. It is slight, with some humor, but fairly
forgettable. Patty: Love And Other Crimes, at forty-eight pages,
is far too long, and another murder tale that is a shadow of the first
two. A good five pages is wasted on describing the titular character's
past husbands, very little of which is relevant to the tale. Meredith:
Fast Love is a simple little romance, as a bumpkin falls for the
first woman jogger he has ever seen. It won an O. Henry Award. Angie:
The Power is a solid story following a small town clique's obsession
with pro baseball and murder theories regarding Marilyn Monroe. Mona:
Miss Mona's Bank describes an old woman's talking two bank robbers
out of their crime. Betty: A Deer On The Lawn is a rather soulless tale
of a woman who gets her wish in getting out of her loveless marriage
when her husband dies. Mattie: An Invitation To The Ball is another
overly long tale of murder- probably the least affecting tale in the
book.
Overall, the book is a sturdy collection, although not particularly
quotable. It is not a poetic prose, and not likely to cling to someone's
bosom the way many other writers' words do. In a sense, Malone's prose,
if a car, is a serviceable beater- not particularly memorable, nor pleasing
to look at, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do more often than
not, and that is entertain. Does it enlighten? No, no more than most
soap operas do. But, there is something refreshing in the best of his
unpretentious tales. Perhaps it is called enjoyment?
© Dan Schneider September 2008
www.Cosmoetica.com
Cosmoetica: The Best In Poetica
www.Cosmoetica.com/Cinemension.htm
Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension
All
Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P Jones
Dan Schneider
Reading the latest book of short stories put out by Pulitzer Prize
winner Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar's Children, was a profound
disappointment
Ellen
Gilchrist's Collected Stories
Dan Schneider review
Having read Thom Jones' Sonny Liston Was A Friend Of Mine
and overdosing on its phallic ejaculations I turned to the Collected
Stories of Ellen Gilchrist for a change.
Dr.
King's Refrigerator, & Other Stories, by Charles Johnson
Dan Schneider
American novelist Charles Johnson has published three collections of
short stories... this third collection, released by Scribner's in 2005,
is by far the weakest.
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