En bok på M: Mord lilla mor av Craig Rice. Jag hittade nyligen igen den och har skrivit lite här. Det är Craig Rice på bilden, hon blev bara 49 år.
En författare på M: Det måste nog bli Michael Connelly. Jag tror att jag läst alla böckerna om Hieronymos Bosch, alkoholiserad bråkstake som biter sig fast tills han löst brotten, och jag gillar även de som handlar om Terry McCaleb. Till exempel Blodspår, där Terry fått ett transplanterat hjärta av en mördad kvinna. Hennes syster söker upp honom och vill att han ska utreda mordet. Connelly är väldigt bra på att skapa personer som känns trovärdiga och som man bryr sig om. Som Rachel Walling, FBI:are, som förekommer i Poeten och uppföljaren Fällan. Och så gillar jag när personerna möts i nån bok här och där: Harry och Rachel, och Harry och Terry. Tyvärr har jag läst alla Connellys böcker huller om buller, det rekommenderas inte. I den senaste (?) går Connelly lite på tomgång, tyvärr, hoppas han hämtar upp sig.
En bok på M som jag vill läsa:Med mord på menyn som jag hittade på Myrorna. Har börjat, och det är väldigt mycket mat och lite kriminalgåta hittills, men smått trivsamt ändå.
Paperback Lover håller i Krimalfabetet.
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Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Krimalfabetet, deckare, Michael Connelly, Craig Rice

I och med den nya bokhyllan kom en del gamla bortglömda vänner fram från de bakersta lagren, och plötsligt hittar jag tre gamla deckare av Craig Rice. Kul! Hon skrev i en sorts humoristisk gangsterstil, oftast med Jake och Helene Justus och deras advokatvän John J Malone i rollerna. En mycket stor del av handlingen brukar utspela sig på barer och nattklubbar, och Malone är i regel antingen full eller bakfull. Men inte mindre klipsk för det.
Den jag blir gladast för är Mord lilla mor, där huvudpersonerna är en syskonskara på tre barn, som löser ett mord (eller var det två? tre?) i smyg för sin tankspridda mor som sitter på övervåningen och skriver på sin bok. I förbifarten ser de till att hon blir ihop med en av de stiligare poliserna också. Eller nåt sånt, jag kan minnas helt fel. Måste nog läsa om den .
Craig Rice själv hade ett trassligt liv, uppväxt hos släktingar och hade sen svårt att ta hand om sina egna barn. (Mord lilla mor är dedikerad till dem.) Dessutom hade hon alkoholproblem och gjorde flera självmordsförsök. Hon dog bara 49 år gammal, med dålig hälsa. Men humor, det hade hon!
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Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Craig Rice, deckare, humor, bokhyllefynd

Perchè rileggere Pavese ? Perche è un grande scrittore oggi passato di moda.

(Craig Mattucci, Il Sole-24 Ore Domenica)

A true twentieth century Renaissance man, Gordon Parks is one of the most prolific and diverse artists in America today. A preeminent photographer, poet, novelist, composer and filmmaker, Parks’s artisitc vision knows no boundaries. This candid portrait of the artist is a journey throught the watershed moments on America’s social history, punctuated by Parks’ seminal works and his unique ability to follow his instincts to the most fascinating and challenging places in the world.

Half Past Autumn – The Life and Works of Gordon Parks is available at Amazon for $19.98. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• A Hungry Heart: A Memoir
• Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks
• Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs
• Learning Tree
• American Photography

   Melissa Mclauchlin          Joseph Gardner

The Murder of Melissa “Missi” Ann McLauchlin
Dec. 5 execution date for SC man in racial killing
Man to die for ‘92 slaying
Gardner execution set tonight
A man whose crime sent chills through the lowcountry 16 years ago… will be put to to death Friday

**Updated**
SC executes murderer who raped, kidnapped woman
South Carolina Man Convicted of Torture, Murder and Rape Is Executed
Convicted Murder Executed in Columbia

Terminato di leggere “Contro la legge” di Craig Rice.  Noiosetto, ha fatto decisamente di meglio. Però, che belli questi gialli cinquantenni pescati a Vendo Libri di Viale Mazzini : c’è anche la pubblicità dell’agenzia investigativa di Tom Ponzi !  La Rice, all’anagrafe Georgiana Ann Randolph, è morta nel 1957 (chissà se per abusi alcoolici, vista la quantità industriale che ne ingurgitano i suoi protagonisti).  Il suo ultimo libro, “I delitti di April Robin”, è rimasto incompiuto ed è stato completato dall’immenso Ed Mc Bain, e pubblicato a quattro mani.

Child detectives aren’t uncommon, but I think when the future witch was handed Home Sweet Homicide at the tender age of twelve or so, she wasn’t used to reading about them in adult books. This crime novel by Craig Rice was a   hand-me -down from the Retired Children’s Librarian (not retired then, of course) who had come for her annual holiday. When I think of this book I can still see how we sat outside our cottage on the side where the sun shone in the evenings, so it makes for a good piece of nostalgia.

I think I was also surprised to find that an adult book could be funny. Who’d expect adults to have a sense of humour? Now I know, because I’m so very witty myself, but at that point it was a nice transition from Blyton to Christie & Co.

The story is about three children with a crime writer mother who is busy writing, and they are left to their own devices. Luckily a neighbour is murdered and they spend their time solving the murder. It’s a lovely piece of Americana from the 1940s.

I’m having to write this from memory, as I have no idea where the book is. Actually I do, and I’m too lazy to shift everything in front of it. But after all these years it’s still quite clear in my mind, which goes to prove how important it was. I went on to read a few more of Craig Rice’s books, but in those days I think it was hard to find all that many, particularly in translation.

I checked it out on Google, but found a long and almost tedious review of the book, where someone had gone to a lot of trouble dissecting both the book and the author, to the extent that he ruined something which I think he had actually liked. That’s why I’m not saying much here at all, except “read it if you can”.

The Crime:

Melissa McLaughlan, 25, was a native of Wixom, Michigan, living with her fiancé’s family in North Charleston, South Carolina. On the night she died, she had an argument with her fiancé at a nightclub. She stormed out of the club and began to walk home. Police spotted her, obviously drunk, and gave her a ride home, but she quickly set out on foot for another club. Three black men, Matthew Mack, Matthew Williams, and Joseph Gardner pulled up alongside in a car and started a conversation. They offered her drugs if she would come back to their trailer and have sex with them. Melissa McLaughlan, who had a history of drug problems, foolishly accepted their offer. The men had spent most of the day drinking and watching pornographic videos of black men having sex with white women. At one point Mack exploded in anger at his white girlfriend, saying he wanted to “stab her,” but that “it ain’t got to be her, any white” would do. Williams said he wanted to have sex with a white woman. Two hours later, the group watched a television news account of the biggest stories of 1992. When the videotaped beating and arrest of Rodney King came on the air, the third man, Gardner, spoke of “four hundred years of oppression,” and made a “New Year’s resolution” to “kill a white bitch.” It was in this state of mind that the four returned to the trailer where the three blacks lived. The men offered Melissa McLaughlan no drugs, but she willingly had sex with them—at first. She began to resist, especially when the men wanted to sodomize her, and soon the men were raping her. They put out the word within the trailer park that they had “captured a white woman,” and three other blacks arrived and raped her. Two black women, girlfriends of some of the rapists, were present in another room of the trailer, but did nothing to stop the attack. After they had enough, the men decided to get rid of the evidence—including Melissa McLaughlan. They soaked her in bleach and hydrogen peroxide, and scrubbed her under the shower with a nylon brush, in the hope of ridding her skin of sperm or other evidence that could be linked to them. They forced her to scrub out her vagina with the same chemicals. They also talked openly of killing her. The men handcuffed her, blindfolded her, and put a heavy coat over her head. They then took her to a car, and forced her down onto the floorboards in the back. After they had driven for some time, she managed to get out of the handcuffs and began to struggle. Joseph Gardner, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, reached over the seat, held back her head, and shot her twice in the face. The driver pulled over 14 miles outside Charleston, where Gardner shot her three more times in the face and once in the arm. The men dumped her on the side of the road, drove back to Charleston, and went nightclubbing. A passing driver found Melissa McLaughlan, miraculously alive, but she died before the ambulance arrived. It took police four days to identify the body, and a day later they located the trailer where Melissa McLaughlan was raped. By January 9, 1993, police had arrested seven people including two of the ringleaders—Matthew Mack and Matthew Williams—and two women, Edna Williams and Indira Simmons, who were charged with being accessories to murder and sexual assault. Three of the rapists were sailors stationed at nearby Charleston Naval Base. The only suspect not in custody was the triggerman, Joseph Gardner, who had carried out his New Year’s resolution. Gardner, who was AWOL from the Navy, eluded police for nearly two years, and might never have been caught had the FBI not put him on the “ten most wanted” list. He was living in Philadelphia when someone saw his picture in the post office and tipped off the police. He was arrested on October 20, 1994, and is now on death row. Police suspected a racial motivation from the start, since they found a “crudely written racial diatribe” in the trailer, complete with racial epithets about white oppression, which claimed blacks were “justified in seeking revenge.”

I have found her name spelled multiple ways: Melissa McLaughlan, Missy, Missi, Melissa McLaughlin, Melissa McLauchlin

        Joseph ML Gardner                      Matthew Mack                              Matthew Williams

Suspects:

Joseph Martin Luther Gardner (triggerman)(death)
Matthew Carl Mack (life) eligible for parole 30 years – involved in a riot
Matthew Paul Williams (life) eligible for parole 30 years
Danny DeWayne McCall (6 years)
Roger Williams (5 years)
Craig Rice (accomplice) did not participate, but learned about crime, did nothing
Edna Lee Jenkins (7 years; suspended for time served)
Indira Simmons (7 years; suspended for time served)

ProDeathPenalty April 2005
Gardner back to face trial
Sixth Defendant in rape-murder sentencing
Joseph Gardner appeal
Missy McLauchlin, RIP (about 1/2 way down the page)