Ed Gorman R.I.P.

I've just returned from a terrific, if all too brief, holiday in Spain, but before I say anything about my trip, I want to talk about someone whose death I was saddened to learn about whilst I was travelling. Ed Gorman, a crime novelist, short story writer, anthologist and blogger of distinction, has passed away, and I'm so sorry about this news. Ed's courage in dealing with serious illness over the past few years has been admirable, and it's such a shame that he's finally lost his battle. But he leaves many people, including me, with warm memories as well as a wonderful literary legacy.

Over the years, I've mentioned Ed numerous times on this blog. My first encounter with him was unexpected but not, as I later learned, untypical. One day, about twenty years ago, I received a phone call out of the blue. The chap on the other end of the line told me he was an American called Ed Gorman, and that he'd just read an article I'd written for a British magazine about Robert Barnard. He said he was involved with the US magazine Mystery Scene and would like to reprint it. I was more than happy to agree, and thus began our friendship.

Ed told me he was calling from Iowa, and I soon discovered that he was very much a home bird. I think I'm right in saying that even quite a few of his American pals never actually met him, although they, like me, bonded with him through phone calls and emails. Ed was one of those guys whose generosity was striking, and he did me a number of kindnesses over the years.  He was, for instance, responsible for my finding an American publisher for Take My Breath Away.

We enjoyed each other's writing, exchanging books on several occasions, and I have a nice collection of some of Ed's novels and short stories, with some marvellous personal inscriptions. Our shared love of pop music was another connection, and he introduced me to Shelby Lynne, as well as sharing my taste for novels with titles taken from pop songs - my Harry Devlin series, and his books such as the excellent Ticket to Ride. Twice he included stories of mine - "The Bookbinder's Apprentice", and a rather less well-known one, "Clutter" - in his anthologies of the year's best short crime fiction. I always enjoyed hearing from him, and although we never met in person, he will stay in my thoughts.

Ticket to Ride

Ed Gorman, whose latest novel, Ticket to Ride, I recently devoured, is a man of many accomplishments. His blog is required reading for me. It’s full of interest, and has introduced me to such good and diverse things as the novels of Elizabeth Sanxay Holding and a terrific CD tribute to Dusty Springfield by Shelby Lynne. As a book editor, he was kind enough to include ‘The Bookbinder’s Apprentice’ in a ‘best of year’ anthology, and I first came across him many years ago, when he phoned me to ask if an article I’d written for a magazine called ‘Million’ (sadly long defunct) could be reprinted in ‘Mystery Scene’, a wonderfully resilient publication whose success owes much to his hard work. Although we exchange emails from time to time, we’ve never met. However, through his splendid writing, somehow I feel that I have the privilege of knowing him quite well.

Above all, he is a masterly crime writer. If you haven’t come across his short stories, check out Famous Blue Raincoat, a collection published by Crippen & Landru, or his collected stories, in two gorgeously produced volumes, The Moving Coffin and Out There in the Darkness. Of his novels that I’ve read, I might previously have said that The Night Remembers is my favourite. But Ticket to Ride is perhaps even better.

It’s the latest instalment in the Sam McCain series. The books take their titles from songs of the period in which they are set – so now we are up to the mid-Sixties, and a time when the US was in the throes of war in a distant land. The book’s first scene involves an anti-Vietnam protest, but although Gorman’s heart is with the protesters, it is a mark of his sensitivity as a novelist that he portrays the people on the other side of the argument with a very human touch. When a murder occurs, Sam (a lawyer in his Iowa home town) has the unenviable task of defending an unattractive client. But he believes in the man’s innocence, and sets about discovering the truth behind the crime.

Despite Sam’s legal background, this book is more akin to a private eye novel than a legal thriller. It is short and snappy, with some wonderfully witty lines. The plot reaches back into the murky dealings of the town’s past, but the greatest appeal of the novel is the depiction of small town America at a time, well within living memory yet in some ways remarkably different from today, when the Beatles were perceived as a threat to moral order by much the same people who supported an unwinnable war.

This particular book hasn’t been published as yet in the UK, and I’m puzzled that, so far, no British crime publisher has really got behind Ed Gorman on a long term basis in the way that the quality of his writing deserves. Perhaps Ticket to Ride will make the breakthrough. Certainly, it is a smoothly accomplished piece of entertainment from a very skilled practitioner.