San Francisco has always embraced the weird, the outrageous, and the rebellious. From the raucous times of the Barbary Coast, to the howling poetry of the Beats, to the free love of the hippies, letting your freak flag fly is not just a slogan in the City by the Bay, but a way of life.

All of that uninhibited freedom, though, has at times fostered a sense of lawlessness in San Francisco. For every sailor who awoke in a brothel in the Barbary Coast, another awoke on a ship, kidnapped by “Shanghai” Kelly; while the Beats were reciting poetry in North Beach, Sonny Barger was forming the notorious Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels; and as the hippies were frolicking in Golden Gate Park, the Zodiac Killer was tallying victims all across the Bay Area.

It’s not surprising, then, that two great crime books to come from San Francisco were written by authors with checkered pasts. You Can’t Win by Jack Black, and Shake Him Till He Rattles by Malcolm Braly, were penned by career criminals who straightened out in time to capture their respective eras in San Francisco history. Though written decades apart, the books share a voice that is particular to that of an ex-con. It is a voice that is tough yet empathetic, unflinching yet forgiving. It is neither self-pitying nor self-flagellating. It is the voice of a life lived hard.

You Can’t Win, first published in 1926, is the autobiography of Jack Black, who was at various times a burglar, a convict, a dope fiend, a “yegg,” and a member of the Johnson Gang of thieves. Black crisscrossed the country at the turn of the 20th century, learning his craft (thieving, not writing) from a cast of characters so vivid, their names alone will make you smile: The Sanctimonious Kid, Salt Chunk Mary, Sticks Sullivan, Foot-and-a-half George, and Montana Blacky, to name just a few. After many visits to San Francisco, Black eventually settled down in the city, his decision no doubt influenced by his stay in nearby San Quentin prison.

Open to any page in You Can’t Win and you will see why it was the favorite book of William S. Burroughs, who wrote the introduction for the AK Press reissue. Black’s teeming prose, his rat-a-tat-tat rhythm, and his use of street slang are obvious influences on the Beats, especially Jack Kerouac. You Can’t Win is also stuffed with delightful old time colloquialisms: professional thieves were “yeggs,” cops were “bulls,” opium was “hop,” and everyone was addressed as “kid,” no matter their age.

Black tells us at the beginning of the book that he is going to write about the things he stole during his life as a thief just as he took them, “with a smile.”

[How Cities and Criminals Evolve...]

We just delivered this to @amazon HQ in honor of a 3 year overdue invoice. Can we please get this mess fixed? —ruaok http://t.co/K6OJWis3NK

— MusicBrainz (@MusicBrainz) December 3, 2013

Using mom's lesson “If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all” paid off when the open music encyclopedia site, Music Brainz, decided to say something nice and send this passive aggressive cake to Amazon to celebrate the third anniversary...of not getting paid! Most criminals would just go for the knee caps (and not have the patience) if they had to wait THREE YEARS for an invoice, so this is the better way to go. In the end, Music Brainz got paid, and Amazon got a free cake. Win/win, yes?

Oh man, O Man.

I need to come clean on something before I get going. And that is that I was only nine or so when this very incredible, very thoughtful TV show first came on the scene. I was too young to stay up that late. I only vaguely remember the second half of the first season, when the show was moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. Some sort of money thing, as shooting in San Diego quickly became too costly. Harry, played to the hilt by David Janssen, was the penultimate private eye. Harry Orwell had been a cop but was wounded in the line of duty. However, getting shot in the back didn’t kill him; it killed his career as a policeman instead. What I love about that bullet is that it serves as a powerful symbol for the wounding that Harry’s view of the world took. In an even more powerful bit of symbolism, he owns a derelict boat named The Answer. Can you get any more symbolic, right? And of course, he’s always working on The Answer. (Yes, I just had to get that in, sorry.)

Harry of course has a cop friend on the force (which private detective doesn’t?). Captain Manny Quinlan, played by Henry Darrow. He was given a difficult role, was Henry, having to play the foil for Harry’s character. One moment he’s a source of information, then in another he’s the cop who threatens to yank Harry’s private eye license. I would like to add here one totally bad-ass bit of awesomeness in the Captain Quinlan character: his ties rival Michael Douglas’s in The Streets of San Francisco. After the show moved to Los Angeles, Darrow’s character was replaced by Lt. Trench of the Santa Monica PD, played to perfection by Anthony Zerbe (who won an Emmy for his role).

[Put these all together and what do you get?]

Norman Reedus in People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive issue (December 2, 2013)?

Yeah, you can see that .

Norman Reedus featured in the story about sexy guys who love cats?

Yeah, we know... we just blew your mind.

But you’re not completely surprised that Daryl from The Walking Dead has a soft side, and a black rescue cat that his son named Eye in the Dark. In the right hands, Reedus says, the cat is a “big fluff love ball,” but he adds, “...if I don’t like someone, they leave bleeding. He’s a little baddie.”

Yeah, you can definitely see that.

Mystery Writers of America has just announced its new Grandmasters for 2014, and authors Robert Crais and Carolyn Hart will be honored at the Edgar Awards banquet next May 1st.

In addition to these worthies, also to be feted will be Aunt Agatha's—a new and used mystery and crime bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan— which will be awarded the Raven for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing.

It's shaping up to be a great Edgars already!

In October 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities held its first hearings into alleged Communist subversion in Hollywood. This kicked off one of the darkest eras in the history of the American film industry. For years, Hollywood was thrown into turmoil as investigations were held in Congress and on the front pages of newspapers all across America. Careers were ruined, friendships betrayed, and an entire generation of filmmakers and filmgoers came of age in a postwar environment boiling with suspicion and fear.

Perhaps, then, it’s not entirely incidental that film noir entered its golden years in 1947. A genre defined by guilt and paranoia, in some respects noir could only have flowered the way it did in tumultuous Hollywood of the late forties and early fifties.

[A scary time to be in show business...]

During the Prohibition years from 1920 to 1933, alcoholic beverages were illegal in the United States. But it was still fairly easy to get a drink. One of the easiest ways was to find a speakeasy—a hidden bar that served bootleg liquor and that often required a password to get in. Legend has it that the name speakeasy came from patrons being told to “speak easy,” or softly, so the police wouldn’t hear the party.

When the Volstead Act, which put Prohibition in place, was repealed in 1933, 80 years ago on December 5th, the speakeasies disappeared. But if you want to revisit that time in a new way, you have your chance because modern speakeasies have popped up all over the country. These bars take the mystery and romance of history and create a fun atmosphere.

Hallmarks of the modern speakeasy include:

1) Individually mixed drinks with fresh ingredients, often invented at that bar. We’re talking fresh, muddled fruit and innovative concoctions. A far cry from the quality of spirits found in most speakeasies back in the day. This also means you pay more than you would for an average cocktail, and depending on the city you’re in, it can be a lot more.

2) An unmarked door or a misleading sign. You have to know where the speakeasy is. Most doors are unmarked, but I’ve visited one behind the façade of a Fortune Telling shop and another where you had to go into a restaurant and pick up an antique phone to gain admittance.

3) Reservations are commonly a must, and many times, you’ll need a password. It pays to do your research. I’ve never had trouble getting into a popular place—as long as I made a reservation and knew in advance if I needed a password.  

4) An intimate atmosphere with lots of attention from your bartender to help you get exactly what you want. These places are small (thus the need for reservatinos), and the décor is well planned. Many of the speakeasies even play the music of the time.

Are you ready to go? Some friends and I started visiting these places as we traveled, and we've compiled our Top Ten list from around the country.  So here are my favorites in no particular order:

[Suddenly... so ... thirsty...]

A neuroscientist who had his brain scan handy while reviewing those of various psychopaths, schizophrenics, and even some murderers serendipitously diagnosed his own “low activity in areas of the frontal and temporal lobes linked to empathy, morality and self-control.” See image above. According to Joseph Stromberg's blog post at Smithsonian Magazine:

... when he underwent a series of genetic tests, he got more bad news. “I had all these high-risk alleles for aggression, violence and low empathy,” he says, such as a variant of the MAO-A gene that has been linked with aggressive behavior. Eventually, based on further neurological and behavioral research into psychopathy, he decided he was indeed a psychopath—just a relatively good kind, what he and others call a “pro-social psychopath,” someone who has difficulty feeling true empathy for others but still keeps his behavior roughly within socially-acceptable bounds.

It wasn’t entirely a shock to [James] Fallon, as he’d always been aware that he was someone especially motivated by power and manipulating others, he says. Additionally, his family line included seven alleged murderers, including Lizzie Borden, infamously accused of killing her father and stepmother in 1892.

We at Crime HQ tend to take a jaundiced view of the ways some people choose to dispose of their mortal remains, because—let’s face it—those ways can be strange. But we can recognize pretty when we see it, so without a hint of snark we present Shine on Brightly, an Asheville, North Carolina, company that sells cremation urns, grave markers, memory books, memorial jewelry and other keepsakes made by local artists and artisans.

What do President Zachary Taylor and Warren G. (Gamaliel) Harding have in common, other than being president? Yes, both were somewhat heavyset. But more importantly, both of their deaths have stirred the pot of conspiracy.  Taylor, who died in 1850, was believed to have died from overeating in hot weather. Harding officially died of a stroke or heart attack. But were their deaths really natural, or were they murder? In Taylor’s case, the exhumation and forensic exam of his body proved without doubt that he had indeed died of natural causes.  But the whispers of murder still float around Harding. Could the notorious womanizer-in-chief have been murdered? Or were his well-known blood pressure issues really to blame?

Warren G. Harding had his share of enemies, most of whom were self-created .  Elected in 1920 on a platform of returning the nation to “normalcy” after World War I, he packed his government with a mixture of bright administrators and Ohio cronies. His attorney general, Harry Daugherty, fought off a couple of impeachment attempts.  Probably the worst of his appointments was Secretary of the Interior Albert Falls, who accepted bribes in regards to oil rights in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and eventually went to prison.  And most scholars agree that Harding had extramarital affairs with four women, two of them close friends with his wife, Florence.

[So what else is new?]

Existentially speaking, Alan Slater isn’t exactly moving mountains. At age 32, he’s a home windows salesman who drinks too much, smokes too much, and has such an anger management problem that he’s stooped to using a self-help method of counting dolphins to try and keep his head together during his many flare-ups. His boss seems to get a kick out of sending him on false sales leads, and while his 21-year old girlfriend is sexy and smart, their relationship brings him as much aggravation as it does satisfaction.

All of that notwithstanding, if it wasn’t for Slater’s friendship with his co-worker Les Beale, he would be just another regular bloke plodding his way along. If Slater’s a guy whose self-actualization process could use an overhaul, Beale is just a flat-out loser. But he’s worse than that, because he’s also dangerous. Beale abuses substances and he also abuses people. He’s a bully, a user, a boor, a racist, a gambling addict, and he’s the worst kind of ne’er-do-well: the kind who always thinks he’s just on the verge of hitting his big stroke of good fortune. Slater’s relationship with his girlfriend might be troubled, but at least he has a girl; Beale’s wife, fed up with his ways, left him some time ago, and took their daughter along with her. Beale’s the kind of shit that, when he goes down he has no qualms about taking others with him. Beale is Slater’s albatross. But he’s also Slater’s only friend.

As Slater, the narrator of the novel under discussion here—Ray Banks’s The Big Blind—describes his troublesome pal in an early part of the tale:

Beale’s a man that most people have trouble spending an hour with, me included. This is why I drink so much.

[With friends like this...]

We love a good villain. Villains with complex characters, mysterious motivations, and great resourcefulness are the best. The hero needs to be challenged, right? The better the villain, the greater the hero’s triumph will be at the end. (Going by movies such as Thor and The Avengers, Loki hits pretty high on the villain scale. This is a character that challenged not only one hero, but an entire group. Even Holmes had his Moriarty, a villain so great that they both went over Reichenbach Falls.)

When villains are emotionally sympathetic, we even like to cheer for them at least a little bit; however, appreciating them as characters is not the same thing as wanting them to win entirely. When it comes to criminal stories, we can’t allow the villain to truly win. It’s not in our nature. By the end of the book, movie, or episode we want, even demand the resolution that allows the villain to be brought to justice. In those rare instances where the villain gets away, it is only because at some later date the villain will return and have to face justice then.

But what if that’s not the case? Rereading the story of Jason and Medea got me thinking about how she got away in the end. She murdered her children, Jason’s fiancée Glauce, and Glauce’s father Creon, and then set fire to a city before disappearing completely. She got away. She never faced justice.

Okay, some may say that what she did actually balanced justice. Jason betrayed her, first, and she responded as was befitting (I won’t debate whether acts of murder and arson are equal to casting Medea aside.)

What about a villain who was not wronged first? Shakespeare’s play Othello has a lot in common with Medea's story, especially concerning the villain Iago.

[Some bad just goes bone-deep...]

Chewing like this guy, you'll always notice the difference, not to mention avoiding a holiday Heimlich marathon.

Knitting artist and rescue enthusiast Katie Bradley of Vancouver, Washington has made over 800 delightful tortoise cozies, such as the helpful reminder above.

On this Thanksgiving, all of us at Crime HQ are grateful for you, even if you are prone to the most sinister thoughts.

H/T: Telegraph.

I think Altman's rendition of The Long Goodbye gets a bad rap.

Fans of Raymond Chandler's poetic novels and Bogart's iconic portrayal find Elliot Gould as a smart-ass, sleepy “Rip Van Marlowe” too much of a change in character. Gould's Marlowe is a man who fell asleep in the '40s and woke up to the hedonistic, nihilistic '70s.

I like Robert Altman's films, especially his experiments with genre such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which goes beyond even revisionist Western, or his classic M*A*S*H, the war movie that's not a war movie. His famous ensemble pieces such as Nashville leave me a bit uninterested, though the excellent Short Cuts, built on a framework of Raymond Carver's touching and painful stories, works especially well. In The Long Goodbye, he plays with point of view; the shots and cinematography are all based on not what Marlowe sees, but how he sees it. He's always outside a window peering in, the vision distorted by the glass. They famously exposed the film to light to dull all the colors in the first two acts, so it feels as if Marlowe has awakened from a long sleep, and his perception is fuzzy until the mystery becomes clear, and  he sees what must be done.

Gould is sort of a post-hippie P.I., whose favorite line is “it's alright with me,” and it's a surprise that Cole Porter's song of the same name isn't in the soundtrack. There is only one song repeated in many variations throughout, “The Long Goodbye,” by John Williams and Johnny Mercer. At first a Tom Waits-like gravelly voice sings it, then a woman, and the motif is even repeated by a Mariachi band when they head to Mexico. The bookends are “Hooray for Hollywood,” for a bitter dash of irony.

When we meet Marlowe, he is trying to get his cat to eat cottage cheese so he doesn't have to buy cat food; he relents, heads out, and slowly gets embroiled in the story.

[And people say there are no cats in neo-noir...]

Using a valid U.S. address (and for a small fee), Died in House instantly searches millions of records to determine if a death has occurred at that location, and if so, will try to retrieve who, when, what caused it, not to mention the “vitality status” of previous residents. From co-founder Roy Condrey's Lapham's Quarterly interview with Bess Lovejoy:

Most people could be comfortable with a peaceful death, I think, but not a suicide. Some people don’t want any deaths in the place where they live. Everyone has their own opinion about this stuff. The real estate industry says that death is not a material fact, like a water leak or an aged roof. But you can fix a leak or a roof, you can never remove a death. You can never remove the fact that John Wayne Gacy murdering and then burying twenty-six young men in his crawl space, or Ronnie DeFeo murdering six family members in the Amityville house. These homes hold the stigma and in time become the haunted houses that we are all familiar with. I think deaths in the home should be disclosed...

A death in a home, especially a violent one, can depreciate a property’s value up to 25% and take 50% longer to sell than a comparable home.

Would you want to know?

We're giving thanks for the opportunity to do a Sweeeeeepstakes of six great e-books!

Click here to enter for a chance to win!

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[Read More about all the titles...]

The Missing Dough by Chris Cavender is the sixth installment of the Pizza Lovers Mystery series featuring Eleanor Swift, who faces the skewering of a former brother-in-law during the Founders Day Festival (available November 26, 2013).

Eleanor Swift is expecting a normal day at her pizzeria, A Slice of Delight. She goes in, makes dough, preps her station, and hangs out with her sister, Maddy. Ten minutes after opening, however, her ex-brother-in-law come barging in the door to harass Maddy, begging her to give him a second chance.

Seeing as how Grant was a cheating, stealing, drinking thug, and seeing as how she’s already seeing another guy, Maddy resists his current crazy charms. Eleanor and Maddy escort Grant out of the pizzeria with the business end of a baseball bat. However, that’s not the last the ladies see of Grant that day. Later, Eleanor and Maddy are enjoying the Founders Day Festival with their significant others when Grant comes at them again. Bob, Maddy’s new man, goes after Grant, but is held back by his friends.

So, later that night, it’s not a crazy supposition for Police Chief Hurley to suspect Bob when Grant is murdered—killed by a barbecue skewer to the heart.

[For most ex-brothers-in-law, that fate remains fantasy only.]