Gold In Them Thar Used Book Stores

[Cormac Brown]

What I love about a good used book store is the undiscovered treasure that I always seem to discover. New stores obviously do not have the shelf space or the desire to carry something that is more than two years old and that wasn't a best seller during its time.

My last two forays to Green Apple Books have yielded these finds:

San Francisco Thrillers was interesting from a hometown point of view. Two of the stories were the 19th Century equivalent of "the trial of the century." These are true crime stories that surpassed the trials of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Scott Peterson, and O.J. in their then local notoriety and gravitas. If there was Court TV back then, you would've never heard the end of the cases (though modern forensics would've proved them guilty rather quickly).

There is also Dashiell Hammet's "Fly Paper" and an excerpt of the shooting script of "Vertigo," which is interesting how much direction is on paper. You just won't see that many paragraphs or descriptions in a modern shooting script. There is also the "origin" of Jim Thompson's "Ironsides" that is not quite the Raymond Burr role that we are used to.

There are also ghost stories by Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain, though this book is more for the hardcore San Franciscan or true crime fans.

The Best American Crime Writing 2005 is some of the best crime-related articles from 2004, from The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Magazine, and other publications. There are some terrific insights into motivations and methods of criminals, the law and people just trying to keep their heads above water.

Unfortunately I didn't catch all of the episodes of "Fallen Angels" when it came out. Fortunately, I now have the book. Dig it, stories by Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, Cornell Woolrich, James Ellroy, and two cats I've never heard of...I mean, Johnathan Craig and William Campbell Gault.

Not only that, they have the corresponding teleplays segueing each story. A wonderful contrast and you each teleplay takes a different turn from the original story.