GREAT WRITERS
Obscure books
Sometimes you choose a novel on a hunch. Riding the bike trails in Fort Collins I pass little neighborhood libraries. Free standing cabinets, no more than two feet tall, two shelves, offering whatever people donate. I always take a book to leave behind and often take a book. That’s how I discovered Conn Iggulden, the great historical writer whose six book novelization of the life of Genghis Khan captivated me for two years. I’ve talked about Iggulden before. This is about three relatively unknown writers whose work remains in my brain decades after reading.
“Greg Matthews was born in Australia in 1949 and settled permanently in the United States in 1983. He now lives in Loveland, Colorado.” Holy shit! I just learned this right now! That’s next door! He published Heart of the Country, a massive historical novel in 1986. It was grim. Like Cormac McCarthy. I couldn’t put it down his descriptions were vivid and unforgettable. His Power In the Blood came out in 1993.
In 1869, the Dugan siblings board an orphan train in upstate New York. Adopted by different families at separate stops along the train's westward journey, Clay, Zoe, and Drew vow to find one another as soon as they can, but tragic circumstances conspire against them.
Clay avenges the brutal murder of his foster parents and becomes one of the most feared bounty hunters in the West. Raped by her new father, Zoe gives birth to a daughter whose vivid blue birthmark portends the gift of second sight. And Drew, abandoned in the desert by a religious fanatic, is rescued by renegade Apache brothers and falls in with a crowd of murderers, prostitutes, and bank robbers.
When fate finally reunites the siblings, Zoe enlists Clay and Drew in a plot against a ruthless Colorado gold magnate bent on stealing her fortune. Decades spent practicing the art of survival have taught the Dugans that the odds are always stacked against them but if they stopped to consider the odds, they would have been dead long ago.
Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as a "great page-turning, stay-up-late-into-the-night-saga" and ideal for fans of Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy, Power in the Blood takes readers on an epic journey into the dark heart of the American frontier.
Marcel Montecino burst on literature with The Cross Killer. While struggling to deal with a failing marriage, an arrogant son-in-law, and an undedicated partner, Los Angeles detective Jack Gold tries to track down a racist serial killer who is terrorizing the entire city.
Montecino’s second novel, Big Time, dealt with the cutthroat music business.
Small-time New Orleans crooner Sal D'Amore runs into big-time trouble when his gambling addiction puts him in debt--$180,000--to the Mafia. Lazy and dumb, yet pursued by nearly every woman he meets, Sal hopscotches across the globe with the dreaded Venezia crime family in tow. After a variety of minor jobs and close calls he hooks up with a young Brazilian singer, and together they rise to the top of the pop music scene. Having progressively developed the survival skills and elementary cunning needed for a life on the run, Sal proves more than a match for the vicious Venezias in the inevitable confrontation. Montecino, author of The Crosskiller (Arbor House, 1988), relates this lavishly caricatured thriller with superb style and control. Sex, violence, music, and egos are all on a larger-than-life scale, yet are never rendered absurd. As good as they come, but not for the faint-hearted.
Details of Montecino’s life are meager. Marcel Montecino did in fact pass away in 1998. He was my cousin and grew up in New Orleans. Much of what is written in “Big Time” can be related to real life situations and experiences - which is true in all three of his books. For instance he attended “Sacred Heart School”, his father in real life was a cabbie, his real mother died during child birth, etc.
It saddens me that I did not have an opportunity to see him in the years prior to his death - He was a great talent in so many ways.
Henry Morton Stanley is arguably the greatest explorder who ever lived. Sent by the New York Tribune to locate a missing British missionary, Stanleyfound him after a year’s search. His first words to the missionary were, “Dr. Livingstone I presume.”
His greatest feat was locating the headwaters of the Congo and following them for 999 days to the mouth in the Atlantic. It took three years.
One more adventure awaited. Going up the Congo to save a doomed Egyptian pasha from annihilation by the forces of Islam. The great explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, finder of Livingston, returns once more to the dark continent of Africa. It is 1887 and Stanley is determined to rescue Emin Pasha, leader of the last organized Egyptian force left in the Sudan, before he too, like Gordon at Khartoum, falls into the hands of the hellish dervishes. Forbath gives us a magnificent Stanley, egotistical and autocratic but blessed with an iron resolution, who will not let anything or anyone deter him. Equally glorious is Africa itself, awesome in its beauty, admirable even as it offers danger after danger to Stanley's men. Forbath has taken an intriguing piece of history and fashioned an epic adventure. Highly recommended.
