"Murdaland" is an old nickname for Maryland, especially Baltimore, which you'd know if you watched HBO's crime drama, "The Wire." I don't watch, so the nickname kind of surprised me (almost as much as when I overheard a restaurant patron here refer to people from Baltimore as "Baltimorons." I thought it was an insult, but apparently Baltimorons like the name. Go figure :)).
Maryland crime writer George Pelecanos, when asked which novel had been “most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years," named dad's book, Hard Rain Falling. On the blog The Rap Sheet, Pelecanos wrote:
Hard Rain Falling (1966), by Don Carpenter. “A stunning, brutally honest entry in the social realist school of crime fiction. Carpenter’s first novel, out of print but easily found, is on par with Edward Bunker’s Little Boy Blue in its shocking depiction of juvenile delinquency and the human cost of incarceration. The best book I read this year, hands down.”
Nice. This little blurb led some folks to a re-examination of the novel, and I got a nice letter today from (what else?) Murdaland magazine, asking if they could excerpt a piece from the book to print in an upcoming issue. They asked so nicely and so flatteringly that I could hardly refuse. This is actually one of the pleasures of being literary executor, when a small press publication asks to revisit dad's work. It's a format that I think dad would have loved...small indy press, hip, gritty, and possibly doomed to failure (but let's hope not!). It's an odd coincidence, I'm sure, that Marylanders and Baltimorons like dad's work, and here I am in Murdaland. Small world :)
They only publish two issues a year, and I'm not sure when dad's piece will appear, but I'll keep you all posted.
Hope everyone is well, and I'll be out on June 9th to see you all.
Bonnie
