The Strange Case of Charles Guiteau

Recently, I read Candice Millard's Destiny of the Republic, the long, strange tale of how James Garfield, who reluctantly went to the 1880 Republican National Convention, gave a speech, and accidentally got himself nominated for president. Meanwhile, a professional deadbeat named Charles Guiteau ingratiated himself with the Republican Party in New York in an effort to secure himself a consul position, "preferably Paris." Garfield won the election. Guiteau, believing it was all his doing, kept showing up at the White House for his reward. After all, he believed he had secured the White House for Garfield. Nobody from Garfield rival Samuel Conkling to Secretary of State James G. Blaine to Vice President Chester Arthur seemed to recall that happening.  

Guiteau was a strange man in a very strange time. Republicans were fractured three ways between Secretary of State John Sherman (younger brother of war hero General William Sherman), James G. Blaine, and former president Ulysses Grant. Sherman turned to Ohio Congressman James Garfield to make his nomination speech. And had Sherman not asked him, he'd have stayed home on his farm in Mentor, Ohio. By the time it was over, he clinched the nomination despite pleading with the convention not to do this. 

Charles Guiteau

Meanwhile, Charles Giteau made plans. He wanted the consul position in Paris. After all, it was his speech that got Garfield elected. (In reality, twisting Roscoe Conkling's arm got Garfield elected. That was more Blaine and John Sherman than anything else.) Once Garfield was ensconced in the White House, all Guiteau had to do was show up at the White House to collect the spoils.

Only...

Until McKinley was assassinated, presidents did not have Secret Service protection. And the White House was not as locked down as it is now. Ulysses Grant often sat in a hotel lobby for some quiet time. Once, while walking back to the White House, a pedestrian fell in step with him and struck up a conversation. The stranger mentioned he did not think much of President Grant. Grant agreed and said he never that much of him, either. This was the world in which Garfield became president. On the downside of this, anyone could drop by the White House and ask to see the president. Guiteau felt this would get him the office he sought.

Only Garfield implemented some controls over the system, limiting hours and having his personal secretary act as gatekeeper. Frustrated, Guiteau felt God's will was being thwarted. Then it occurred to him that maybe God wanted him to kill the president.

So he found himself at a train station as Garfield prepared to leave town, briefing Blaine and War Secretary Robert Todd Lincoln as he made his way toward the train. Giteau shot him in the back.

Here's where Guiteau differs from other presidential assassins and would-be presidential assassins John Wilkes Booth clearly killed Lincoln. Leon Czolgosz put a gun in McKinley's belly. Conspiracy theories aside, Oswald sat in that book depository. And John Hinkley? He'd just like to forget shooting Reagan. But if any of them denied shooting the president, they would say they it was someone else. Guiteau? He said he didn't kill Garfield. His doctors did. He was right, but he pulled the trigger. However, if Reagan had been shot in 1881, he'd have been a goner. The technology needed to save him was either too new or not invented yet. Garfield in 1981 would have been back to work in a couple of days. Not the least reason that doctors in the 1980s took germ theory as a given. The problem was Dr. DW Bliss appointed himself Garfield's doctor and rolled over other physicians, one because he was Black (despite having a far better reputation and track record) and another because she was a woman. Bliss insisted on sticking his finger in Garfield's wound, compounding the infection. Garfield did not die of a bullet wound. He died of sepsis. (I've had sepsis. Not fun.)

So no, James Garfield need not have died for Charles Giteau's sins. One quack doctor the a massive ego and an inability to try anything new (He even flubbed Alexander Graham Bell's new metal detector by limiting him to the wrong side of the body.) killed the president. Bliss's reputation and practice never recovered. Flash forward 20 years. William McKinley might have lived, but the technology was bleeding edge. Would the X-Ray machine hurt him? (Having had several, I can say no from personal experience) How would electric lights interact with the ether of the operating theater? So things we now take for granted had too many question marks. Harding would die of natural causes. Kennedy would die by a Marine marksman's bullet (all conspiracy theories aside.) Reagan benefitted from modern medicine and a near hermetic bubble presidents have traveled in since JFK died. And the shooters? Booth actually had a plan going in, and more importantly, a day job. He was the only "smart assassin" among presidential killers, and I include John Hinkley's failed attempt. On any other day, Charles Giteau, Leon Csolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald, and John Hinkley would be hitting you up for change on a street corner. They just blundered through the net. 

And Booth might have been tactically smart, planning a decapitation strike on the government at a time when security was a polite suggestion. From a strategic point of view, he managed to commit treason against both the United States and the Confederacy before getting shot in Mudd's barn. Good job, Johnny. How'd that work out for you? Oh. Right. The Army shot him when they found him. His co-conspirators were hung, and Andrew Johnson flailed his way through four years, becoming the first president to get impeached. How'd that help the South again, since they'd already lost the war? 

 

Ripped From the Headlines of Science Digests!

Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a Venatrix.  (And the rest of you, get your minds out of the gutter!)

The newly analyzed drawing, on a third-century mosaic, shows a huntress fighting a leopard with a whip, i.e., a venatrix.

In the Roman Empire, beast hunters put on shows in arenas, where they would battle wild animals, such as boars and bears. Unlike gladiators, they fought beasts rather than people. Like the female gladiators, it seems female beast hunters would "always fight topless, with bare breasts, because [otherwise] spectators from the stands would have had problems to notice that they were actually women, and [to] arouse an erotic effect on those spectators, to excite them sexually, was one of the aims sought by their performance."   (LINK)  

BTW, Romans approved of gladiators and beast hunters because the games reinforced essential cultural values: "martial courage, stoicism in the face of death, and the superiority of Roman power."  And the people loved it because it was exciting, stimulating, exciting... and they got fed for free, thanks to aristocrats and rich folks who were always jostling for popularity.  

Bad news for the permanent space stations:

Turns out that sperm cells, egg and embryos all like gravity. "This human, mouse and pig study, published Thursday (March 26) in the journal Communications Biology, revealed that sperm became disoriented, mouse eggs had fewer successful fertilizations, and pig embryos experienced developmental delays, all due to microgravity.

The findings have big implications for building a lasting human presence off Earth. The long-term settlements planned for the moon and Mars depend not just on keeping astronauts alive but on whether people can eventually reproduce there."  (LINK)

And another shock in the world of biological reproduction:

So if you can't produce your own offspring, clone them!  EXCEPT:

"You can't clone yourself forever, 

You can't make yourself all the time.

At some point you mutate, 

Especially vertebrates,

You can't make yourself 59 times."  

Seriously, the limit is 58 successive clones.

Michael Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, who was not involved in the study: “In any kind of animal breeding, once you have the optimal genome, the best way to keep it is by cloning — except for this mutation problem.”  

Cats Can't Taste Sugar - this doesn't mean that your cats will never go after your chocolate, or knock it down onto the floor. It just means they can't taste it.  

The weird part (to me) of the study of taste in animals is that “The super-tasters among the animal world are goldfish,” says Finger. “Goldfish and catfish have way more taste buds than anybody else.” They have poor vision, and their taste buds, including those on their whiskers, could help them sense their way to a meal in murky water, he adds. (LINK)

Goldfish?  Goldfish?  So now I'm pitying all the goldfish swimming in their bowls, getting the same damn fish food day after freaking day... I'm amazed they don't leap out of their bowls and go for the hand that feeds them.

Little Mysteries From Science: WARNING:  Solutions have not yet been found for all.


Why are humans the only species with a chin? (LINK)


Why can't you tickle yourself? (LINK)


What's the deal with blushing?

Charles Darwin described blushing blushing as "... the most peculiar and most human of all expressions."

“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” Mark Twain

"Blushing may be a part of the automatic arousal you feel when you are exposed and there is something that is relevant to the self," lead study author Milica Nikolic said. (LINK)

Why do animals have different pupil shapes? (LINK)

The Ig Nobels are moving to Europe! 😭😭😭

Winners have for the past 35 years traveled to the United States to collect their prizes — and be showered with paper airplanes. Last year, winners included a team of researchers from Japan studying whether painting cows with zebralike stripes would prevent flies from biting them. Another group from Africa and Europe pondered the types of pizza that lizards preferred to eat.

The year’s winners, honored in 10 categories, also include a group from Europe that found drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak a foreign language (as well as Pure Gibberish) and a researcher who studied fingernail growth for decades.

But four of the 10 winners last year chose not to travel to Boston for the ceremony. In previous years, the ceremony has taken place at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University.

And so... off to Zurich it goes! (LINK)

Ig Nobels, we barely knew thee...

LIPS!

Back on March 9, I participated in my own scientific medical experiment regarding the swelling of lips, specifically my bottom lip.  Here's the deal: during an examination my ENT physician found a papilloma in the back of my throat.  Did a biopsy.  Squamous tissue, i.e., we've got to take it out because it might become cancerous if we don't.  So, on March 9 they did, having wisely given me total anesthesia (I have a kick like a mule), using a (portable) laser.  

Anyway, all went well, I came home that night feeling like a zombie, and the next morning I got up, looked at my face, and said, "What the hell...?"  Now in order to get the laser down where it needed to be, they had to hold my bottom lip down with something (I really don't want to know with what), and this was the result:  Basically, I got a not-so-free non-filler Mar-A-Lago filler job on my bottom lip.  

It lasted for about a week.  During this time I reached the strictly scientific conclusion that anyone who has this done on purpose is certifiably insane.  For one thing, it turned meal-times into an adventure, because the lip simply would not behave itself.  It was just there, and not happy about being used, because it hurt.  And since I wasn't 6 months old anymore, I no longer enjoyed the feeling of food spilling down my face.  Also, it completely blew up the trope that the hero (or in my case, heroine) can get in a fist fight (or a surgery) and then have deep  passionate kisses afterwards.  I certainly couldn't:  it hurt.  

I'm back to normal, and I am happy to announce all was benign.  And that I will never pursue the Mar-A-Lago look on a permanent basis.  I'd rather be a female gladiator any day.

Bright Bay Babbles

Last time I promised (or threatened, if you prefer) to provide my favorite quotations from Left Coast Crime, held in February in San Francisco.  With no further ado...

"Sometimes I think I write books in order to research." Connie Berry

"You cannot know a city until you know it from the sidewalk up." - Rochelle Staab

"A short story is like a quick jab to the nose." - Vera Chan

"All good plans go to hell, don't they?" - Lori Rader Day

"Scottish marriage counseling: He'll do. Shut up." - Catriona McPherson

"The last ten pages of all my books I wrote the day they were due." - Wendall Thomas

"My second biggest fear is that I might spill food on myself, because I always thought in case of a famine I could boil my clothes." - Sara Paretsky

"My low expectations have been fulfilled." - Paul Levine

"This is book eight in a trilogy." - Catriona McPherson

"When I'm bored with a character I murder them." - Gordon Jack

"I'm a historical crime novelist and I also write historical crime novels." SJ Rozan

"It's very satisfying to sit at a passive-aggressive meeting and think 'I could take you down.'" - Vera Chan 

"My character's name is Joy because she's utterly joyless." - Susan Sherman

"In revision you take out everything that isn't the book." - Hank Phillippi Ryan

"A short story is finished when you cash the check." - Michael Bracken

"My finishing school was a waste of money."  - Catriona McPherson

"I thought [Saul] Bellow's writing would have been better if he ever had a real job and didn't have women supporting him all his life." - Sara Paretsky

"If you have a resolution it's commercial. If you don't it's literary." - Vera Chan

"I was amazed at how similar the social dynamics are between retirement homes and high school."  Gordon Jack

"Taxidermy is always funny." - Catriona McPherson

"You should imagine sending your story to the editor one sentence at a time." - Tom Andes

"Since I'm last I'm told I can talk as long as I want, right? Chapter One..." - Jennifer van der Kleut

"The smart money is always on Goliath." - C.R. Foster

Oh, and chag Pesach sameach to those who celebrate. 

Some Great New Books

Books. Books. Books.

I read a lot. Last year, for instance, I finished more than 200 published books (and many short stories and unpublished novels and short story manuscripts). One thing I enjoy as much as reading is telling people about books I love. And since today, March 31, is the last day of the first quarter of 2026, this seems a good time to talk about my favorite mystery/crime books published in the last three months. 

 

 Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line

Elle Cosimano's wonderfully funny and fresh Finlay Donovan series is back with its sixth book, Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line. I think it's the best one since we were first introduced to Finlay and her nanny/best friend/unintentional partner in crime, Vero (short for Veronica), in Finlay Donovan is Killing It. The series begins with Finlay--a romantic-suspense author and single mom juggling two small kids, an annoying ex-husband, money problems, and a book deadline--being mistaken for a hit woman. 

Each book is madcap and fun, this newest one especially. It has Finlay, Vero, and friends trying to clear Vero of charges that she stole a lot of money that her old college sorority raised from illegal poker games. The story is engaging, with tons of twists, strong characters, a great voice, and clever, interesting writing. I laughed out loud often. If you haven't checked out this series yet, don't wait. The first novel is being adapted by Tina Fey for a TV series on Peacock. Take my advice: read the books first. While you could start with the sixth book, you'll get much more enjoyment by reading them in order. 

 The Bookbinder's Secret 

There are a bunch of books with this title. I am talking about the one written by A. D. Bell. This is a debut novel, but it doesn't read like one. It is set in England at the start of the twentieth century. The main character, Lily, is an accomplished bookbinder (she is technically an apprentice but it is in name only). While repairing a book, she finds an old letter hidden in the binding, and it leads her to a dangerous mystery that she is compelled to investigate. 

This novel has wonderful characters, a well-drawn setting, and an intriguing story. The voice is melodious, and the writing is strong. Plus you get an inside look at bookbinding. What reader wouldn't like that? I did have a quibble: Lily didn't quickly figure something out that seemed obvious to me. But a book needn't be perfect to be recommended, and I definitely recommend this one.

  

Murder Will Out

This is another debut, and I have to thank Kristopher Zgorski for talking about it recently and thus bringing it to my attention. Jennifer K. Breedlove's Gothic-ish novel, set on an island off the coast of Maine, won the Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel Award last year, and I see why. 

The story opens with Willow returning to the island where she spent summers as a child. She has come back to attend the funeral of her beloved yet long-estranged godmother, Sue. It turns out that Sue recently inherited a mansion (a haunted mansion--but it's not scary-haunted), and her death--occurring the day before she was supposed to get married--looks awfully suspicious to Willow. With the help of new friends, including a resourceful librarian and a smart, brave, charming corgi, Willow is determined to find out what happened. 

This book has strong writing and an engrossing, complex story. The author makes great use of the setting, especially the house and the ghosts. I appreciate how the main character grows by the end and finds her place in the world. And of course I love the dog. I did find the large cast of characters a little hard to follow at times. And I have a problem with a legal issue affecting the plot that the author (and her editor) overlooked. It could have been resolved with an additional sentence or two. Nonetheless, this is a book I enjoyed and recommend.

A Field Guide to Murder

The final book I'm recommending is also a debut. Written by Michelle L. Cullen, A Field Guide to Murder has two main characters, Harry--a sixtysomething anthropologist who's no longer traveling the world thanks to his broken hip--and Emma, his twentysomething nurse. When one of Harry's neighbors calls him begging for help right before she dies (murdered, of course), no broken hip is going to keep him from finding out whodunit. And Emma, dissatisfied with her life, is happy to help him. 

I enjoyed how both characters grow throughout the book. And I loved watching them learn to lean on each other as they investigate, developing a sweet father/daughter type relationship. The book has a slow start and a lot of characters, but once I got into it, I was invested in the mystery and especially in Harry and Emma. The writing was good and, at times, funny. A solid debut. 

 

Overall, all four of these books are recommended. As I said, the Finlay Donovan series is up to book six, and the other three books are the first in their series. I'm looking forward to the next book from all of these authors. I hope they are released sooner than later.

Before I go, I don't usually mention here the release of books I edited. But today happens to be the publication date of Let Nothing Astonish You by Lauren Opper. This intricate whodunit is set in part in a Gothic mansion in small-town Connecticut. It is Opper's first novel, and it comes with a blurb from none other than Meg Gardiner: "A lively mystery rich with atmosphere, a vivid cast of suspects, and some delicious twists. Enjoy!" I couldn't say it better myself. 

Happy book birthday, Lauren! May your writing career be long and bright.

 

 

 

 

 

My Novel Picks for the Edgars

The Edgars, awarded annually by Mystery Writers of America, are mystery and crime writing's Oscars. As Best Picture is the Holy Grail of the Oscars, so Best Novel is the Holy Grail of the Edgars. Over time, MWA has chipped away at the main fiction category with separate awards for Best First Novel by An American Author and Best Paperback/E-Book Original as well as not-quite-Edgars. These include the Sue Grafton Award for a novel with a "strong, independent woman who is a professional investigator" as protagonist; the Mary Higgins Clark Award for a novel with "nice young woman whose life is suddenly invaded" as protagonist; and the Lilian Jackson Braun Award, for a "contemporary cozy mystery" that must be "light in tone, often humorous. While the book may reference serious themes or subject matter, it does so in a non-heavy-handed manner." This leaves Best Novel to some extent to literary crime or crime-adjacent fiction and what I still can't help thinking of as "boy books."

I'm a longtime member of DorothyL, a venerable online mystery lovers group of eclectic readers, including many writers and other crime and mystery professionals. In recent years, many of them have never heard of most of the Edgar nominees. This year, in a field of three men and four women contenders for Best Novel, we all knew veteran bestsellers Robert Crais and Scott Turow. Collectively, we considered their current books up to standard but not outstanding. Our first and second place 2025 Favorites votes went to Sally Smith, Of Mice and Murder, whose protagonist is a barrister in the Inner Temple in 1901; and Allison Montclair, An Excellent Thing In A Woman. The sleuths in this brilliant series, which always makes DorothyL's top ten list but has never been nominated for an Edgar, are a pair of formidable and delightful women running a marriage bureau in post-World War II London.

It seemed only fair to check out the Edgar nominees. My rule is to read on only if I'm enjoying what I'm reading. If the story doesn't grab me or the voice fails to appeal, that's it. No dutiful turning of pages because a book's been praised or because it's literature. So I'm not saying that my picks for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Paperback Original are the books I think will win the Edgars on April 29. They're the three nominated books, one in each of these categories, that I read with enjoyment and appreciation.

Best Novel: Allison Epstein, Fagin the Thief
In this brilliant and compassionate twist on a Dickens classic, Epstein blows away the thick fog of anti-Semitism that allowed Dickens to describe Fagin the master pickpocket merely as a Jew for his readers to supply the stereotypes—small, contemptible, avaricious, heartless—and need to know nothing more about him to despise him and wish him a bad end. Instead, Epstein gives us Jacob Fagin, Jewish survivor, profoundly alone and not without heart.

Jacob loves three people in his life. His mother Leah nurtures him, reads to him, and believes in him. When Leah dies, Jacob blames God, turns his back on the Jewish community, strips himself of faith, vowing never to love again. Then he takes in a thirteen-year-old boy with nowhere to go, Bill Sikes, and teaches him the trade of thieving. He's played Pygmalion before, but this time he creates, not a Galatea, but a Frankenstein monster: a giant filled with rage and incapable of controlling his impulses. Enter Nancy Reed—again, it's Epstein who gives her the dignity of two names—a pickpocket as skilled as Fagin himself. When they work a crowd together, they're like partners in a dance. Nancy has charisma. She has only to enter a tavern to light up the room. When she stands on the table and sings, hardened criminals and down at heel old soldiers and sailors sing along. For Fagin, it's not a romantic love, but she is precious to him.

Epstein picks the right moment to challenge anti-Semitism, which is raising its ugly head again all over the world. She also takes on our current stereotypes of exploitation of child labor and domestic violence. Of course these abuses are genuine and widespread in the real world. But what goes on in Fagin's world is more nuanced. Fagin's school for thieves consists of children as young as six whom no one else wants. They come to him cold and starving. He gives them shelter, food, clothing, and a sense of family. He also teaches them a trade that will allow them to eat from day to day, which is the reason he picks pockets himself and always has been. He is a good teacher. He makes sure they excel because he wants them to survive.

Bill Sikes and Nancy Reed fall in love at first sight—both of them. It has the quality of a great love story, even a love triangle. Jacob, with his love-hate relationship with jealous, dangerous Bill and his concern for Nancy's safety, is the third. For more, you'll have read the book. It's beautifully written, well researched, and a satisfying story.

Best First Novel by An American Author: Zoe B. Wallbrook, History Lessons
Wallbrook gives us a Black feminist perspective on academe red in tooth and claw in a savvy, distinctive, and often hilarious voice and a clever mystery that keeps the surprises coming.

Newly hired assistant history professor Daphne Ouverture, "a Bambi in the eyes of her colleagues," has to deal with all the usual tenure battles, shredding of reputations, sexual shenanigans, and plagiarized student papers in the age of AI, along with the traditional sexism and racism that clings like ivy to the older tenured white male professors. The rich intellectual and cultural context of Daphne's life makes this book far more than just another academic mystery.

   Daphne, Sadie, and Elise became best friends after finding one another at some university-sponsored mixer for faculty of color last term. Daphne thought she had been making do just fine with her white colleagues—until Elise and Sadie barged into her life. ...The conversation took off the moment Daphne and Elise realized they'd been raised by tough, immigrant mothers. At some point when swapping strategies for surviving varying punishment methods, a tall Brown Amazonian goddess..had leaned across the bar and asked if she could compare notes. By the third margarita, they were screaming with laughter about the merits of surviving middle school with a mother who refused to pack sandwiches like the white moms. By one in the morning, the trio was dancing to Lil Wayne at a bar downtown and making plans to meet for brunch the next day.
   Brunch lasted approximately ten minutes. ...They'd napped away the rest of the day in Sadie's living room like toddlers at preschool until their hunger woke them up. ...Something had clicked for Daphne that day—an actual physical feeling of her brain making sense of herself. Sadie and Elise had gifted her with the greatest freedom through their friendship. The freedom to be her most honest, messiest self.

Daphne tells Elise about a disastrous first date.

     "Did he like your story about Belgium, at least?" Elise asked.

     "You mean how nineteenth-century Belgian colonial administrators in the Congo dismembered indigenous Africans for the purpose of scaring local villagers into creating profit for their newly emerging rubber industry?...No, Elise, it turns out that explaining the evils of late-nineteenth-century European imperialism on a first date isn't exactly a seductive move."

The mystery itself is the murder of Sam Taylor, the university's most popular professor, a rising star whom everybody loved—or did they? a man who could do no wrong—or had he? Daphne finds herself increasingly embroiled in the investigation, which is somehow connected to her. This complicates her growing interest in Rowan, a former cop turned bookseller, who works with the police. She can't walk away, because for some reason, Sam's death has earned her enemies who threaten her career and perhaps her life.

Best Paperback Original: Abbi Waxman, One Death At A Time
I'm not usually a fan of Hollywood or LA novels, but the sleuthing duo in this one won me over: Natasha Mason, age twenty-five, three years sober, recovering from alcohol, drugs, and intrusive psychiatrist parents in Berkeley; and Julia Mann, age sixtysomething, fading Hollywood star: formerly famous, still glamorous, served her time for murdering one husband and can't remember if she killed the one who's been found floating dead in her swimming pool, because she was in an alcoholic blackout at the time. Mason volunteers to be Julia's interim AA sponsor and finds herself cast as personal assistant, dogsbody, chauffeur, and unlicensed PI charged with detecting the real killer, preferably before Julia is convicted of the murder.

I'm a pushover for funny books about recovery from alcoholism and addictions, and this one is both on target about what it's like and very funny indeed. The wisecracking narrative voice elicits not only laughter but compassion for both protagonists, who start out bristling with antagonism toward each other and slowly form an unlikely alliance that works for both of them and satisfies the reader. The mystery is convoluted and takes in the machinations of the varied participants in the complicated business of making movies.

Hardy Like a Fox at a Crime Scene

This month, some musings on recent reads/listens, followed by a piece of news I find pretty exciting.

THEY CERTAINLY ARE HARDY, THOSE BOYS

I like to listen to audiobooks on my daily walks, and often I choose to listen to favorite books from my childhood. The sense of nostalgia is a welcome break from the daily grind, and it's always fun seeing exactly how much I remember. I've listened to all fourteen of L. Frank Baum's Oz novels, Treasure Island, The Swiss Family Robinson, The Westing Game, Pippi Longstocking, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Once and Future King, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wind in the Willows, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Lord of the Rings (in a new reading by Andy Serkis so good I've listened to the whole thing twice).

Last month I listened to a package of four of the early entries in the Hardy Boys series by "Franklin W. Dixon." I'm sure I'm not the only crime writer whose first introduction to the genre was these books (or Nancy Drew--but I'm old enough that, in my youth, boys reading Nancy Drew simply Wasn't Done). I had, if memory serves, a set of the first seventy or eighty novels, in their distinctive blue-spined hardbacks with the painted covers. Encyclopedia Brown probably came along at about the same time, and then The Three Investigators (much better books, as I recall) and the McGurk Mysteries (which nobody but me seems to remember). Then came Sherlock Holmes, followed by Agatha Christie . . . well, you get the idea.

(An aside: I wonder what happened to the original paintings the publisher commissioned for the covers of these novels. Were they, like so much commercial art, discarded and forgotten? Are there people who collect them?)

It's been decades since I read the Hardy Boys, and I found listening to several in a row a little startling. It rapidly became clear, first of all, that the audiobooks were not the versions I read in the 1970s, which had been heavily edited and, as much as was possible, updated. Those blue hardbacks filling my shelves always had exactly twenty chapters, for one thing, while the audiobooks had 23 or more. They were clearly the originals, from the 1920s and 30s, which made things a bit disorienting. It's hard to identify everything that was different, but there were more scenes with the Hardys simply hanging out with their friends, and even going to school, than I recalled. Also, I really don't think the Frank and Joe I knew were quite as accustomed to toting guns, which their earlier incarnations very casually bring along on several of their adventures. They never actually shoot a person--at least not in the books I listened to--but they cheerfully dispatch large numbers of snakes and wolves in ways that modern, ecologically-conscious readers might be a bit uncomfortable with.

I should say, by the way, that the readings, by Gary McFadden, were quite good--even given his choice to make the Hardys' chums Chet Morton and "olive-skinned Italian-American" Tony Prito (who's described that way literally every time he appears) sound like, respectively, Gabby Hayes and Chico Marx. Chet, the primary chum, is the only one given anything more than a single defining personality trait (Biff Hooper is athletic, Tony Prito is Italian, Callie Shaw is pretty). I remembered Chet as being a) fat and b) cowardly. In the originals, though, he's a) fat and b) a practical joker, whose jokes usually backfire on him.

I did definitely remember the extremely limited and repetitious vocabulary employed by "Dixon." Friends are always "chums." Fired revolvers invariably "crash." Cars are either "roadsters" or "jalopies." On the other hand, there were some turns of phrase I found quite novel. Several times, expressing enthusiastic agreement with a statement just made, Joe breaks out not with "I'll say!" but rather "I'll tell the world!"

Plotwise, the books are . . . let's be generous and call them thin. They're not really mysteries, as the bad guys (gangs of thieves or kidnappers, generally) are immediately obvious from the first page, and it's just a matter of tracking down their hideouts. There were two things I found very striking about the books. First, storms. I listened to four books, and in every single one of them the Hardys (and usually some of their chums) are put into moral peril by a sudden hurricane-level storm or, if it's winter, the worst blizzard in decades. These are always preceded by Frank casting a worried glance at the gathering clouds, but deciding that the boys probably have time to do whatever detective task they're engaged in before the storm hits. He's always wrong. As a variation on the theme, there are cave-ins, which happened three times in the four books. The minute Frank and Joe decide to go into a mine, the supporting timbers immediately age by several hundred years.

The other thing that was impossible to ignore was probably one of the main elements that had been updated for the 1970s versions. In the originals, the Hardys live in an America that is still overwhelmingly rural. Trains are the main way to get from town to town; most roads, outside city limits, are unpaved; airplanes are still a novelty. Most families grow at least some of their own food. Odd hermits can built themselves cabins in the woods not far from town and go unchallenged. Teens go ice skating on frozen rivers. Placing a long-distance telephone call requires lengthy negotiations with operators and a bit of luck. Outside their hometown of Bayport, the landscape for hundreds of miles in every direction is farmland, dotted with occasional small villages that generally aren't even named. I found it all quite fascinatingly alien. 

I don't think I feel the need to listen to any more of the books, but revisiting them was fun. Maybe I'll try a couple of Nancy Drews. I've been told that, on average, they hold up better. Anyone want to vouch for that?

THE SHELF YOU LIVE ON

While I was listening to Frank and Joe, the actual physical books I read over the last few weeks were just a tiny bit different, being new novels from a couple of titans of American literature who have been around since the 1960s: Fox, by Joyce Carol Oates, and Shadow Ticket, by Thomas Pynchon.

Of the two, I found Fox more successful and compelling. It concerns the murder of a popular teacher at an exclusive New Jersey middle school who, it turns out, was also a serial pedophile. It's a long book, and most of it is concerned with putting us in the heads of the characters--including, in a number of chapters that sometimes get very difficult to read, the pedophile. The structure of the central plot, though, is a fairly straightforward murder mystery, and while Oates leaves more plot threads dangling at the end than is typical in such a work, she does ultimately provide a satisfying answer to the question of whodunit.

Shadow Ticket, meanwhile, is about Hicks McTaggart, a Milwaukee PI in the early 1930s who gets caught up in the search for a missing heiress--the daughter of "the Al Capone of cheese." The quest eventually takes him, against his will, to Eastern Europe, where people are more concerned with a certain political uprising that it's getting harder and harder to make fun of. Does this plot reach a satisfactory resolution? Hard to say because, as in most of Pynchon's novels (and especially his recent works), the very structure of the book seems designed to undermine the idea of plot. Or causality. Or logic. There are vast global conspiracies that may or may not exist, phantom submarines, vengeful golems, Hungarian biker gangs, vigilante autogyro pilots, spies, counterspies, and swing musicians, and after a while it's pretty much impossible to tell what any of them are trying to do or if they manage to do it. This is a book that openly mocks the idea that anyone is going to try to make sense of it. You just go along for the ride, and if you're a certain kind of reader, the absurdity and humor make it worth your time. It worked for me for a while, but I can't say I was sorry to get to the end.

So, what we have here is a murder mystery and a PI novel--and yet, I'm sure the vast majority of bookstores will put them on the general fiction shelves, not the mystery shelves, mainly because of the names of the authors. A lot of Oates's books in particular involve murder or other serious crimes, and she's been in Best Mystery Stories of the Year and Ellery Queen many times, but I don't often see her books alongside those by Richard Osman. I don't know that I have a point here, beyond noting that a lot of "serious" or "literary" fiction is really just crime writing wearing a tweed jacket and a pair of wire-rimmed specs.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

Hey, speaking of books on shelves . . . 

I try to avoid vulgar self-promotion in these columns, but there are times I can't resist.

It's been fifteen years since I published my first crime story. In that time, I've hit a number of milestones that I found thrilling. First sale to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. First sale to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. First award nomination. First acceptance to an open-call anthology. First award win. First inclusion in an invitation-only anthology. First Honorable Mention in Best Mystery Stories of the Year, followed by the first actual inclusion in the volume. First Bouchercon. Joining SleuthSayers. Becoming the president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Of course, I haven't notched nearly the number of publications and impressive achievements that many of the other columnists on this site can boast, but I'm having a blast chasing them. I figure I only have to live another 500 years or so to publish as many stories as John Floyd has, for example.

This past week I hit another personal milestone, and one that's especially meaningful to me, when Level Best Books published Crime Scenes, my first collection. Not too long ago, I thought such a thing would never happen, but here we are. The book includes twenty of my stories, including finalists for the Edgar, Derringer, Thriller, and Shamus Awards, two winners of the Al Blanchard Award, and several selections from Best Mystery Stories of the Year. 

Even if I never have another book published under my name, I'm thrilled to have this one out in the world. I didn't publish my first piece of fiction until I was in my forties. For many years, I thought being a published author was a dream that would be forever out of reach. Now I've got something I can put on the shelf to show that I made it after all. I'm proud of that, and also extremely grateful--to Level Best, to every editor and publisher who ever accepted my work, and most of all to the readers who have enjoyed it.

Because it turns out that actually being a writer is a lot more fun than dreaming about being one. I'll tell the world!

You can't take the Italian out of the Writer

It’s been brought to my attention that some readers here might not know that I got my start writing stand-up.  (30 years later, I have to work hard to simply stand up, but that’s another column.)

It’s also quite possible that since I collect husbands with Celtic last names (Campbell and O’Connell), readers might not know that I am predominantly Italian.

So when I was asked by Gemma Media – a terrific publisher of short, easy to read adult books- to write a crime series for them, it was just possible that my Italian background might come through.  As it did for The Goddaughter series.  As it did for…okay, all the others.  I’m an Italian gal masquerading as a WASP, and I couldn’t keep a straight face if they ironed and botoxed it.

Melodie Campbell is Canada’s “Queen of Comedy” – The Toronto Sun

Comedy is my lifeline.  Laughter is my survival kit.  I love the Merry Widow Murder series that I’m currently writing for Cormorant books.  It has humour in the form of my beloved character Elf.  But I miss the old standup days.

Writing PIZZA WARS brought me back to my early comedy-writing days.  It’s perhaps my most loopy book.  Take a city (Hamilton) that’s known for steel mills.  Take a population where a good many came from Sicily between the wars. 

Take all that, try to fit it into a Police precinct, arm the place with Officer Rita “Mom” Gallo, and you can have some pretty funny things take place.

After all, who needs a gun when you have a wooden spoon?

Now available!  At Amazon, and all the usual suspects.  (If you like The Goddaughter books, check out PIZZA WARS!)