Crime Scene Comix Case 2026-09-039, Gold that Glitters

Once again we highlight our criminally favorite cartoonist, Future Thought channel of YouTube. We love the sausage-shaped Shifty, a Minion gone bad.

Yikes! In this Crime Time episode, only one outcome is possible.

 

 

 

 

© www.FutureThought.tv

 

That’s today’s crime cinema. Hope you enjoyed the show. Be sure to visit Future Thought YouTube channel.

John Irvin's TINKER TAILOR

  

“In my jungle, you’d be just another asshole.”

The director John Irvin died last month.  He wasn’t a brand name, and he wasn’t identified with any particular genre.  His best-known picture is probably Hamburger Hill, from 1987.  But he made two indelible stories: le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Frederick Forsyth’s Dogs of War.

The Dogs of War was Forsyth’s third novel, and it has a convoluted back story.  The plot involves a mercenary-led coup against a corrupt African dictatorship, and Forsyth created a legend that he was prepping a coup himself, against Equatorial Guinea – which got him inside the world of guns for hire, and gives the book its nuts-and-bolts authenticity - but also suggested to the wrong people that Forsyth’s invented coup was the real deal, and there was later an actual coup in Guinea, similar in many ways to the paramilitary operation mounted in Forsyth’s novel. 

The movie streamlines the story considerably, without making it less morally ambiguous or any less savage.  The preparation is in itself fascinating – Bill Goldman once said the trick to a good heist movie is that you show the audience how it’s done, and the story arc is much like a robbery picture, the pitch, the recon, the score – and then the moral reckoning.  Forsyth is said to have disliked the picture, which may be because of the necessary compressions in the script, but there’s no wasted motion.

The mini-series adaption of Tinker Tailor takes a far more circular approach, with a lot of breathing room, none of which lets any of the air out of its tires.  It’s consistently nerve-wracking.  Le Carré, it should be admitted, doesn’t suffer from the long-form.  The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Deadly Affair (Sidney Lumet’s 1967 movie of Call for the Dead) are very good pictures, both with a runtime of just under two hours, but generally speaking, le Carré is better when you don’t cut corners.  The Little Drummer Girl is a terrific book, and it turns in on itself, winding the clock.  The 1984 movie with Diane Keaton is an honorable attempt, but the 2018 adaption, with Florence Pugh, is a masterpiece.  The same can be said of Tinker Tailor and its sequel, Smiley’s People.  Each of the television versions run a full six hours. 

Tinker Tailor is very much script-driven, and Arthur Hopcraft’s screenplay is labyrinthine without becoming unnecessarily tortuous.  It also has an extraordinary cast, beginning with Guinness, but with Bernard Hepton as Toby Esterhase and Beryl Reid as Connie Sachs, Joss Ackland, Ian Bannen, Hywel Bennett, Patrick Stewart (in a cameo), Nigel Stock, Sian Phillips, and the incomparable Ian Richardson as Bill Haydon.

Tony Pierce-Roberts’ other cinematography credits include The Remains of the Day and one of my own secret enthusiasms, A Private Function.  But managing this herd of cats was John Irvin’s job description.  It was a five-month shoot, complicated by logistics issues and the threat of strikes.  Alec Guinness reportedly had cold feet about playing Smiley, at the outset, but Irvin wouldn’t humor him.  Asked later what he thought about the director, Guinness said, “Balls behind the camera.”

“Being a director is the most privileged existence there is,” Irvin remarked of his career.  "It's the best table in the restaurant."

House of Creativity

One of many paintings by Temple’s mother
we have hanging in our home.

Temple and I live in a home filled with the creativity of others.

Temple’s mother and my mother were artists, and their paintings adorn the walls, as does a painting by Temple’s great-grandmother on her father’s side. Temple’s father crafted our dining room table, two end tables in our living room, and other furniture throughout the house. We have several quilts sewn by our mothers and other family members. We have original art and limited edition prints we’ve collected over the years, some by friends and acquaintances and some by strangers. Additionally, though I have none of his work, my mother’s stepfather was a photographer who also created and sold jewelry.

Our own contributions pale by comparison: A few shelves contain books I wrote, edited, or contributed to, and many of Temple’s tiny sketches and watercolors peek out from shelves in several rooms.

Temple and I both come from decidedly hard-working families, none of whom ever made a living from art, but they found time to create it, just as we do now. The attitudes they passed along, though, were markedly different.

As a child and as a young man, I drew and took photographs and created nothing but a drawer full of sketches, drawings, and photographs that demonstrate no particular skill at visual arts. My musical attempts led to a collection of instruments sufficient to outfit a rock band but which serve to remind me I have no particular musical skills.

When I was young, my mother encouraged my attempts. Though she could never afford lessons, she gave me my first guitar, and my first drum sticks and practice pad. She also gave me a Brownie camera. More importantly, when I told her I wanted to be a writer, she gave me my first typewriter and later gave me my second. Though she never made a dime from her art, my mother never told me I needed something to fall back on.

Though her mother and great-grandmother were artists and her father crafted furniture, Temple’s parents did not encourage her. They emphasized the need to get a job and earn a living, so her path to art was a much tougher one. Rather than being in the forefront of her life—as it has been in mine—Temple’s pursuit of art was squeezed into the tiny scraps of time between her adult responsibilities. Only in the last few years has she felt free to explore her artistic calling. Now, just as I have a room where I write, she has a room where she paints.

I wish Temple had not had to battle her upbringing to find her way to art—especially because of her family’s artistic legacy—but, if nothing else, it proves that artists will find a way.

Pencils down

             Among the common laments of struggling writers is the problem of getting started.  Writing that first sentence, paragraph, chapter.  Personally, I like that part.  If all I had to do was start a project, my batting average would soar.  The difficulty for me is starting something good.  That’s a whole n’other kettle of fish.  And a consistent ravager of averages.

            There’s an opposite problem, which is knowing when to stop.  Both these issues are

dealt with by Issac Newton, who basically said getting something moving takes some effort, though stopping it can be even harder, or actually impossible, without the intervention of an opposing force. 

            Technically, the best treatment for this affliction is to have thought out the structure of your book in advance.  If you have a beginning, a middle and an end, presumably you’ll know when it’s time to stop.  This gets us into the tiresome debate over who’s a pantser and who’s an outliner.  If you believe the beleaguered panelists at a writers conference, we’re either one or the other.  Of course, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, though when it comes to wrapping up a mystery novel, it’s pretty helpful to have a destination in mind as you’re writing along. 

Another trope of the writing commentariat is E.L. Doctrow’s bit, "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  That’s a lovely bit of poetry, but the most likely outcome of this approach is hitting a tree, or running over your next-door neighbor.  Employing a purely Doctrowian strategy, you might find yourself driving from Oxford, Mississippi to the Upper Peninsula, and not have a clue about how to find your way back.  If all that driving is a stand-in for work product, that means you‘ll be throwing out a lot of pages, and this I find

inexcusably wasteful.   I’m more in Reed Farrel Coleman’s camp, who says something like, “I know how to get started, and where I want to end up, and then I figure out how to get there along the way.”

There are believable reports from the conference stage of writers who find their plots revealing themselves as they write, with the finale popping into view at just the right moment, that is, when they’ve reached about 100 thousand words and everything suddenly makes a lot of sense.  I know this happens, and for some, it’s the only way it can happen, but I suspect their genius lies in the subconscious, which has been ably managing navigation while the driver is at the wheel wearing out her pants.

Newton did stipulate that the force needed to arrest motion is external, but this needn‘t apply to automobiles (which have brakes) or disciplined, experienced writers itching to write “Finis”.  Though in support of Newton’s proviso, we also have editors, armed with book contracts, underpinned by production costs and sales forecasts. I worked for a publisher once, and I got to say, “We love your book.  Please cut forty pages.”  I think this always made for a better novel, and importantly, one we could afford to print. 

Have you ever had a big chunk of writing get gobbled up by the computer, and been forced to recreate it all from scratch?  And then somehow come across the original pages?  In my case, the reincarnated version was always better, though some nice bits were invariably lost.  I copy these down and squirrel them away for future use.    

This might give you the idea that you can always improve your book if you have the time to constantly fiddle.  Though there’s a subset of the sin of overwriting, which is over rewriting.  In woodworking and car mechanics, two pursuits that have a lot in common with banging out novels, this is called “Fixing it till it breaks.”  It’s the delusion of perfectionists that refining will always elevate the product, not knowing when they’ve crossed into

sabotaging the messiness that actually creates something fresh and notable.  Whether inflicted by a heavy-handed editor, or ones internal arbiter, it amounts to a crime against art. It's not just about when to stop, but how you do it.

By far my favorite form of ending is one that really isn’t.  The reader thinks he’s idling around in a denouement, when all of a sudden he’s back in the soup.  Or a final twist pulls it all into a more satisfying conclusion (e.g. Presumed Innocent, my personal crime writing GOAT.)  James Cameron, undoubtedly inspired by Rasputin, built about five climaxes into the original Terminator, which my young son at the time renamed The Determinedator.  This technique is a lot of fun, but not that easy to pull off without seeming contrived.  I admire the writers who do.

Our most recent terrier, who died having outlived all his successors, always looked like he was eager to get on to the next thing.  He didn’t know what it was, but he was sure it was going to be great.  He might have been possessed by eternal optimism or just some fundamental drive; it wasn’t exactly joy, but certainly the sublime fulfillment that comes from never being entirely fulfilled. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timmy the Greek

As mentioned once before, during the pandemic, I began sketching cartoons. Eventually, I became addicted and couldn’t stop.

Not everyone loves ’em. My friend Thrush claims he hates them, they’re obscene he says, they’re unfunny. But he dislikes all animation and cartoons, so perhaps I shouldn’t read too much into it.

But that is a problem… I can’t always tell if something’s funny or not, and I definitely lean toward dark humor, less a product of Covid than wicked imagination. Are they any good? I don’t know, I’m an amateur, not a pro, but they’re fun and I’m improving.

What I do know is that a great many cartoons of today either aren’t amusing or rely upon a 5^th grader’s sense of humor. On the flip side, it must be tricky to come up with a funny comic every day or even once a week.

Because of the coronavirus, the majority of my efforts were either medically tied or came from wandering, peripatetic thoughts. Virtually none related to crime. This past week corrected that. What can be more criminal than mobsters having a pleasant chat in a warehouse?

The Interrogation

Influences

Dick Tracy’s Chester Gould suggested the stylized geometry, angular lines, the period, and zoot suits. I debated a 3-D look, but decided against it. Squat characters found at any number of sources finished the cast. The warehouse setting is like a fourth character, silent but menacing. So step back into the dark as we bid hello and goodbye to Timmy the Greek.

Funny or not? Dish it out. I may not have a career in cartooning after all.

The Way I Do It

The other day, as I sat here wondering what to post for my SleuthSayers column, I received an emailed request from an editor for an interview about the way I write short stories. I agreed, he sent me the questions to answer, and one of them was How often do you revise and edit your work? The day after, before writing more of the piece--or do you complete the work, then go into revision mode?

I dutifully responded to that question (and to the others), and only afterward did it occur to me how good a question it was, because I know a number of writers who approach editing and rewriting in many different ways. And--full disclosure, here--I also realized that this was handy fodder for a SleuthSayers post.

Another thought that struck me was something I heard years ago: A good teacher doesn't say, "This is the way you do it." A good teacher says, "This is the way I do it."

So . . . (though I'm no longer a teacher) what do I do, with regard to writing and revising a manuscript?

The whole process, for me, happens in three steps:

Step 1: Planning. I get an idea and--since I'm an outliner--I put the whole story together in my head, start to finish, mostly visualizing separate scenes. It might change a bit later, during the actual writing, but I have to have the entire story, including an ending, in mind before the writing begins. And yes, I know that's not the only way to create a story. But it's what works for me.

Step 2: Writing. I write (type) the first draft of the story, from beginning to end, in all its rough and unedited glory. During that draft, I sometimes substitute letters or abbreviations for characters' names--H for husband, W for wife, N for neighbor, V for villain, and so on--and insert brief notes in certain places like "come up with with a reason for this" or "add detail," or "add background," etc. In other words, I write down the flow of the story, all the way through, and leave out anything that might slow me down.  

So no, I do not "edit as I go."

NOTE: I know many, many writers who do. They write, let's say, an opening to a story, and when that's done, they carefully edit that opening, making sure that section of the story is as perfect as they can make it--and only then do they go on to the next section. They write a few pages of, let's say, the middle of the story, and then edit that part, again making it as perfect as it can be. Then they write the next part, and edit and revise that. And on and on, all the way to the ending. The result is, when those writers are done writing the story, voila!--the story's finished. I mean, completely finished--there's no need to edit or rewrite further. They're ready to send that story out into the world and have it make something of itself.

Step 3: Editing. When I've finished writing my rough draft, I go back to the beginning and edit the entire story.

       3a: I often use a triage approach. By that I mean, I might address the most important things first, like plot holes, continuity problems, timeline differences, weaknesses in structure, etc. I also, during this "step," try to plug the needed information into the place-holders I had put in during the first draft: explanations, clarifications, background details, names of characters, whatever.

        3b: Then I move on to matters of style: strengthening sentences and paragraphs; correcting errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.; making the dialogue snappier, weeding out unneeded words, and finding and fixing really minor issues like typos, backward apostrophes, and so forth. During this step I read and re-read the story, trying to do it through the eyes of a reader and not a writer. The last thing I do here is run the whole thing through SpellCheck and then read it one more time, looking for things SpellCheck won't catch, like typing "doe snot" when what I meant was "does not."

         3c: Finally, I take a hard look at the formatting of the whole manuscript. Spacing, margins, indentations, italics, scene break designations, fonts, page numbering, other header information, etc.

I should point out, here, that I actually have two reasons for doing all this the way I do, rather than "editing as I go."

Reason #1: Doing that info-dump first draft gives me the feeling that I've put a safety net in place. I like having the whole framework down on paper (well, on my hard drive) before I start editing anything. That probably goes back to being a plotter instead of a pantser. I need that reassurance. And having that ending securely in place, even though I might change it later, keeps me from wandering off the path during the middle of the story. 

Reason #2: I sometimes, during the rewriting stage, I think of new things that might change and improve the flow, or even the outcome, of the story. If I edited each section "as I went," these later changes in the plot would probably require me to go back and change things earlier in the story to make my later changes work. I might need to add all kinds of foreshadowing info. If so, I would be forced to completely re-edit sections that I'd already spent a lot of time editing. That's extra work. I don't want to have to go back and add and decorate another room on the bottom floor of the house I'm building when I have already begun building the second and third floors on top of it.

One final note: I don't do multiple drafts of a story. I write a first draft and save it with the story name as the file name, and when it's done and I start editing it, I type the edits directly into the first draft. So when I finish, I have one and only one file of the story. And these days, I usually don't print the story out at all. Everything--the writing, the editing, and the submitting to a market--is done electronically. I do, however, have an automatic backup of everything, both on- and off-site. I should also mention that I'm one of those odd people who actually enjoys the rewriting and the polishing of a manuscript. I know lots of people hate that part of writing. What can I say?

 

So, good or bad, that's my process. How do you do it? Do you edit as you go? Edit every page before starting the next? Write a certain number of pages or words a day? Stop writing with a cliffhanger so you'll be inspired to continue the next day?

Whatever it is, if it works, great. Do whatever's best for you. And vive la difference!

Luke Nickle Fights AI